In October, I traveled to El Reno to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of Wesley United Methodist Church’s sanctuary. I was delighted when their pastor, Reverend Dylan Ward shared exactly how many baptisms they had celebrated in this sacred space within the last century (2,094). But a more profound consideration came when he challenged the congregation to consider the following: “Who within their community was God calling them to baptize in the coming year?”
One frustrated church member in particular asked me, “How are we supposed to bring new people into the church with all that’s going on in The United Methodist Church?”
I really think that question speaks more to the individual anxiety of some of our church members rather than the concerns of those outside the church. An outsider’s question may be more fundamental. Does God love me, and will God be faithful to me throughout my life? And a good follow-up, will you, as the church, act upon this faithfulness?
How does our theology of baptism reflect this love and this faithfulness?
I would argue that we actually make a theological statement about God's love and faithfulness through a refusal to re-baptize people!
United Methodists accept the Christian baptism of people coming from other churches. Through preceding grace, we recognize that people had a valid spiritual and religious life prior to their arrival at our church. God walked with them in important ways previously and now (for often a great variety of reasons), they are choosing to live out their Christianity as a United Methodist. And not only do we accept previous baptisms, even if someone wanted a United Methodist pastor to re-baptize them, the pastor would refuse.
At an initial glance, this sounds kind of mean, doesn’t it? It sounds like a refusal of grace which is not how I would like to be identified.
Yet, we are so serious about this that we even include a prohibition in the Book of Discipline. In paragraph 341.7 (the heading of which is “Unauthorized Conduct”), it flatly states, “No pastor shall re-baptize.”
What makes this especially tricky is that in some traditions, re-baptism is expected if a person wants to join that particular church. If this becomes a wider cultural expectation, then the refusal to re-baptize may miscommunicate our theology of grace.
For United Methodists, the initiator of baptism is God. This fits with our understanding of preceding grace where God moves toward us before we move toward God. We would say that baptism is more about God claiming us than our claiming God. This is why an infant is eligible for baptism. What a wonderful expression that we did not work to earn this gift! Our official document on baptism entitled, By Water and the Spirit, elucidates the idea of God being the initiator by stating, “The power of the Spirit in baptism does not depend upon the mode by which water is administered, the age or psychological disposition of the baptized person, or the character of the minister.”
For United Methodists, God has the agency in baptism. For other traditions, baptism may be more about a person’s public claim on faith in Christ. If this is the case, then it makes sense that a person may get baptized multiple times in their life as they seek to re-commit their life to God. This recognizes that we may break our covenant with God rather freely.
But for United Methodists, if baptism is more about God’s claim on our lives, we would not want to say that God didn’t mean it the first time or that God was not faithful in pursuing us when we strayed. As in the parable of the prodigal, we might stray from the father, but the father is always faithful to us.
In this way, we are in agreement with the Nicene Creed which proclaims, “We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” One baptism means that when God promised to love us and to be faithful to us in this sacrament, God meant it. In this age of hypercritical reactionism, where we are quick to drop relationships, this is a radical theological statement.
This is an important message to share with the world in 2023. It sounds like Good News. So, as the church calendar approaches Baptism of the Lord Sunday, who is God calling you to baptize in your community this year?
