Have just finished reading this quite old but very good book on baptism and the complicated issues. Being someone who grew up in a Baptist Church was dedicated as a baby, then baptised later, worked for an Anglican Church and society for two years and now finding myself attending an Anglican Church I have been puzzling over the issues of when and how to baptise people for a while and so my vicar lent me this book to read!
The book really made me think and challenged my views and opinions (a good thing) but I am still convinced that I am not in favour of baptising children when the family does not belong to the church. In cases where the family do belong to Jesus and therefore the Church it's a little different, but I have a real issue with getting people to say things like 'I turn to Christ' and 'I repent of my sins' when quite clearly they are doing neither. And I am not convinced by this whole use it as an evangelism tool either, I personally think it must upset God to hear people saying things like that when they don't mean it. And I haven't seen many examples of families coming to Church after they have had their children baptised (although I imagine ther must be some)
However as I am now committed to a Church which does baptise children who are not members of the Church, I will have to keep praying and working my way through this issue because it's not going to go away anytime soon.
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That's very interesting Hannah, and I agree. In fact one of the vicars at my church in St Annes a number of years ago had at one point left the church and gone into teaching over this very issue. At that time any family in the parish could come and ask for their child to be baptised without any preparation. Now the vicar can insist on a course of preparation for the parents before the baptism to impress on them the gravity of the promises that they as parents will be making and that they are not to be made lightly. Alternatively our vicar would say that he was happy to hold a thanksgiving service for the child. When I was baptised (at age 7) Ian, the vicar, insisted that if my dad did not feel able to make the promises in the baptism services then he wasn't to, so he didn't. And my dad respected Ian for saying that, I don't think he would have felt at all comfortable making such promises when he did not believe them. Having the choice of a thanksgiving service gives the parents an alternative and can still be evangelistic in style whilst holding its integrity.
I have heard about these thanksgiving services and people at our Church do have them but it seems to eb the Christian people who have them!! Hmm..If only everyone was as good as Ian your vicar at giving people the choice in sayign the vows.
Hi Hannah:
Interesting. I believe that it is right for Christian parents to have their children dedicated - to promise to bring their children up with the knowledge of God and His word - praying continually for their personal faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Baptism - baptizo - I believe in the immersion of the person only after they have a personal faith in Christ and have committed their lives to Him.
We had Judith and David dedicated in our own home (at that time we were in a church which did not publicly dedicate babies). All of our family have been baptised as adults.
In our church we dedicate babies in the way I described above and the parents - always Christians - are challenged to bring the children up in the ways of God.
There have been SO many babies in our church lately (and many on the way) so we look forward to a heap of dedications soon.
Ann
Thanks Ann, that is so my view point as well and I hope and pray that if I ever have chil xdren I will be blessed to have them dedicated and to bring them up knowing and loving Jesus as you did with yours
This is an interesting post. I am not always convinced by the personal faith argument as there seems to be a hint that when one member of a family came to faith, all the family were baptized there and then. I am not sure in the NT, how much faith preparation there was.
I think i need to think about this a bit more. I might blog on it then.
Nice to see you blogging Hannah.
Here are some more thoughts that I posted here. It has made me think a bit about what I believe about baptism. I have always shared the typically Anglican view that children should be baptized but this post has made me think a bit, accompanied by Toni asking me whether we would baptize our babies.
I suppose at the root of it, it depends on one's understanding of baptism and its purpose. In my mind, to say that baptism is just a public declaration of faith is not enough and, for some reason, I cannot accept that somebody needs to come to faith and be able to verbalize and understand what that means.
Is it that by which we are saved? I don't think so because I don't believe that baptism automatically means that I am saved whatever happens. I believe that salvation is a journey that we must persevere through.
I believe that baptism is a sacrament through which we are grafted into the Body of Christ and find our new identity in him and I believe that it is perfectly right to do that if you do intend to raise your children to be Christians.
The issue does become sticky though when the parents clearly aren't 'believers' or have no intentions of raising that child to be a Christian - but baptism is surely more about what God does/has done than about what we do/have done.
Debbie and I felt very strongly that our kids should be baptised as infants. We held a thanksgiving for each of them the first time they made it to church (about 9 or 10 days old!!) They were baptised after a few months.
I think I have two main reasons:
1) Baptism serves as the sign of entry into what I would call the "covenant community". In that sense it replaces circumcision. Not all who were circumcised grew up to be godly (as the OT testifies), but that didn't mean they couldn't receive that sign. For me baptism signifies my children as part of the community of the new covenant unless or until they choose otherwise.
2) The other issue is whose action in baptism is most important. Is it the human actions - the individual, the parents, the minister, or is God's action not entirely dependant on the sincerity of the people involved?
I think the "non-Christian parents" issue is more complex. My view was that I explained what they were saying, doing and committing themselves to, and it was their decision as to whether they could do it with integrity. After that it was between them and God.
Being a bit of a pragmatist, infant baptisms actually grew our toddler group and Sunday School!
I come late (very late!) to this blog and as a result to this debate.
I believe the bible teaches baptism is an outward, public declaration of an inner love, just as marriage is in many respects. Both depend on personal, lifechanging decisions. Other people can't make those decisions for you. Therefore I believe that everyone should make up their own mind if and when to be baptised. Obviously, for me, that's not going to happen during infancy.
My children were dedicated in church. More accurately, we had a service to dedicate ourselves to bringing up our children in a loving, Christian way and environment, and at the same time the people of our church dedicated themselves to help us do that.
Hopefully my kids will become Christians and decide to get baptised to demonstrate their personal love for God in their own time.
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