Should we be baptized and if so what is the correct way of baptism?
Well I would say “No” to your first question (or at the very least “There’s no need to be”) and therefore “Not applicable” to your second one.
But I suppose you will be wanting the input of some of our Christian posters.
Who are “we”?
Couldn’t hurt.
Unless you take your cleansing in shark-filled waters, of course.
The mainstream Protestant conventional wisdom:
Baptism is not essential for salvation. All that you need to be saved is to believe in Christ Jesus. However, baptism is an important witness both to the world and to the Christian community, making your decision to follow Christ a public one. It’s symbolic of washing your old life away.
Whether you’re sprinkled or dunked doesn’t matter, but since this is meant to be a token of a decision “for” Christ, by definition infants cannot undertake this, since an infant cannot choose whether or not to follow Jesus.
I’m sure some other flavors of Christians will be here in a minute with other “takes” on the subject.
Since you ask “should” (instead of “must”), then, yes, we should. From a Catholic perspective (and, no, that limbo business is no longer in the by-laws), all sacraments are sources of grace and means of becoming closer to God, which is reason enough.
Since you asked.
the church I attend strongly encourages immersion for believers who have some awareness of what it’s about (little kids- OK, babies- no) but it doesn’t mandate baptism.
I encourage baptism by whatever mode for believers or infants- heck, I believe in infant communion also. If a grown person is comfortable with their infant baptism, I see no reason to demand
rer-baptism. If one wants re-baptism as an aware believer, I see no reason to deny it.
Especially if you believe in Pascal’s Wager.
My best understanding of Baptism is that it’s a “nominal consideration” for entry into the Church. Think of it like your generous grandfather who agrees to sell you his car on your 18th birthday for $1. He’s essentially giving you a gift, but the $1 is a matter of form that says you’re serious about taking the car from him. As a matter of respect, you pay it, even though the transaction is, for all intents and purposes, gratuitous.
As a Catholic, I’m taught that Baptism has multiple meanings. On a social level, it’s a public welcoming of the individual into the larger family of the church. Biblically, it’s a matter of tradition (even Christ was baptized, as being a good Jewish boy, he followed the traditions of his day). And spiritually, Baptism is supposed to open Christians to God’s graces in new ways. (This part I’m still trying to figure out, but I welcome other Catholics to pick up where my brain is leaving off.)
Who are “we?”
Damn
Note to self: read thread first
Couple of points:
First, baptism is something commanded by Jesus. So even as evangelical Protestans who “don’t believe in priestly magic,” anyone who sincerely means to take Jesus as Lord – i.e., to live one’s life according to His commandments – is obliged to be baptized if he or she has not already been. For Baptists and a few other groups, the significance of intentionally undergoing it in obedience to Him means that infant baptism is meaningless, since that baby cannot form the intention that makes the ceremony anything meaningful.
However, those of us in the historical branches of the faith, ranging from Coptic through Orthodox, Catholic, and Anglican to Methodist, understand it to be a sacrament. To distinguish this from “mumbo jumbo aimed at placating the Great Sky Pixie” takes a little work, so bear with me.
In what’s called “philosophical anthropology” (a subset of philosophy, not of the social science discipline studying human origins and culture), what constitutes a human being is one of those hotly debated subjects: are we just a body in which electrochemical impulses give rise to consciousness? are we an immortal spirit immured in a mortal body? etc. At rock bottom, one is faced with the fact that whatever we may “really” be, what we appear to be is a unary composition of body and mind/soul. And if you are hungry, the finest words I can give to you will not assuage the craving in your stomach; I need to stop talking at you and feed you. If you are tired, you need to stop and rest. And so on.
In this context, then, while moral activity is something that is developed in the mind/soul, it is expressed in actions taken or refrained from by the body. Joe Cool and Jersey Diamond did not get married by his placing a ring on her finger; odds are he did that before, at the time he proposed if at no other point, and if they felt playful and light-hearted during their courtship, he may very well have done it with a strip of paper or a child’s toy ring as a serious-but-playful symbol of what they were committed to do in the near future. However, by placing that ring on her finger in a formal wedding ceremony in which they exchanged marriage vows, he was making a physical act that carried real and effectual symbolism of what they were committing to do with each other through that ceremony. This time, “it was for real.” The formula, “With this wing I thee wed” that is in the traditional marriage ceremony is meaningful – it is a physical act invested with additional and legally valid meaning because done intentionally in symbolism of the vows made in the wedding.
Baptism for us liturgical, sacramental Christians carries the same sort of objectively real symbolic weight. An unbaptized person who has come to Christ, or a family with a new baby who are committed to raising that child as a Christian, come to the font with the intent of commitment, to the best of their own will, to Jesus as Lord and Savior – the adult being intent on that commitment for himself, the parents of doing their duty to raise the child until he or she is mature enough to make his or her own decisions – and in token of that are poured, sprinkled, or immersed with clean water which has been set aside by prayer for the purpose (“consecrated” is the technical term) and in doing so, God’s grace of adoption into the Mystical Body of Christ is conveyed through the act of baptism with water. The key point is that it is an act which symbolizes and effectually conveys God’s grace – it is His intention, not that of the priest, the adult being baptized, the parents of the baby being baptized, or anybody else, that makes it “real.”
Hence “the age of reason” does not enter into the picture – it’s God’s act, done through the agency of the priest in terms of who physically manipulates the water, which conveys the grace. And while many of us are priviliged to claim that “we know (connaitre} God,” I differ from that baby or a brand-new convert only in knowing (savoir) a miniscule more about that ineffable and incomprehensible Godhead. I stand a few feet ahead of them on a journey of a million megaparsecs, to change the metaphor slightly.
As for what is necessary to do in baptism, I don’t think any particular style of performing the act is required. The key aspects are to use clean water if it is available (as it will be with vanishingly few exceptions) and to use a formula that places the appropriate words around the intentionality with which the ceremony is conducted, which would be “(Name), I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” if one adheres to the traditional usage. For an older child or an adult, the symbolism of being totally immersed represents the death of “the old creation” and the rebirth of “the new creature” in the language of the Scripture from First Corinthians that Jersey Diamond quoted on another religion thread. But it’s no more essential than that the person to be baptized be dressed in white; it’s just an additional effort to make the action more fully symbolical of what it stands for.
I thought that was so you could avoid paying high Vehicle License Fees, which are based on the sale price of the car.
It depends on you’re religious affiliation. As a Quaker, I was taught that physical baptism is not required. Baptism is a spiritual process, between you and God. It doesn’t matter what any other paritioners see happen to you, or wether or not a Priest says you’ve been baptized. The accepting God into your heart is the important part.
Betcha a copy of the Pensées, Tracer!!
Couldn’t hurt? Depends.
I kind of figure that baptism implies a promise. If there is a Christian God (which I don’t think so), I kind of figure he is more likely to look kindly on non believers who lived good lives and never got baptised than on people who were baptised and reniged (like me) and even less on people who were baptised only to “play safe.”
Neither of my children are baptised (which drives my father nuts). If they want to make that particular commitment to the Christian God, they need to be old enough to understand what they are doing. Baptism is kind of like getting a tatoo - if you change your mind, its hard to undo.
To me, this question is similar to "Should we make a Haj to Mecca?"
Your answer would depend on what you believe.
Baptisms are a lot cheaper and you don’t have to go through Customs.