CHRISTENINGS in this country have become such posh and trendy affairs – like society weddings. We live in the age of the designer Baptism. Personally, I prefer to do Christenings as part of the Parish Communion, rather than hold them as hole-and-corner affairs in private at 3pm on a Sunday. For if one of the main points of the service is to welcome a new person into the congregation, then it’s right there are a few of the congregation present to do the welcoming.

But sometimes you can feel you’ve been landed with rather too much of a good thing.

Little Kaylee, or as it might be Landon, is carried in accompanied by more baggage than the Queen of Sheba and often in a designer Christening gown like something that would win prizes at Milan Fashion Week.

And the child is not alone. Whereas those attending the service were usually parents, godparents and perhaps a grandparent and a couple of uncles and aunts, nowadays they bring the whole neighbourhood. The young modern parents invite all their friends, who are also, of course, young modern parents, with their shoals of sprogs. So the scene around the font resembles a play group and the sound reminds me of all those terrifying biblical texts about wailing and gnashing of teeth – even when the baby has no teeth.

I used to enjoy village Christenings in my country parish in Yorkshire and I remember being told by a farmer’s wife with a ruddy face and ruddy loud voice that: “The baby’s got to cry when it’s being sprinkled. It’s the devil coming out.” And there is some historical sense in what she said, because the Christening in the old Catholic Latin rite and in the first English Prayer Book of 1549 included a prayer of exorcism: that the devil come out of this child and torment him no more. Heady stuff. And entirely unacceptable to the dumbed-down, touchy-feely, nonbelieving modern Church of England.

Its liturgical commission has just brought out a new draft Baptism service which makes no mention of sin. That wouldn’t be “nice”

would it? And the devil is not so much as mentioned, let alone renounced. Stephen Platten, chairman of the commission explains: “The devil is theologically problematic.”

Not half as problematic as the contemporary Church of England. CS Lewis, who wrote the Narnia stories, said that the devil wants us to have one of two sorts of attitudes towards him: either to take an unhealthy interest in satanic things, or to make the devil into a pantomime figure of fun.

“Picture something in pink tights.”

What’s so marvellously emancipated about the modern church that it no longer has a place for the personification of evil? The devil has a long history.

He appears as early as chapter three in the Bible, he torments Job and he tempts Christ in the wilderness. Oh, but we think ourselves so progressive and delightful these days that we don’t like to mention our warts and blemishes.

But when you look at the wars and genocides of the past 100 years – more than in all the previous ages put together – can we really refuse to own up to what we always unfashionably regarded as sin? If I look into my own heart, I know there is plenty of scope for repentance: my selfish motives, letting people down, my repeated failings and shortcomings.

The diluted modern church has undermined its own Gospel. If there is no sin, no evil, why did Christ bother to die on the cross?