This project seeks to assemble and interpret historical, theological, and contemporary social-scientific studies of confirmation as a faith practice to provoke a new way of approaching confirmation as a theological problem. Confirmation developed from sacramental, ecclesiastical, and ritualistic concerns and desires within the church; today it is often approached as a programmatic practice that might appear to be answering a question (or a set of questions) which are no longer asked within the larger life of the church or in society as a whole.

The theological question at the heart of this inquiry echoes back to Paul Tillich’s dictum regarding “relevance” in the “contemporary situation.” Confirmation, as a sacrament doctrinally matured during the latter Crusades as a means of emphasizing the structural integrity and hierarchical authority of the church; today's teenagers are asked to "confirm" their faith in a world where the church's authority is obviously challenged, diminished, or regularly exorcised from pulpits despite the inundation of cultural signals of irrelevance. I propose a shift upon the grounds of relevance, that is, that congregations contextually identify "relevance" and "irrelevance" as understood within their local communities of faith with the goal of promoting lifelong faith development and promoting Christianity itself as a desirable option to be a primary answer to concrete and existential questions of human meaning, human suffering, and living together in global community.