‘Intinction’ means ‘dipping’, and it refers to the practice of dipping the bread (usually a wafer) into the wine as part of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper (Holy Communion, the Eucharist, the Mass).

I’ve been dipping into the topic a little, far enough to gather a short reading list (also covering related topics, such as individual communion cups). I haven’t read all of the articles listed below, and I’m unlikely to take it much further any time soon, so I thought I’d deposit my notes here for future reference. It might even be useful to someone else, who knows.

First, a brief summary…

There are very few references to intinction in the early centuries of church history. It might have been introduced in some places as a way of making the bread easier to swallow for the sick or for young children. It is difficult to know when the practice arose, but in the Eastern Orthodox Church today, the bread and wine are mixed together and then served using a spoon. Intinction was a controversial practice in the Western (Roman) Church, and it was banned in the thirteenth century. In the Roman Catholic Church, the laity received only the bread (the host) between around 1415 and 1970, so intinction wasn’t a live issue in recent times prior to 1970. In other churches, it seems to have become more popular since the early twentieth century, in response to growing awareness of the role of germs in spreading diseases.

The two links in the summary above are to the best articles I have found so far as entry-points into the topic (also mentioned below):

• ‘Intinction: An Historical, Exegetical, and Systematic-Theological Examination’, by Lane B. Keister, published in 2018 in the Mid-America Journal of Theology (MAJT). Originally written in the context of debates around 2012 in the Presbyterian Church in America, with numerous references to other sources, the focus is on the history of intinction in the early church and in the Reformed tradition, and on the exegesis of key biblical texts.
• ‘Germ Panic and Chalice Hygiene in the Church of England, c.1895–1930’, by Andrew Atherstone, first published in 2025 in the Journal of Religious History. This article documents a very important period of history both for the move towards intinction and for the move towards individual communion cups, in response the new science of germs and subsequent widespread public concern about hygiene.

In dictionaries and encyclopaedias, there are brief entries on ‘Intinction’ in A New Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (SCM) (see under ‘Communion’ in its successor, The New SCM Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship), in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, and in An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church. Wikipedia also has an article on the topic.

In the Church of England, current practice is that intinction is generally discouraged but not actually prohibited in the Church of England as a whole, although it is prohibited in quite a few dioceses. Examples of diocesan guidance in which intinction is strongly discouraged include:

• Diocese in Europe: ‘A note about receiving Holy Communion by intinction’.
• Diocese of London: ‘Intinction of wafers’ as part of some Communion guidelines.

The Church of England’s Legal Advisory Commission of the General Synod issued a legal opinion way back in ‘January 1991, revised September 2003’ on ‘Holy Communion: administration of the Sacrament’ (also available as a PDF). This includes a lot of detail about individual cups and a smaller amount about intinction. However, the current version includes the following note at the top:

“At its meeting on 13 June 2024, the Legal Advisory Commission noted that there are two respectable views on the matter of the use of individual cups at Holy Communion.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Church of England guidance was issued in mid-2020 on ‘Holy Communion and the distribution of the elements’, in which the common cup was suspended. This led to an intense debate on the use of individual cups:

• Various responses are linked from a Thinking Anglicans blog post of 27 August 2020 …
• … including a legal opinion on ‘The legality of the use of individual cups for communion wine in the Church of England’ (also here).
• Thomas Renz published numerous articles on the topic on his own blog, as well as a post on the Psephizo blog
• A post on the Law & Religion UK blog from March 2021 contains links to various resources.
• Andrew Atherstone wrote a Grove Booklet on the topic, ‘Drink This, All of You’: Individual Cups at Holy Communion, which is described in a post on the Psephizo blog.
• That blog post refers to Andrew Atherstone’s significant article on an important period in the history of the Church of England regarding individual cups and intinction, ‘Germ Panic and Chalice Hygiene in the Church of England, c.1895–1930’, originally published on 19 September 2025.

Subsequent Church of England guidance was issued in December 2020 regarding intinction, using the language of ‘simultaneous administration’, where the priest (rather than the communicant) dips the wafer into the wine (otherwise known as ‘priestly intinction’). That guidance is available on the Thinking Anglicans website (linked from a blog post).

The Church of England website still contains a page with Coronavirus (COVID-19) guidance. This page includes a link to a July 2022 document, ‘Opening and managing church buildings’, which says the following under ‘Administration of Holy Communion’:

“If communicants do not wish to receive in both kinds, they may do so by receiving only the bread (communion in one kind) or the president may dip the bread in the wine before giving it to the communicant (simultaneous administration). Intinction by the communicant is not recommended.”

More recent discussion in the Church of England has been on the topic of gluten-free bread and alcohol-free wine, precipitated by a question posed at General Synod.

• A press release was issued by the Church of England on 10 February 2025: No, we’re not banning ‘gluten-free’ bread or ‘non-alcoholic’ Communion wine
• Andrew Atherstone wrote a post on the Law & Religion UK blog, which was published on 17 February 2025: ‘Wheat bread and fermented wine at Holy Communion? The origins of Canon B17’
• That same blog has an update on the topic from 10 July 2025: ‘Progress on those unable to consume gluten and/or alcohol at Holy Communion?’

In the Anglican Communion more widely, the Lambeth Conference of 1948 had the following resolution:

“Resolution 118: Administration of Holy Communion

The Conference holds that administration from a common chalice, being scriptural and having a spiritual meaning of great value, should continue to be the normal method of administration in the Anglican Communion; but is of opinion that there is no objection to administration of both kinds by the method of intinction where conditions require it, and that any part of the Anglican Communion by provincial regulation according to its own constitutional procedure has liberty to sanction administration by intinction as an optional alternative to the traditional method, and that the methods of intinction to be adopted or permitted should not be left to the discretion of individual priests.”

Outside the Church of England, there was quite a debate on the topic of intinction in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) around 2012, with the 40th General Assembly in 2012 giving ‘initial approval’ to an amendment ‘to prohibit the practice of intinction in communion’, which was then not approved by the presbyteries and was therefore taken no further, as noted at the 41st General Assembly in 2013.

• The most detailed treatment I have found on the topic of intinction is a paper by Lane B. Keister published in 2018, ‘Intinction: An Historical, Exegetical, and Systematic-Theological Examination’.
• An earlier (December 2012) version of that paper (which contains some additional material at the end) is linked from a blog post from 20 April 2020 by Cameron Schaffer: ‘A Personal Journey on Intinction’.
• There are a few posts on intinction on the website of byFaith , which is ‘the magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America’, such as the following from 2012: ‘The Intinction Debate’, ‘Adiaphora and Intinction’, and ‘Update on Intinction Vote: Six in Favor of BCO Change, 12 Against’.
• More recently, R. Scott Clark has a post from 2021: [John] ‘Owen Gives Us Theological Reasons To Object To Intinction’, which contains a few helpful links at the end.
• Also from the PCA stable is a blog post from 29 March 2025 by O. Palmer Robertson: ‘Should you Dip the Bread in the Wine at the Lord’s Supper?’.

On the same side of the pond, in The Episcopal Church, I came across a couple of articles:

• From 1945, there is an article by Gardiner Mumford Day on ‘The Importance of Intinction’.
• From 2025, there is an article by Matthew S. C. Olver of The Living Church: ‘It’s Time to Retire Intinction: An Open Letter to the Bishops of The Episcopal Church’

That post has some helpful links to the science, including ‘Holy Communion and Infection Transmission: A Literature Review’ by Dimitrios Anyfantakis (2020).

In the Roman Catholic Church, the laity received only the bread (the host) until 1970 (following Vatican II), after which practice has been governed by the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, as described in various places.

Plenty to read, if anyone is inclined to delve deeper into the topic!

Cite this article as Anthony Smith “Intinction and the common cup: a reading list ” in Law & Religion UK, 24 July 2026, https://lawandreligionuk.com/2026/07/24/intinction-and-the-common-cup-a-reading-list/.