Last saturday we held a baptism service at our house for asher. there were about 30 people who showed up to assemble a community of faith around him. the ceremony was perfect. many of our friends and family did the readings, prayers and music. we invited people to remember their baptism by dipping their hands in the baptismal water, which by the way was in an upside down cake holder and the pitcher you see is our margarita pitcher. it fit very well with the benediction from Alternative Worship which called us to “buld the kingdom with the stuff that’s all around us”.
in many traditions, when infants are baptized the community of faith is asked to commit to raising the child in the faith. i have to admit i was somewhat torn in planning asher’s baptism. when we found out we were pregnant we had recently joined meadow oaks (a baptist church). for those who don’t realize this… baptists don’t baptize babies. you could make some convoluted arguments to get around it, but the truth is that historically baptists do not baptize babies.
yet as sarah and i discussed what we wanted to do about baptism it became clear that we felt strongly about baptizing our child as an infant. (i don’t intend to revive this discussion, btw) so we were torn between two communities of faith: our church family and our broader community of faith in our friends and family. so we decided it would be good to hold the baptism at our house. this would be an incredible picture of the actual community that will have the most influence on asher’s faith. and we wouldn’t have to try and explain why we were baptizing him as a baby (except to our baptist relatives).
if you’ve ever been to an infant baptism at most mainline denominations you will recognize that the community of faith assembled on those days is not the same community that gathers every sunday for worship. nope, we truck in all the relatives, godparents and friends to be part of the special day. i’m tired of the fragmentation and compartmentalization in our world, so i wanted to assemble the community that would be surrounding asher throughout his life.
the trouble is in doing so i left out a very important part of our community of faith, meadow oaks. they will definitely be involved in asher’s life, but not in that sacred rite binding the community to asher as the family of God. i don’t know that we could have had it both ways. maybe there was a third way i missed. either way, it makes me sad that division in the Body of Christ prevents us from being the Body together. We only find unity in spirit, not in practice. I pray that i can be part of changing that.
My last objections to infant baptism were stripped away when I read what St. John Crysostom wrote about it. I think there needs to be some rite of passage for the child who makes his or her own decision to follow Christ. I still have a preference toward baptism fulfilling this role, but there really needs to be a sacramental entrance of the infant into the community. I find “baby dedications” (as I’ve seen them done) to be weak. My plan (should we have children) is to have a chrismation for the infant, and save baptism for the child’s own decision. I’m not sure this is completely satisfying as a third way, though. I find it difficult to imagine our church participating in a chrismation, which would put us in the same position that you were in, leaving out the immediate faith community where we would desperately want them involved.
[...] i went and read the article peter linked to and it was very enlightening. here’s some quotes i thought were pertinent to our discussion of fragmentation and compartmentalization of community… “We know these close ties are what people depend on in bad times,” she said. “We’re not saying people are completely isolated. They may have 600 friends on Facebook.com [a popular networking Web site] and e-mail 25 people a day, but they are not discussing matters that are personally important.” [...]
[...] years in seminary with me. Along the way this person became one of my closest friends. This friend baptized our first child and their family has been a source of joy, comfort and great friendship to me and my family. I [...]