KINGSVIEW

INFANT BAPTISM FRIDAY AFTER ADULT BAPTISM SUNDAY

Michael A. King

Before a smile seemed to spread across my life from somewhere, maybe even an impish Spirit, that Sunday I wrapped up the series of seven sermons on key Anabaptist-Mennonite teachings our associate pastor and I had been preaching. Amid an influx of new members largely from backgrounds other than Mennonite, those of us in congregational leadership had settled on this approach as a way to emphasize basic teachings and test whether we were within reach of consensus on core values.

Throughout the series I made much of adult baptism. I recounted how in early 1500s Europe arose the conviction that the decision to follow Christ was one to be made by persons old enough to understand and count the cost. I distinguished between Christendom and believers church understandings of Christianity. In Christendom, as some would name the collection of Christianized nations of 1500s Europe, the very act of being born into and then baptized as a baby into a nearly seamless interweaving of church and nation makes you a Christian.

In a believers church, you become Christian by consciously choosing to follow Christ. You then mark your decision publicly by baptism amid the believers you now knowingly and intentionally join.

In Christendom, I noted, there is considerable risk that nation and society will take priority over Jesus’ teachings. This is because Christendom can make it seem as if whatever your nation or culture wants is also what Jesus wants.

In a believers church tradition such as espoused by Anabaptists, including the Mennonite wing who took their name from Menno Simons, Dutch priest turned Anabaptist, the first loyalty is to God’s nation. Its citizens are believers committed to living above all by God’s laws particularly as taught by Jesus rather than according to human laws. If the demands of citizenship in God’s nation clash with the demands of one’s earthly nation, in a believers church understanding one chooses God over local loyalties.

And the core sign of this view is adult or believers baptism. The early Anabaptists felt compelled to mark their break from Christendom nations in favor of God’s nation by rebaptizing each other. Then it would be unmistakably clear, to them and to those surrounding them: Christ over nation.

Understandably Christendom recoiled. These Anabaptists declaring their higher loyalties risked destroying Christendom. So the Anabaptists, meaning "rebaptizers," were told to recant or else. Thousands remained unbowed. They had declared their loyalty to God through Christ. They had meant it, they had counted the cost, they would pay any price. Unrepentant, they accepted torture, drownings, burnings at stakes.

They have something to teach us, I suggested, even today, maybe especially today, as Christendom seems at times to be reviving. Even contemporary democracies whose constitutional commitment is to distinguish between church and state seem increasingly tempted to find salvation in the hope that if church again becomes state and state becomes church, then God will bless. But history suggests that when state and church become each other, church loses. God loses. Faithfulness to Christ’s more radical teachings fades or is even actively stamped out.

So let us be believers church and not Christendom members, I preached. And let us treasure believers baptism as the mark of our decision.

That was Sunday. For a few days I enjoyed a feeling of completion. I felt renewed commitment to Anabaptist-Mennonite understandings. Then came Friday and Elrena Evans.

She was querying my interest in publishing "Me and My House" (now in this Winter 2008 issue of DreamSeeker Magazine). I started in with the inevitably skeptical attitude of an editor forced to reject some 90 percent of submissions because they don’t fit the magazine. Then I realized here was trouble. Here was writing so skillful and moving that as never before in my life I could get, as if from the inside, why one might see the baptism of an infant as an event to treasure rather than reject, a celebration to honor rather than to die opposing.

Still I wanted to reject. How to square this with the passions I had just invested in that preaching series?

Finally I said to Evans that although the hoped-for audience is broader than Mennonite, "DreamSeeker Magazine emerges from an Anabaptist-Mennonite publisher. . . . And as you also may be aware, Anabaptists got burned at the stake and drowned in 1500s Europe for rebaptizing themselves (the name Anabaptism means rebaptizer and was given them by their enemies) for their belief that Jesus taught baptism for adults. Thus was born the adult baptism/believers church tradition.

"It just so happens," I continued, "that I’m pastor of an Anabaptist-Mennonite congregation among whom are many newer participants who have mixed feelings about Anabaptist-Mennonite teachings—including adult baptism." I reported that having just completed a sermon series on these teachings was causing me to ponder "how we retain a core Mennonite identity yet honor perspectives of those shaped in different traditions.

"Now here," I observed, "comes your article on baptism of your baby daughter! Interesting the ways of the Spirit." I noted how movingly the narrative fit the DreamSeeker Magazine quest for "voices from the soul," which made it hard indeed to turn down. I suggested accepting the story for publication then possibly "writing something myself on the intrigue of publishing this celebration of infant baptism in a magazine emerging from an adult-baptism tradition."

We agreed. This was a way to proceed. So now we have. Evans speaks in these pages. As do I. We speak so differently. We reflect ways of thinking each so convinced of being the Truth that our forebears thought death—whether imposing or accepting it—was better than compromise.

Why resist still fighting each other, if not to physical death in our occasionally more civilized times, at least until one or the other emerges the spiritual victor? Evans, who had in fact understood that DreamSeeker Magazine emerges from an Anabaptis tradition valuing believers baptism, had realized battle was a possibility when she submitted the article. She wouldn’t have been surprised to receive a summary rejection.

But I found I had in this case no stomach for battle, not even for just the first shot of rejection. It was one thing to champion believers baptism in my own congregation. It was another thing to deny Evans her story and its treasures any more than I’d accept her denying my story and its treasures.

But what alternative to fighting is there? Surely one of us is wrong? Then I remember that Evans says this: "My life resembles this liturgy of baptism, in that it often seems like a series of questions." This sounds familiar, I think. This sounds like . . . me.

Yes, I embrace the value and meaning of believers baptism. But I too have found that life is a series of questions. Even in my own congregation, after the sermon series ended, I’ve wrestled with how to journey with those from infant baptism traditions who are saying that yes, they get why Anabaptist-Mennonites underscore adult baptism. But no, they’re not so sure this means their own infant baptism, followed by confirmation rites in which they claimed the meaning of what they once were too young to understand, must be superseded by rebaptism. Would I feel any differently if I were they? Probably not. Now what?

I don’t want to make this an answer column. I’m not sure enough of what we do next when faced with your treasure being my lump of coal or vice-versa. But as tensions within and between faith traditions seem ever to be mounting these days, finding alternatives to battle seems ever more important. So I want to benefit from wrestling with this riddle the Spirit seems to have handed me: How do I treasure my own understandings of baptism and simultaneously see treasure in that soulful story of coming to believe that through baptism a daughter "is sealed as God’s own"?

—Michael A. King, Telford, Pennsylvania, is pastor, Spring Mount (Pa.) Mennonite Church; and editor, DreamSeeker Magazine.