Tricolor Baptism

The scene was a baptism in the devoutly Catholic Brittany town of Morlaix: proud parents, thirty beaming friends, godparents holding the infant girl. But why was everybody gathered at the city hall instead of the local church? Why was the deputy mayor, in his tricolor sash, presiding instead of a priest with his stole? The ceremony was in fact a "republican baptism." Instead of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the baby was christened in the spirit of liberty, equality and fraternity.

This rare form of civil baptism dates back to 1790 in Strasbourg, where the first recorded ceremony took place amid the fervor of the French Revolution. Recent years have seen a sporadic revival of the practice particularly among atheistic socialists like the parents in last week's ceremony, Jacques Destable, 27, and his wife Christine, 22. Writing in the Morlaix birth registry, the Destables charged the godparents with the responsibility, if necessary, of raising their daughter Juliette "solely in the cult of reason, honesty, the love of labor and of the republic."

The lone traditional touch came afterward, when the Destables handed around pink-sugar-coated almonds. But that did not sweeten the ceremony for some of their neighbors. "Most people have treated me very coldly," lamented Destable. "I have the feeling that many Bretons haven't yet accepted the French Revolution."

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