I’m not sure on what basis your Presbyterian church could deny baptism to unbaptized children of believers. It’s not that Presbyterians ONLY do infant baptisms. I can see them refusing to do infant dedications and insisting on doing baptisms instead. But any good Presbyterian church should be willing to do one of two things with your kids: baptize them now, and have them do profession of faith later when they have gone through the catechism system, or have them baptized along with a profession of faith now. Tell ‘em I told ‘em so. Hope everything works out. And blessings to you!

I agree with you totally about affirming our unity with other evangelicals. My posts on infant baptism are not meant to burn bridges with people from other churches, or to tell the RPC and NPC churches that we work with how they ought to do church. If others want to re-baptize or dedicate, that is up to them. If my kids end up joining other churches when they grow up, I will be affirming of them and their churches, and give them my blessing, whether I agree with all the particulars on not. Even though I won’t officiate a re-baptism as you would, I certainly won’t boycott a re-baptism if there is one. I’ll attend and say congratulations and wish them well.

My point is that we need to stick to and affirm and defend our own identity and beliefs. I think there has been some confusion of roles and identity, since we are ministers of one church yet work primarily in the context of another.

Like I mentioned, just because we work with churches who do things a different way doesn’t obligate us to follow along. They have pastors who can officiate over re-baptisms and infant dedications. We have to respect their way of doing things and not necessarily get them to change their ways. But by the same token they have to respect our commitments and recognize that there are certain things that we cannot and should not do for them. And I would say that infant dedication and re-baptism are two of those things.

Blessings and thanks again for your comments. Dave

I have to agree with Alejandro that one of the main reasons a person who converts to Christ would get re-baptized is that it certainly is a water shed experience. The baptism is a rejection of the past and an acceptance of the legitimacy and authority of the Presbyterian church.

With about 33 years of experience in the Mexico field working on loan to both the Reformed Presbyterian church and the National Presbyterian church, I have adopted their practice in regard to baptism. I also do dedications of babies. For me this is a simple prayer over the child and an opportunity to exhort the parents to be faithful in raising the child in the knowledge of Christ. I tell the parents that I also expect them to have the child baptized at a later date. In some cases it happens and sometimes it doesn’t.

The church environment of some people can very fluid. If they travel they have to find another church where they can attend and participate. If they haven’t officially joined a church they won’t be able to have the child baptized. A full official baptism can be expensive and involve a large party for the family.

One thing that we have to be careful with in discussing this whole matter is that we shouldn’t attach a Catholic way of thinking about baptism that affirms that the act in and of itself has some merit. What counts isn’t the ceremony or the activity but the faith of the people involved in affirming that their child is a son or daughter of the covenant.

When I grew up in the Christian Reformed church I certainly absorbed the idea that getting re-baptized was a negation of any previous baptism. In visits to the Jordan River I have seen entire bus loads of people who probably have been baptized already but see nothing wrong with going through the experience again simply because they happen to be at the Jordan river.

One of my nieces grew up in the Christian Reformed church and as such was baptized as a baby. She went to Bible school and met a young man who later became a Baptist pastor. They married and are active in the Baptist church. For her to be a member in that church she had to be re-baptized. Her parents asked me what my advice was on the baptism and what they should do about it. I said that they should go and give their blessings to the event. They didn’t have to consider the re-baptism a negation of the baptism that was done as a child. My niece and her husband are active in their church and the church doesn’t puzzle over whether she is really baptized or not. The parents are also affirming of the ministry that their daughter and son-in-law is doing in the Baptist church.

Many of the doctrines that we live with today derive from the experiences of the Reformers. But we live in a world where the challenges can be entirely different from what the 16th century reformers faced.

I’m not in favor of an ecumenical movement that would try force all of us into one super church. But I am in favor of church leaders recognizing Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit in other denominations that follow Christ but may not have the same doctrines that we have. I am not a dispensationalist pre-mil Baptist but I consider it a high honor that I have a close friend who lives by those doctrines. I’m not going to change to his doctrines and he is not going to change my doctrines but even so we highly appreciate each other’s ministries. God’s garden has many colored flowers in it and it’s about time that we come to appreciate the variety of colors.

I suppose we all mellow somewhat as we age. I hope that I’m never so ardent for propositional truth that I end up negating the unity of the body of Christ. I’ve had the opportunity of preaching at Baptist and Methodist churches. I’ve even preached at a chapel service held in the ruins of a Byzantine church at Mamsit, Israel. Those are not places to affirm our differences but rather we should affirm what brings us together.

Shalom Jan Van Ee

Thanks for your comments. I agree with everything you said about the emotional and symbolic value of infant baptism. As I mentioned, I went through that myself. I’m wondering, though, if we shouldn’t look for some other process that could fill that need rather than re-baptism.(After all, the Reformers came out of an even more hostile Roman Catholic universe and still rejected re-baptism).

As for the Catholic-leaning trend in the CRCNA, that scares me. I think it’s a move in the wrong direction, a glance back at Egypt when we ought to have our eyes on the Promised Land. While at Calvin I wrote in the seminary student newspaper criticizing the trend to speak ill of evangelicals – “evangelical” was always used negatively by professors there – and coddle up to Roman Catholicism. I think the roots of this are more socioeconomic than theological – i.e., it’s more prestigious to hang around scholarly, high church Catholics than to hang around lower class, grass roots evangelicals. I think another possible cause for some is that some people still have one foot in Europe and don’t like the idea of integrating with “America” – and evangelicalism is a very American phenomenon for the most part.

The burden of these posts is that I would like to steer clear of Catholicism’s many errors while not departing from our Reformed confessions either. I think we as Christian Reformed believers offer a nice compromise – evangelical piety and activism coupled with a solid Reformed theology and worldview. I think we need both to survive in the long run, but as always, Satan is in there trying to mess things up. But one little word shall fell him! Blessings, Dave