Naming and Blessing of Children

The first thing to establish about the Latter-day Saint blessing of a child is what it is not. It is not a baptism, not a christening, and not understood to do anything to the child's standing before God, because Latter-day Saint teaching holds that a child needs nothing done to it. The Book of Mormon condemns infant baptism in unusually direct language, calling it a denial of the mercy of Christ, and the movement holds that children are innocent until the age of eight, which it treats as the age of accountability and at which baptism is administered.

What the ordinance does is name the child and bless it. A few months after birth the family brings the baby to a fast and testimony meeting, and a circle of men holding the Melchizedek priesthood, ordinarily the father with grandfathers, uncles, brothers and close friends, stand at the front and hold the child between their hands. One of them, usually the father, pronounces the blessing.

The child is entered on the church membership record from that point, as a member of record rather than a baptised member, and the name given in the blessing is the name recorded. That administrative detail is the only fixed outcome of the whole thing.

There is no text. The man giving the blessing has nothing prepared beyond, at most, a thought, and what he says is understood to be given at the moment. He names the child, and then blesses it with whatever he is moved to bless it with: health, faith, a particular quality, sometimes something oddly specific that the family will repeat for decades. It lasts a minute or two. The church does not record it, and the words are not entered anywhere, though families very often record it themselves on a phone, which is the modern form of an older practice of having someone write it down at the back of the room.

The whole thing takes place in an ordinary meetinghouse in front of the entire congregation, which makes it, unlike the temple ordinances, completely open. Anyone may attend: grandparents who left the church, neighbours, family of another religion or none. For many families outside the movement it is the only Latter-day Saint ordinance they will ever see.

Two things about the practice are discussed within the movement. The circle is composed of men, and a mother holds her child until the moment it is taken from her and does not stand in the circle, which is among the practices Latter-day Saint women raise in the continuing conversation about the place of women in the church. And the church clarified in 2019 that a child may be blessed where a parent is not a member, removing an obstacle that had kept some families at a distance.