I didn't know that about the discussions preceding the 1979 BCP. Was the idea to remove confirmation from the church altogether, or just to remove it as a rite for a Christian who's changing denominations?
Ruth Myers gives a very accessible and detailed account of the history in her book
Continuing the Reformation. It took me a while to find my copy, but I skimmed through the relevant chapters and here is but a very brief summary. [Edited to add: okay, it's not brief. It's really long. And I apologize, but I find it fascinating.]
In the 1960s when prayer book revision was underway, it seemed clear that we would be moving toward an understanding of baptism as the full rite of initiation into the church, including the bestowal of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, since confirmation had previously served as the prerequisite to Communion and would no longer do so, it's use had to be re-thought. The committee was torn over whether a mature public commitment was necessary, and if so, whether to call it "confirmation" or not.
In December 1968, the committee drafted a new rite of baptism which eventually became PBS 18 (the Prayer Book Studies were a series of booklets which set forth proposals for revision). They called the service "Holy Baptism with the Laying-on-of-Hands" and it restored baptism, confirmation, and communion back into a single unified initiatory rite as they believed the ancient church had. They included with it an "Admission to Holy Communion" rite for those coming into TEC from another church and a laying-on-of-hands for those baptized under the old 1928 rite which didn't include it at baptism. Leonel Mitchell, a very influential liturgist, suggested in 1970 that reaffirmation of baptismal vows (much like the catechesis which led to confirmation) should be ongoing and continual when witnessing the baptism of others.
The above unified initiation service had the bishop as the normal minister, but allowed for the whole thing to be delegated by the bishop to priests. This met with a lot of disagreement. One attempt to make it more palatable was to require the use of chrism which had been blessed by the bishop, thereby making the bishop a participant by proxy.
The committee chose not to provide any rite for reaffirmation or confirmation.
In January 1969, the Standing Liturgical Commission (SLC) responded to all of the requests for a reaffirmation service. But instead of assigning it to the Drafting Committee on Christian Initiation, they assigned it to the Drafting Committee on the Catechism to make clear that baptism was a full and sufficient initiation on its own. The Catechism committee responded with what is now the "Form of Commitment to Christian Service" and not with confirmation.
In October 1970, the General Convention heard a proposal to enact the unified PBS 18 as a trial rite in which priests would be licensed by their bishop to do the whole thing. It didn't pass the House of Bishops. Instead, they amended the resolution to allow trial use of the baptismal rite, but held that only the bishop could perform the laying-on-of-hands, and only then if they were old enough for confirmation. Essentially, this kept the status quo -- only with the new baptismal liturgy.
Louis Weil (another respected liturgist and member of the drafting committee) wrote this in an article a few years later: "The general reaction of the Church to PBS 18 was not merely that it was too radical, but rather more that a rite of profound pastoral importance in the Anglican tradition had been lost. It was not so much a question that the sacramental clarification implied by the rite was rejected, but rather that the significance of confirmation as a personal profession of faith and pastoral contact with the bishop had been cast aside."
In 1971, the House of Bishops met and issued "A Statement on Holy Baptism and Its Relation to Confirmation" That statement made a passionate defense of confirmation as an episcopal rite.
In April 1972, the SLC responded to the House of Bishops' statement with a conclusion that a rite of reaffirmation should be repeatable since it does not convey an indelible spiritual character like baptism does. Therefore, they proposed a reaffirmation rite which could be repeated multiple times and was entirely optional. They were clear that it should not be called "confirmation".
In May 1972, the drafting committee met and proposed "A Form for a Bishop's Visitation with the Laying-on-of-Hands." They took the SLC's insistence that it not be called "confirmation" since that implied it completed baptism, which was not the new understanding. It was sent out to the House of Bishops Theological Commission, which opposed it rather strongly.
In August 1972, the drafting committee took the comments from the House of Bishops and reworked their visitation rite. What emerged was sort of a compromise in which the laying-on-of-hands could be repeated at different times of a person's life, but it now included a blessing of the Holy Spirit (although specifically not implying that it was being bestowed for the first time). In September 1972, the SLC made some minor changes and distributed the new proposed visitation rite.
In December 1972, the House of Bishops met with the SLC. Unsurprisingly, the bishops complained that their statement from 1971 was being ignored and that it needed to be called "confirmation". They also continued to hold that the bishop should be the one doing the confirming, although they admitted it was not a case of "doctrinal necessity". The bishops won on every item except the name. The agreed statement from that meeting called it a reaffirmation of baptismal vows but still acknowledged that it was done on a person's "Confirmation Day". The revised service was published in PBS 26 under the very unwieldy name "A Form for the Affirmation of Baptismal Vows with the Laying-On of Hands by the Bishop, also called Confirmation".
The General Convention in 1973 changed the title to "A Form for Confirmation or the Laying-on-of-Hands by the Bishop, with the Affirmation of Baptismal Vows". The resolution originally said that Episcopalians were "suggested" to reaffirm their baptismal promises. That got changed to "encouraged" and then the bishops changed it again to "expected".
The story goes on from there, but by this point the future of confirmation was confirmed (yes, pun intended).
