Believe it or not, baptism is in the news.
In this case, we have some good news and some bad news.
What do you want to hear first, the good news or the bad news? In this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) we went with the good news first.
When I say “good news,” I am referring to a New York Times story that is kind of fun and contains tons of good information. However, this is a story that takes a trend in some of those giant, modernized evangelical megachurches and tries to turn it into a Big Idea piece. Hold that thought.
The headline: “Horse Troughs, Hot Tubs and Hashtags: Baptism Is Getting Wild.” Here is a big block of the thesis material:
Performing the age-old Christian ritual in a more informal style “conveys this isn’t your grandmother’s church,” said Drake Osborn, pastor of teaching and liturgy at Grace Church in Waco, Texas. His congregation moved into a former bowling alley in 2016 but never considered installing a built-in baptistery. Instead, Grace Church uses a foam model bought online for about $2,500.
The shift has taken place as many pre-21st-century symbols of church life have fallen out of fashion in evangelical culture, especially among churches that are expanding or building new facilities. Sanctuaries are now “worship centers,” and steeples and stained glass are out. Natural light is often eschewed in favor of a black-box theater aesthetic optimized for flashy audiovisual experiences and online streaming.
It is not just the architecture that is changing. Contemporary evangelical baptisms are often raucous affairs. Instead of subdued hymns and murmurs, think roaring modern worship music, fist pumps, tears and boisterous cheering. There are photographers, selfie stations and hashtags for social media. One church in Texas calls its regular mass baptism event a “plunge party.”
Well now. It may be true that “evangelical baptisms” are getting a little bit “raucous,” but that’s a rather strange statement to make in light of baptism traditions down the years in Black evangelical and Pentecostal churches. And things have always been rather wild in evangelical churches in mountain regions, which are traditionally located next to streams or rivers — a logical place for baptisms (think Jordan River imagery).
Here’s a bit of an “On Religion” column I wrote about that back in 2011: “Goodbye to old-time mountain faith.”
Travelers who frequent the winding mountain roads of Southern Appalachia know that, every few miles, they're going to pass yet another small Baptist church sitting close to some rushing water. It's all about location, location, location.
Why would a preacher want to baptize a new believer in a heated, indoor tank when he can dunk them in the powerful, living, frigid waters of the river that created the valley in which his flock has lived for generations? There's no question which option the self-proclaimed Primitive Baptists will choose, even if it adds an element of risk.
"Among Primitive Baptists, you almost always see two ministers when they baptize someone — one to do the baptism and one to hold on. It's even become part of their unique liturgical tradition to have two ministers there," said Baptist historian Bill Leonard of the Wake Forest School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C. "As the saying goes, you could get baptized and go to heaven on the same day if there wasn't somebody there to hang on so you didn't wash away and drown."
The Times story — for valid reasons — spends lots of time on changes in Protestant megachurch facilities. But there is also this reference to the wider world of Christian tradition.
Facilities tend to flow from theology. In traditions like Catholicism that baptize infants by sprinkling or pouring water on their heads, the equipment required is minimal, although it can be ornate: a bowl on a stand and perhaps a small pitcher. But many of those who practice “credo-baptism,” or the voluntary baptism of believers as an outward expression of faith, require the person — usually a teenager or an adult — to be fully immersed in the water. For the congregations in that category, including Baptists and charismatics, that means plumbing, heating equipment, maintenance costs and potentially hundreds of gallons of water for each event.
These indoor baptisteries were common during the 20th Century, especially in wealthier churches. Dunking people in creeks, rivers and lakes was, well, so tacky.
So there is a news story here, no doubt about it. Big, suburban churches are making some changes.
However, it would have been good to note some baptism trends in some radically different churches. For example, quite a few Eastern Orthodox congregations (like our church here in Oak Ridge, Tenn.) keep a horse trough handy for baptizing adults, teens and larger kids. The Orthodox baptize by immersion and, well, if a congregation is evangelistic enough to have adult converts, then it helps to have a horse trough in which to dunk them. I don’t know if this is happening in Catholic, Catholic or Lutheran churches.
One more news tip: There’s another reason that some evangelical churches may be rethinking their baptism plans. In the past few years, the Southern Baptist Convention has seen a disturbing decline in the number of baptisms — period. Check out this Baptist Press headline: “Giving increases while baptisms continue decline.”
Now for the bad news, in this podcast.
In this case we are talking about this culture-wars headline in The Washington Post: “Transgender people can’t be baptized unless they’ve ‘repented,’ Catholic diocese says.” Here is the overture (which was not produced by the newspaper’s religion desk):
A Catholic diocese in Michigan has instructed its pastors to deny baptism, confirmation and other sacraments to transgender and nonbinary people unless they have “repented” — possibly the first diocese in the United States to issue such a sweeping policy about those who identify with a gender other than their sex assigned at birth.
The guidance issued by the Diocese of Marquette also stipulates that transgender people may not receive Communion, in which Catholics believe the body and blood of Jesus Christ are truly present. In most circumstances, they cannot receive the anointing of the sick, which is meant to provide physical or spiritual healing to those who are seriously ill. The guidance was issued in July but only recently sparked a debate after a prominent priest and advocate for LGBTQ Catholics shared it on Twitter.
The story veers into advocacy journalism after this sentence: “A spokesperson for the diocese said no one was immediately available for an interview.”
Thus, there is no need to seek input from Catholic liturgists or church historians anywhere else. There’s no need to actually quote Catholic doctrines on issues linked to this story.
The end result is a parade of commentary from the Catholic left, including an LGBTQ advocacy group — New Ways Ministry — that is currently in the news for other reasons.
All of this commentary and information is valid, as part of a debate with orthodox Catholic sources.
The bottom line: A hyperlink or two in the digital edition of this story is not enough, as in this passage:
Because the Catholic Church primarily baptizes infants, the Diocese of Marquette’s policy is likely to primarily impact non-Catholic adults seeking baptism in the Catholic Church, transgender teenagers preparing for confirmation and children of Catholic migrants who were not baptized as infants because their parents were frequently moving, among other possible reasons.
The backlash may portend a growing clash between the church, which teaches that people should accept their sex assigned at birth, and a younger generation more likely to identify as something other than cisgender and less likely to believe that being transgender is morally wrong.
One crucial fact is missing in that summary.
In Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, it is normal — teens and adults, especially — meet with a priest and go to Confession for the first time. As an Orthodox convert, I experienced this tradition as part of my conversion. Needless to say, all kinds of issues are discussed as the priest helps you work through the timeline of your life. Yes, we are talking about that word that news professionals tend to avoid — “sin.”
Surely, the Diocese of Marquette is not the only Catholic body that has faced this issue. The Catholic church’s views on “gender theory” are clear.
As always, the theological signals from Pope Francis have been mixed — in the headlines.
But there is this commentary from the current pope, as quoted by the Advocate, a major LGBTQ news source:
Let's think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation.
With this attitude, man commits a new sin, that against God the Creator. The true custody of creation does not have anything to do with the ideologies that consider man like an accident, like a problem to eliminate.
God has placed man and woman and the summit of creation and has entrusted them with the earth. The design of the Creator is written in nature.
In one memorable soundbite, Pope Frances declared that “Gender ideology is demonic” and he compared this school of thought to the “educational policies of Hitler.”
There are many, many sources for Pope Francis material on this topic, all available with one or two clicks of a mouse. Here is one more, care of The Tablet, during a discussion of problematic trends in modern life:
"One place is 'gender theory,'" the pope said. "Right away I want to clarify that I am not referring to people with a homosexual orientation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church invites us to accompany them and provide pastoral care to these brothers and sisters of ours."
Gender theory, he said, has a "dangerous" cultural aim of erasing all distinctions between men and women, male and female, which would "destroy at its roots" God's most basic plan for human beings: "diversity, distinction. It would make everything homogenous, neutral. It is an attack on difference, on the creativity of God and on men and women."
Pope Francis said he did not want "to discriminate against anyone", but was convinced that human peace and well-being had to be based on the reality that God created people with differences and that accepting — not ignoring — those differences is what brings people together.
So there is the issue the church will need to face: What is the appropriate confession of sins for a trans convert who is entering the Catholic faith?
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FIRST IMAGE: Print of a painting — for sale at Amazon.com — depicting a river baptism outside an African-American church.