Now I live in the bible belt and baptism is an important part of life. Some believe you have to be dunked at the age of consent (12) others believe that you have to be baptised as a child. I had a man tell me recently that because I am baptised as a child it didn’t count. I tried to explain to him that water baptism and spirtual baptism is different. Water B. is a covenant made with God with the church family that the child will be raised a christian and not a non-believer. Its a mark that all christians where. Now spirtual baptism is what seperates the elect from the non-elect. Spirtual B. is something that God allows over man. Its being washed with the Holy Spirit. Now both baptism can happen at the same time but odds are they don’t. I tried explaining it to him on simple terms like that but no dice. Any help?
:: runs in naked and dripping wet::
You know, if baptisms were held in hot tubs, I think there would be a lot more popular support.
Yee haw!
:: runs out naked and dripping wet ::
Nope, as both of you seem to mix a lot of church doctrines into the mix. Baptism by water is I think what you are talking about, that happened as a child. Some churches believe (as do I) that this should be done as an adult, as the Bible says believe and be baptised. Baptism of the Holy Spirit doesn’t seperate the elect from the non-elect. But back to water baptism, there is no mention of this covenant b/t God, church and family, so that is why I think it’s more a church issue.
Well in Acts it speaks of Baptising entire families. Repent and Baptised also can be baptised in the spirit. Paul also speaks of being baptised in the spirit and the water.
Perhaps the Pizza Parlor might get you more answers than you’re likely to get here. Plus, over there, you’re not going to get the atheists coming along for pot shots, as I’m sure will happen soon. I’m trying very hard not to be the first, though.
Some people don’t believe in infant baptism but I’ve actually seen it. 
Had it done to me to, as a week infink in the Roman Catholic church. Had it repeated too as a teenager with the whole fam damily in a southern baptist church. Done just the way John baptized Jesus, in a fiberglass jaccuzi tub. Okay, it wasn’t the Jordan but it was by full immersion. I’m now a Lutheran and feel no need to repeat the process as it took the first two times.
wow I have to say Padeye that you are a melting pot of denominations. If you would have been reformed from the begining you would have understood that the first was enough.
As far as I’m aware, many denominations who practice infant baptism also include confirmation as an adult or adolescent, where you re-afirm your committment to God.
That’s how they do it in the Roman Catholic Church.
I suspect that there is no way to persuade an adherent of adult baptism that infant baptism is legitimate, just as there is no way to persuade an adherent of infant baptism that that practice is wrong. At this point, there are not only all the theological issues that have been imbued in the people who practice each mode, but there are political and emotional issues tied to the practices that prevent either “side” from granting their “opposition” a hearing.
Same with us heathen Methodists.
My grandparents were Quakers who came over to the United Methodist Church (there is a name for it, but of course it escapes me). They were not re-baptised at that time, because the UMC recognizes the Quakers as kindred spirits. However, on a trip to the Middle East, they were immersed in the river Jprdan by our pastor (very cool).
Our current pastor includes water from the Jordan into each baptism with our local water.
Obviously, that should be the river Jordan…
sigh…
Well, in distinction from the Eucharist (where the RCC gets fairly picky), the Catholic Church recognizes all Christian baptisms (even if they were performed by a non-Christian(!?)). Any christian who wishes to enter the Catholic Church and can provide documentation of having been baptized is accepted with an initiation rite and no baptism. If they believe they have been baptized, but do not have documentation for it, they are “conditionally” baptized, as the RCC holds that baptism is a single event, regardless of the conditions under which it is performed.
I don’t know if that’s true, as I was once pro-child baptism. I was baptised as a child as well, but now I don’t believe in it. I don’t think it does any harm, unless people believe they are saved because they are baptised.
I was raised UCC (United Church of Christ a/k/a Congregationalist) and we, like the Methodists (which I am now) do the double feature of baptizing in infancy and confirming at the age of reason (usually around 14, after a school-year of mostly tedious once-a-week confirmation classes).
Infant baptism may be theologically thorny for some (not me!) but it is an old, old practice. Since baptism was long considered a prerequisite for salvation, it made sense to baptize babies to ensure that they could have a chance to go to heaven in the event of their (all too common) untimely deaths. IIRC, adult baptism is actually the more modern practice (that is, adult baptism only, with no earlier infant baptism). Maybe TOM can confirm?
One apologia (with history) for infant baptism.
Luther continued infant Baptism and even Zwingli did not seem to have opposed it, outright. (I’m not sure about Calvin.)
The trend toward adult baptism began with the Anabaptists (from the word meaning “baptized again,” although they did not believe in a second baptism, instead denying that the first was effective.) The Anabaptists were pretty shrill in their demands for their particular reform of Christianity and were suppressed and persecuted by nearly all the other Protestant groups, even more than by the Catholic Church. (Some of the opposition resulted from various peasant revolts that they inspired, but they were still persecuted more frequently by Protestants than by the RCC.) However, each persecution resulted in a dispersal of the group through other regions of Europe and they eventually got some of their teachings accepted by a number of Protestant groups.
I am a Calvinist and we practice infant baptism but also have confirmation of faith. We do not baptise more that once, because the first was effective.
In addition to what was said before about early child death being more common, it was also a way to welcome new babies to the community. Lately at the ones I’ve been to (RC) we have a standing ovation for the babies and parents after they’re baptized and there’s parties afterwards. Things have changed, though; in a holdover from Jewish custom, the new mothers had to be “churched” as if they were unclean somehow after they’d given birth, so when I was baptized at three weeks in the mid-60’s, Mom stayed home and got ready for the party while my godmother and dad held me at the church.
Half the fun of infant baptism, of course, is seeing how the babies react. Often very comical and always cute.
Sheesh–forgot to add that the change is that mothers are now perfectly welcome, and that pre-Vatican II holdover is gone.
I was told basically that baptism puts you in a state of grace and confirmation makes you a full adult member of the Church, with Communion along the way (at “the age of reason”, in our case 7).
Actually, the church never prohibited (or even frowned on) mothers attending the baptism. What we usually find are variations on different cultural traditions coming over from Europe (some of which look distinctly odd to us, now), but most of which had begun when the children were baptized as soon as possible to avoid the problem of an early death interfering with the rite while the mother stayed home to recover from the act of giving birth. (Childbirth was a great killer of women in the old days and women who lived through the experience were often encouraged to recover for several days.) Different groups developed different traditions around those experiences and translated them through their own cultural filters which, in turn, changed again when medical science began increasing the survivability of both mothers and children.