FOR many people the church is an anachronism, a relic of a God-fearing age which will be visited three times in their lives - at their christening, their wedding and their funeral. After that the church ranks increasingly alongside the museum and the library as places to be avoided in many people's daily lives.

Mainstream religions have their work cut out to appeal to the 21st Century masses. Their language steeped in the past struggles to make itself heard over today's crass commercialism.

Weekly attendance is moderate and figures show that Anglican and Catholic baptisms are significantly down - from 365,000 in 1940 to 150,000 some 60 years later and 74,000 in 1981 to 67,000 in 1996, respectively. Today, only a quarter of new-born babies are baptised.

Commentators claim that people haven't lost their spirituality but simply no longer feel like buying into something where the rewards are promised after death.

When parents do decide to visit church for a christening, the message is often lost. The ceremony is a mere precursor to the real event of the day, the party back at the house - much to the frustration of the clergy.

With the Blairs, the party no doubt will be held, but there's also no doubting their faith as regular churchgoers.

For them the baptism will be the moving religious experience it's designed to be. In church, presided over by a priest, Leo will be baptised with Holy water, as was Jesus Christ by John the Baptist in the sacred River Jordan nearly 2,000 years ago.

Before a christening, parents are prepared so they understand to what they are committing the child and, during the service, godparents make a pledge on the baby's behalf that he will accept the Catholic faith. Prayers will be offered, hymns sung and a candle lit signifying the spirit of the Lord.

"I think it's still popular, certainly in our diocese," says Dr Jim Whiston, spokesman for the Catholic diocese of Middlesbrough. "I was talking to a colleague the other day who has done 40 in the past year."

Baptism is the entry of the child into the family of God and marks his acceptance by the Christian community. Momentous, symbolic, a moment to cherish, but not one shared by other faiths and the growing band of agnostics.

But while traditional churches are having to work hard to keep the faith, the House Church Movement thrives.

New Life Baptists in Northallerton, for instance, had to buy an old cinema when the congregation became too large for their church. Recently they took over Hambleton Leisure Centre to perform 18 total immersion baptisms before a lively congregation of 200.

But the ritual differs slightly in the House Church Movement with baptisms performed on older children and adults as a sign they are believers, the devout ready to embrace the faith in the most demonstrative fashion - by being plunged completely beneath the water.

"I was baptised as a child and that was the choice made by my parents," says Baptist minister Rodney Breckon. "It was later that I decided I wanted to make a declaration of my faith in Christ.

"So when children are born we don't baptise them, we have a service of thanksgiving and dedication, thanking God for the gift of life. But we see baptism as part of the person's faith. It has to be their choice."

While the Baptist churches have found a way to tap into the modern day psyche, perhaps more successfully than traditional faiths, the groundswell of unbelievers express their spirituality subliminally in their lifestyles and behaviour.

"They have codes which they intend to live by and they pass on their values to their children," says Sue Gill, of the Welfare State International, a visual arts company in Cumbria which, for the past 25 years, has been organising alternative, secular ceremonies, including weddings, baptisms and funerals.

It's something the Government recognised when it allowed such ceremonies to take place outside church, in hotels, parks and stately homes.

"People want to live to a code and still have a value structure. But they want to be able to think for themselves. It's about life before death. People are not willing to put up with discomforts now on the chance there will be benefits in the afterlife," says Sue.

That's why people's homes have become so special, she claims. They want peace of mind which they can find in the garden, or in the food they eat - an agnostic population expressing its spirituality in a secular fashion.

"It's all manifestations of the same things; the way we live our lives, spilling over into the way we want to mark milestones in them," she says.

"So they want to make a personal tribute but will not buy into conveyor belt ceremonies any longer, no age-old script you have heard hundreds of times at christenings. And people are feisty consumers."

Instead, she offers to design personal ceremonies for parents and lay parents, a day to celebrate, a day to remember. It could be held by a lake, in a stone circle, on the fells and involve poetry, music, or the elements of earth, air, fire or water.

"At the heart of this is a ceremony where the parents themselves name their child. There's no hierarchy, it's for them to make a public commitment of their values as new parents."

One mother of a millennium baby asked for presents no bigger than would fit in a matchbox. These were placed in a special casket, a form of time capsule, to be opened by the child at the age of 18.

Mrs Gill is performing an ever increasing number of such ceremonies and even running courses on how to organise them. She has also published a handbook, The Dead Good Guide to Namings and Baby Welcoming Ceremonies, which is available by mail order on 01229-581127.

But whether parents turn to the traditional or the alternative, when a child is born they feel the need to mark a momentous occasion with a ceremony which satisfies their souls.

Critics might say Tony Blair is out of touch with the masses whose interest in religion has waned. But then who are they, or any of us, to impose our values on others