I know this seems like a heretical question, especially for those of us who teach confirmation but also, I suspect, for any of us who went through it. It is, after all, perhaps the most significant religious right of passage in mainline Christianity. But that’s precisely what I want to question: confirmation as a rite of passage. As ample research has shown, confirmation functioned something like graduation for previous generations of Protestant mainline Christians. It was the end of required attendance, and when our kids left our churches in droves we didn’t worry too much about it because we could count on them returning once they’d...