Christening and Baptism
IT TECHS - Add Baptism to Christening line. The Baptism records are going in to Other Records. Everyday I have to manually put the Baptism Date and Place in the Christening line. Takes too much time and is often overlooked by other researchers. I have been very patient with this, but now it needs to be corrected. It is an easy fix. Just add Baptism to the computer language.
Thank you for all that you do.
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Hello @CSAndrews,
Thank you for your comment. We think you are talking about adding Baptism to the Christening area in the Vitals section, correct?
A better place to post changes you would like to see in FamilySearch is in the Ideas section. That is where the programmers look for comments such as yours.
On the left side of your screen, click on the lightbulb icon that says Ideas. Then click on Family Tree, then New Idea and post your comment.
Thank you!
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@bathompson thank you for moving this thread to the correct category, and please remember that the Ideas category still has the button disabled so no one can start any thread there.
@CSAndrews : This is one of my pet peeves too, so I will Upvote your post. I have requested the change repeatedly. That said, I think it is a lost cause. Here is why.
Several religious denominations make a hard line distinction between baptism and christening. Christening is infant baptism. In some denominations infant baptism is the only baptism that really counts; in others it does not count at all; and in a few denominations it is sacrilege.
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Looking at the history of genealogy, it is easier to understand what is going on here. It appears from old genealogy manuals that probably the original intent was to enter birth information when available and christening information when it was not available as a birth record substitute. For example, prior to 1815, only a very limited number of parishes in Norway ever recorder birth dates, the vast majority only recorded christening dates. These are a pretty good substitute because christenings at that time had to be within eight days of birth.
Since FamilyTree is now a world-wide project, rather than a European-centric tree, what would be most appropriate, would be to leave baptism in Other Information, move christenings to Other Information, and replace the Christening field with some short term meaning "Naming Ceremony held very shortly after birth."
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Gordon, this is off topic, but how did you create a new idea, or enter a "Feedback"?, or are we not doing that anymore? I know it wants us to enter a topic and see if someone from the past has commented on it, but really do not see anywhere NEW IDEA.
[Later]
Gordon, sorry to bug you. I have been working with this new "Q and A" and "Feedback," and catching onto it a bit, sorry to have bugged you. - Don
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Don, I didn't enter start this idea, just commented on it. CSAndrews created it under QandA, it looks like, and a moderator moved it to Ideas.
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Sorry CSAndrews for hijacking your "Feedback."
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Back to the evergreen argument of baptism versus christening: add to dontiknowyou's description the fact that English is just about the only major world language that has two different words for the concept. Even in England, records in Latin are labeled baptisati, regardless of what the nitpickers would label the rite in English.
I discovered on previous versions of FS's feedback forums that many people feel Very Strongly that baptism is not the same as christening. Other people -- including me -- believe, equally strongly, that they are Exactly The Same Thing. (To this day, I haven't wrapped my brain around what the difference is supposed to be.)
FS's data setup shows evidence of both beliefs. The index-based legacy profiles that litter Family Tree are largely based on records labeled Baptisati, and they all have the date and place from the record entered in the Christening field. If you go to one of these profiles and use the (inevitable) record hint to attach the originating index entry, Source Linker will helpfully offer to create a Baptism event under Other, exactly duplicating the Christening event that's already there under Vitals.
This duality is annoying and senseless. Either it's a birth proxy event and belongs under Vitals, or it's just a stray religious rite and belongs under Other. Not both, or rather, sometimes this and sometimes that, depending on the history of the profile and on the particular linguistic and cultural beliefs of the users who have touched the profile.
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Well, in some religions baptism is performed only on persons with mature understanding who profess the requisite faith. So infant baptism is right out. Christening is a naming ceremony, with or without baptism, and applied primarily to infants.
In a pedantic Venn diagram of baptism and Christening the union would be very large and the intersection very small.
Wikipedia has a disambiguation page:
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When I know or suspect a baptism is not a christening I leave it under Other.
When I know the baptism was in a community that practiced infant baptism ASAP then I will move the date and place into the Christening field so it can stand in for a birth record. In some families the infants were baptized the same day they were born, and perhaps then the mother was not present to supply the names of her parents...?
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My view of the argument: Christening and Baptism are the same if they occur at the same time. They are different if they occur at different times. Christening confers a name and baptism is a ceremony for entering a religion. If these occur simultaneously and the priest never quits talking, I would say it is hard to call that two different events.
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If these occur simultaneously and the priest never quits talking, I would say it is hard to call that two different events.
I have attached records from some well-documented communities where both Christening and baptism are recorded in painful detail, separately. Usually on the same day and in the same hand.
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This is a great discussion and this topic has been an issue even before FS FamilyTree. There are two similar but separate issues.
1. The vital conclusions of the Person are Name, Sex, and the 4 events: Birth, Christening, Death, Burial. The purpose of these vitals is to be able to describe the vital aspects of the person's life. The events chosen are to conclude the entering and passing of life. Christening typically is very close to the birth, and burial very close to the death and those are there because there is more likelihood of those events being recorded in historical records. Why not Baptism? That term tends to be more confusing for many users, and could be much later than the Birth event so it was not included in the vitals. Likewise other birth-like and death-like events were chosen to be in OtherInformation to capture, but not make the vitals more complicated. There are many posts discussing the details of various cultures, government, and religious record.
2. The issue of the historical record indexing equating baptism/christening is kind of confusing, based on #1 thought-process. I think it would be good to consider a more accurate and matching methodology to the indexing process. But we have to realize historical records and their indexes can be sourced from other record-custodians, parties, and indexing efforts outside of FS.
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I wish I had actual numbers to attach to this, but on a practical level, if everything on FamilySearch labeled "baptism" were filed under Christening in the Vitals section, it would be correct functionally every time. Worldwide and throughout the genealogical timeframe, the number of records labeled "baptism" that aren't christenings is infinitesimally tiny.
Never mind the distictions made by the profusion of denominations in the United States. In the rest of the world, there was and is no difference between "baptism" and "christening", because they're the SAME WORD.
I've moved a christening event to "Other" a few times, when it occurred so late that the event was not suitable as a birth proxy. (The family converted from Judaism when the children were preteens.) In contrast, I cannot count how many times I've dealt with baptisms that needed to be moved to Vitals, and with baptisms duplicated between Vitals and Other. Eliminating this tedious, annoying, and totally unnecessary work would be incredibly simple: just stop quibbling over a distinction that is absent from nearly every world language besides English.
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