What is Confirmation?

Confirmation is the sacrament through which the Holy Spirit comes to us in a special way and enables us to profess our faith as strong and perfect Christian and soldiers of Christ.

Confirmation is a rite used in many Christian churches. Though beliefs about confirmation differ among traditions, it is commonly seen as a mature statement of faith of a person already baptized. Customarily, it is done during adolescence, and, as such, is often seen as a rite of passage.

Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, and a large portion of Anglicans, view it as a sacrament, which in the East is conferred on infants immediately after baptism, but in the West is usually administered later.

According to canon law for the Latin or Western Catholic Church, the sacrament is to be conferred on the faithful at about the age of discretion (generally taken to be about 7), unless the Episcopal Conference has decided on a different age, or there is danger of death or, in the judgement of the minister, a grave reason suggests otherwise. The number of Episcopal Conferences that have set a later age has diminished in recent decades, and even in those countries a bishop may not refuse to confer the sacrament on younger children who request it, provided they are baptized, have the use of reason, are suitably instructed and are properly disposed and able to renew the baptismal promises.

In Protestant Churches, the rite tends to be seen rather as a mature statement of faith by an already baptised person, usually an adolescent, and thus as a rite of passage, which, though not as big a change as a bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah, holds a similar meaning.

Several secular, mainly Humanist, organizations direct "civil confirmations" for older children, as a statement of their life stance, an equivalent alternative to traditional religious ceremonies for children of that age.

Some regimes have as a matter of policy fostered the replacement of Christian rituals such as confirmation with non-religious ones. In the historically mainly Protestant German Democratic Republic (East Germany), for example, "the Jugendweihe (youth dedication) gradually supplanted the Christian practice of Confirmation." The Jugendweihe, a concept that first appeared in 1852, is described as "a solemn initiation marking the transition from youth to adulthood that was developed in opposition to Protestant and Catholic Churches' Confirmation."

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