Infant Baptism

Back in the early 90’s I spent a fair amount of time considering the concept of infant baptism when my first child was born.    I was a member of a church which practiced infant baptism and I felt like I needed to decide whether or not to baptize, dedicate, or skip the entire thing.   After a fair amount of investigation I came to a few conclusions.

1.       

• 1.       Most importantly I realized that baptism, while important, was not required for salvation.
• 2.       I concluded that the Roman Catholic position was problematic.
• 3.       The position of my denomination that allowed only for infant baptism or adult baptism was also problematic.
• 4.       Biblically, baptism was an act performed by adult believers.
• 5.       Infant baptism as practiced by the church I was part of was much more analogous to the Jewish ritual circumcision than to believer baptism.
• 6.       There is a certain value in having some type of ritual in which the parents and the church make promises to the child and acknowledge that both parties are accepting some responsibilities for the spiritual welfare of the child.

In short, while I think that calling what happens baptism is a poor label, I think that there is value in the sacramentally making a set of promises between the child, the family, and the local congregation on behalf of the Church.

Recently, I had the occasion to reflect on this and what exactly we as a congregation were promising.  In my experience, most people affirm the promise they make thinking that they might teach Sunday School or VBS of something like that and to engage in some general act that will generally help the child grow up in the faith.

A few weeks ago this seemingly theoretical question became immediately and crushingly real to me, when I got the call that my younger sister had died suddenly leaving two young daughters without a mother.   At one point during the week between her death and the funeral there was a prayer service at the church, at which someone brought up the point that this circumstance was the time when the church needed to step up and honor the promise that was made when these two girls were baptized.   Not in a “Hey I’ll bring cookies to VBS.” way, but in a real, deep, ongoing, and meaningful way. 

Obviously the family, both immediate and extended, has the primary responsibility, but that doesn’t let the Church off the hook.   

I actually am looking forward to see how this plays out over the next several years and to see some amazing people step into roles in the lives of these two girls in amazing ways and in ways that we can’t even imagine.     This is one of those areas in which the Church can and does step up and really shine and frequently does.