Alleia gets baptized on Sunday. One interesting thing about attending a multi-denominational church is the interaction with people who haven't grown up with infant baptism and in many cases aren't quite comfortable with it. I remember in high school having theology debates with the Mennonites over all the hot-button topics: infant/believer baptism, just war/pacifism, predestination/free will. I came from a Reformed background and went to a Mennonite high school, a similar situation in some ways to being a Christian Reformed Church-affiliated member of a Mennonite-affiliated multi-denominational church. I think I'm less inclined to be strident in my defense of one or the other, and willing to acknowledge that there are valid and important aspects on both sides many times.
That said, one of the things that I've come to appreciate more about infant baptism is the emphasis on covenant and on God's grace -- the belief that God works in mysterious ways and has pledged himself to his people over and over again. While there is (of course) something very beautiful about an adult being baptized, it seems to me that infant baptism strikes a blow against the individualism that is so deeply embedded in much of traditional evangelicalism and the modernist notion that Christianity is simply a concept you mentally assent to. God's grace is so big that the people he claims as his own haven't always "prayed the prayer" or don't even necessarily know his name.
I'll paste some of the language from the form for baptism below.
Our gracious God has always desired
to hold his people in a covenant embrace.
He declares over and over,
"I will be their God, and they shall be my people."
Pursuing this deep desire,
God called Abraham and Sarah to trust in him
and gave a covenant sign to show that they belonged to him.
In baptism God now claims us in Christ
marks us as his own people,
and seals our membership in God's covenant community, the church.
Baptism is the covenant sign that God frees us
from the power of sin and death,
uniting us with Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection.
By water and the Holy Spirit we are washed clean from sin.
God's grace in baptism calls us to give ourselves to him
in trust, love, and obedience.
From the beginning,
God graciously has included our children in his covenant.
All his promises are for them as well as for us.
We are to teach them that they have been set apart by baptism
as God's own children
so that as they grow older they may respond to him
in personal faith and commitment.
Alleia gets baptized on Sunday. One interesting thing about attending a multi-denominational church is the interaction with people who haven't grown up with infant baptism and in many cases aren't quite comfortable with it. I remember in high school having theology debates with the Mennonites over all the hot-button topics: infant/believer baptism, just war/pacifism, predestination/free will. I came from a Reformed background and went to a Mennonite high school, a similar situation in some ways to being a Christian Reformed Church-affiliated member of a Mennonite-affiliated multi-denominational church. I think I'm less inclined to be strident in my defense of one or the other, and willing to acknowledge that there are valid and important aspects on both sides many times.
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