Un-Baptism

[Motokid]

Is it possible?

Many children are baptized long before they have a choice in such matters.

If, as an adult you wish to undo what was done, is there a way to do that?

Is there an entrepreneurial possibility here?

Do I have to baptize myself as a pagan, or heathen to break the Christian one my parents had for me?

Seriously though, is there something "official" to reverse/undo a baptism?

 

[abecedarian]

Most denominations that practice infant baptism have confirmation classes when that child is older. Those classes are to teach the doctrines and beliefs of that denomination, and I think they have a special church service where the child is reckognised as a full-fledged memeber of the church. In churches like mine, we don't practice infant baptism at all, preferring to wait til a child is old enough to choose for themselves. In most churches, if an adult wishes to drop their membership, all they have to do is send a letter to the pastor.

 

[sparkchaser]

^^^^^^
What abecedarian said.

 

[Motokid]

Most denominations that practice infant baptism have confirmation classes when that child is older.

Exactly. Child. Once again it's children being basically told what to do and when.

How do you undo that?

Is it as simple as no longer going to church?

Am I un-baptized if I haven't set foot in a church in a few decades?
(with the exception of funerals)

Am I un-baptized if I don't pray?
Am I un-baptized if I don't rest on Sundays?

 

[beer good]

If someone no longer believes in a certain faith or a certain deity, why would it matter to that someone whether or not a representative of that faith or deity poured water on his/her head at some point? In other words, wouldn't you become "unbaptized" the second the baptism seizes to have meaning to you?

 

[abecedarian]

Exactly. Child. Once again it's children being basically told what to do and when.

How do you undo that?

Is it as simple as no longer going to church?

Am I un-baptized if I haven't set foot in a church in a few decades?
(with the exception of funerals)

Am I un-baptized if I don't pray?
Am I un-baptized if I don't rest on Sundays?

The idea behind confirmation classes is to give an older child(usually around 12 or 13) the chance to confirm(agree with) or forsake the choice that was made for them as an infant. In many Protestant denominations that 'sprinkle' babies.. they see the act as a dedication on the part of the parents to raise the child in the faith.

Don't worry, being baptised as a baby does not make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a Ferrari! This confusion is why churches like mine do not practice infant baptism.

 

[dele]

I don't think you can be un-baptized. But the idea of baptism is to wash away original sin so you can go to heaven. If you want to undo that, I suppose all you would have to do is commit a cardinal sin. Depending on your branch os Christianity, it can be as easy as eating meat on Friday or as bad as murdering someone!

 

[Sybarite]

I don't think you can be un-baptized. But the idea of baptism is to wash away original sin so you can go to heaven. If you want to undo that, I suppose all you would have to do is commit a cardinal sin. Depending on your branch os Christianity, it can be as easy as eating meat on Friday or as bad as murdering someone!

Isn't masturbation still a cardinal sin in at least one branch of the Christian church?

 

[dele]

Yes, yes it is!

 

[Flor]

There ya have it. Walk away to indulge and you're done.

 

[Litany]

Debaptise yourself.

And is 12 years old really old enough to be able to break away from the rule of your parents and speak out against years of religious conditioning? I know plenty of people who were too scared to speak out when they were children. I know plenty of people that are still too scared to speak out to their parents because their parents are so busy branding atheists as evil.

 

[SFG75]

If, as an adult you wish to undo what was done, is there a way to do that?

Very good question. To me, you can be "unbaptized" and sever your ties witha given sect when you have your name taken off their membership list. Unless you do that, you are counted as a member, which allows certain groups to boast of having 6 milion+ members. People think they don't show up and that somehow finishes the matter.

Some friends of mine use to attend a Mennonite church in ther small town. They have since quit attending and have been attending a Berean church that they enjoy. They are dreading taking their names off the Mennonite registry as their names will be published in the church newsletter in their small town. No pressure there!. Oh well, if you believe it's the right thing.....

 

[Sybarite]

As has already been mentioned, different denominations have different traditions. In the Methodist church, in which I was brought up, infant baptism is customary, but you only become a member of the church later, after various talks etc. It's a little like a form of confirmation.

What this subject does raise is the acceptability or otherwise of indoctrinating extremely young children into any particular set of beliefs.

And it also brings to mind Richard Dawkins's point, raised in The God Delusion, about how people describe 'a Christian child' or 'a Muslim child' etc, when they would never say: 'a Conservative child', 'a socialist child', 'a fascist child' or 'a libertarian child'.

If people want to believe something, then that's fine, of course. But the problem comes when they start attempting to foist it on others. Given the impact of indoctrinating a child from infancy, and the subsequent difficulty of breaking from such indoctrination, is the right of the child to a chance to grow up without indoctrination and make their mind up later more or less than the right of parents to impose their own beliefs on the child?

Should all infant baptism be stopped? Or is it simply a harmless comfort to those who believe in a god who, apparently, is such a rotten so-and-so that he would consign to hell (or limbo) a tiny baby of they haven't been baptised?

 

[Motokid]

Obviously the baptism of an infant is more for the mental state of the parents/adult family members and not for the "safety" of the child's soul.

That whole "original sin" issue aside, I just can't even begin to imagine any "God" not allowing an infant into whatever heaven might exist simply because they had not been baptised. That's just asinine.

Isn't it?

 

[Sybarite]

Obviously the baptism of an infant is more for the mental state of the parents/adult family members and not for the "safety" of the child's soul.

That whole "original sin" issue aside, I just can't even begin to imagine any "God" not allowing an infant into whatever heaven might exist simply because they had not been baptised. That's just asinine.

Isn't it?

I think that it raises a very interesting issue, which is that, while the Bible itself portrays a sadistic, tyrannical and jealous god, the Christian churches of the 21st century generally try to get around this by portraying God in a better light. They do not, for instance, mention the times in the Old Testament where God is reported as ordering his servants/followers to murder survivors of a battle or rape any female (virgin, of course) prisoners that they want.

Various famous stories have been bastardised in order to change their meaning. For instance, in the Sodom & Gomorrah story, you don't hear much these days about how Lot was perfectly prepared to offer his virgin daughters to the men outside his home who, allegedly, wanted sex with the two strangers that he had welcomed into his home. So pimping and raping girls is fine, in Biblical terms, but adult homosexual sex is not. That is not, however, the way in which the story is still told – while 'Sodom & Gomorrah' has become a byword for debauchery and sodom gave its name to sodomy. Yet Lot is still described as the 'one good man' from the towns who was worth saving – it was his wife, swimply for looking back, who was punished, not Lot for offering his children to be raped. You don't hear much these days about how, after the departure from Sodom, his daughters got him drunk and then had sex with him (so not too drunk) and bore children by their father. No punishment is mentioned for this behaviour, so presumably incest is acceptable in Biblical terms too.

The story of Onan has given it's name to onanism – mastutbation – and is told in such a way that it makes out masturbation to be a deadly sin. Yet the story actually has Er (Onan's brother) upsetting God by, er, erring, and being killed by God as a result. After that, God tells Onan to go and have sex (rape, in effect – there's never anything about female consent in the Bible) with Er's widow. He refuses and 'spills his seed on the ground' instead. So, he refuses to rape his widowed sister-in-law – and he's the bad bloke for that?

Job – that paragon of fortitude, faith and patience. Look what happened to him. He's a faithful follower of God, who is made to suffer (but not as much as his family and his servants etc, who are killed) just so that God can prove a point to the Devil. In other words, so that God can win a bet with the Devil.

Look at how Abraham is perfectly prepared to murder his young son because God told him to. I was taught this story as an example of faith – it might well be faith, but it's also about child abuse. Even if the murder didn't go ahead, what a sadistic way to test someone's faith. And what a sadistic thing to do to a child, to take them and place them on an altar and prepare to murder them.

The Christian churches know that huge swathes of the Bible are not applicable in a more civilised world, and they avoid these things like the proverbial plague. But they cannot admit this, because to do so would be to acknowledge that the Bible cannot simply be taken as gospel (so to speak). And that automatically says that either it was not divinely inspired or that, if it was, God didn't know what He was doing/saying and that we now know better.

 

[abecedarian]

God never told anyone to rape the women whose people they were told to destroy. In most cases they were not told to kill ALL the people anyway, but in those cases, the intent was to punish those people for their wickedness.

Onan: That was not a story to illustrate the evils of masturbation at all. The reason God killed Onan was his refusal to show mercy to his brother's wife. The practice of the day was for a childless widow to sleep with her dead husband's brother in hopes she might conceive a child. Childlessness in that culture meant certain poverty and destitution for a woman.

Unbaptised Infants: Most Protestants believe in something called The Age of Accountability..which is a very fluid idea, so think about nailing jello to a wall here.. anyway, the thought goes like this: before a child reaches an age of reasoning, where they can understand right from wrong, they are in no danger of hell. Since we all know how that varies from child to child, its very hard to say exactly where that point is for everyone. In other words, we don't tell parents of unbaptised children, 'Sorry folks, you shoulda had that kid sprinkled or dunked!"

 

[Sybarite]

God never told anyone to rape the women whose people they were told to destroy. In most cases they were not told to kill ALL the people anyway, but in those cases, the intent was to punish those people for their wickedness.

There are places where God is reported as telling his followers to "take" virgins left after a battle and do what they wanted with them. As I said earlier, there is nowhere in the Bible where female consent is considered worthy of mention. So, can we assume that God actually meant: 'go and have a word with these virgin female prisoners and ask if you can marry them [I've actually heard this posited as what God meant] and then marry them – if they say yes'? If this is God's word, you'd really think He could have made such things a little clearer, since being omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, He'd have been able to know all those years in advance, that such things would concern people in the civilised world.

Onan: That was not a story to illustrate the evils of masturbation at all. The reason God killed Onan was his refusal to show mercy to his brother's wife. The practice of the day was for a childless widow to sleep with her dead husband's brother in hopes she might conceive a child. Childlessness in that culture meant certain poverty and destitution for a woman.

I said that it wasn't a story about masturbation, but that that is the way in which it has often been used – Onan 'spilling his seed on the ground' etc. Indeed, he gave his name to 'onanism' – masturbation. So my point stands – that churches have, down the ages, manipulated the Bible in order to make it support what they wanted it to support. You're saying that things have changed since Biblical times – so the Bible was relevant a few thousand years ago but isn't now?

... Unbaptised Infants: Most Protestants believe in something called The Age of Accountability..which is a very fluid idea, so think about nailing jello to a wall here.. anyway, the thought goes like this: before a child reaches an age of reasoning, where they can understand right from wrong, they are in no danger of hell. Since we all know how that varies from child to child, its very hard to say exactly where that point is for everyone. In other words, we don't tell parents of unbaptised children, 'Sorry folks, you shoulda had that kid sprinkled or dunked!"

Interesting. My father, who was a Methodist clergyman (he's a retired supernumary now), never mentioned that. It was straightforward hellfire and damnation. Indeed, I've never heard of it at all before, whether from Anglicans (I had a phase of attending a CofE church) or from my father Plymouth Brethren relatives or from any of the varied evangelicals that I met over the years.

 

[Motokid]

My wife once had a close friend express something almost close to outrage when she found out we had no intentions of ever baptising our children.

It was her strongly held belief that such a thing was mandatory.

The result of not baptising an infant was at the very least going to keep the child from entering heaven, and most possibly would damn them to hell should they meet with some unfortunate end.

 

[abecedarian]

There are places where God is reported as telling his followers to "take" virgins left after a battle and do what they wanted with them. As I said earlier, there is nowhere in the Bible where female consent is considered worthy of mention. So, can we assume that God actually meant: 'go and have a word with these virgin female prisoners and ask if you can marry them [I've actually heard this posited as what God meant] and then marry them – if they say yes'? If this is God's word, you'd really think He could have made such things a little clearer, since being omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, He'd have been able to know all those years in advance, that such things would concern people in the civilised world.

-They had laws governing marriage and the punishments for rape..I believe they were supposed to marry the virgins to provide homes and families for them and themselves...if that was the order according to the individual incident. Some of the people they were told to fight, God didn't want them intermingling with at all.


I said that it wasn't a story about masturbation, but that that is the way in which it has often been used – Onan 'spilling his seed on the ground' etc. Indeed, he gave his name to 'onanism' – masturbation. So my point stands – that churches have, down the ages, manipulated the Bible in order to make it support what they wanted it to support. You're saying that things have changed since Biblical times – so the Bible was relevant a few thousand years ago but isn't now?

Ok, I think we agree about the masterbation bit, and probably even about the traditional church's mistaken stance on this story as proof that practice is sinful. However, just because cultural traditions change, that doesn't negate the relevancy of the Bible for modern times. The principle application of this story is that God hates selfishnes..which Onan's story clearly illustrates. He used his widowed sister-in-law, but refused to help her in her plight. He didn't want to any child conceived with her to inherit any of 'his' property.



Interesting. My father, who was a Methodist clergyman (he's a retired supernumary now), never mentioned that. It was straightforward hellfire and damnation. Indeed, I've never heard of it at all before, whether from Anglicans (I had a phase of attending a CofE church) or from my father Plymouth Brethren relatives or from any of the varied evangelicals that I met over the years.

I grew up in Baptist churches, and heard it often. Even they believe children of good mind can be 'saved' at an early age. Children who are not of good mind.. are in a state of grace perpetually. Anabaptists believe that baptism is only for those who have made the decision to follow Christ..as in someone who is ABLE to make that choice..infants and small children are not accountable.

 

[Litany]

Anabaptists believe that baptism is only for those who have made the decision to follow Christ..as in someone who is ABLE to make that choice..infants and small children are not accountable.

And what do they say the magic water does in the eyes of the ominpotent creator of the universe? Why does he care so very much about what you squirt on your head?