GetReligion
Thursday, April 03, 2025

baptism

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Plug-In: Canadian trucker protests echo U.S. Christian nationalism? Press says 'yes'

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Plug-In: Canadian trucker protests echo U.S. Christian nationalism? Press says 'yes'

“Honk if you love Jesus.”

That headline on a recent story by the Ottawa Citizen’s Blair Crawford sets the scene as the Canadian newspaper explains “Why so many Evangelical Christians have joined the ‘Freedom Convoy.’”

Unfamiliar with the Freedom Convoy? The Wall Street Journal explains the protest in Canada’s capital city this way:

Since late January, downtown Ottawa has served as a parking lot for hundreds of heavy-duty trucks, pickup trucks and other vehicles, operated by individuals who say they are fed up with the social restrictions and vaccine mandates meant to contain the spread of Covid-19.

Back to the faith angle: The Ottawa newspaper notes:

At the ongoing demonstration … Jesus references and Bible quotes share space alongside “F*ck Trudeau” signs. The evangelical Christian message of love and peace clashes with reports of Ottawa residents being harassed for wearing masks, houses displaying the rainbow pride flag vandalized and the sight of Confederate flags and swastikas among the demonstrators. At one booth on Wellington Street you could get buttons with the yellow Star of David, likening the plight of Jewish people in Nazi Germany to the unvaccinated.

CBC News’ Jorge Barrera reports that “For many inside the freedom convoy, faith fuels the resistance.”

According to Barrera’s story:

Christian faith — with an overtly evangelical feel — flows likes an undercurrent through the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa.


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Just how big is the Mississippi abortion case at U.S. Supreme Court? Well, THIS BIG

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Just how big is the Mississippi abortion case at U.S. Supreme Court? Well, THIS BIG

“The most important abortion case in decades” is how the New York Times’ Adam Liptak describes it.

“The most significant abortion case in a generation,” agree the Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin and Brent Kendall.

“The biggest challenge to abortion rights in decades,” echo The Associated Press’ Mark Sherman and Jessica Gresko.

It’s not hyperbole: Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide, faces its biggest test yet. The Washington Post’s Robert Barnes explains:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday signaled it is on the verge of a major curtailment of abortion rights in the United States, and appeared likely to uphold a Mississippi law that violates one of the essential holdings of Roe v. Wade established nearly 50 years ago.

Whether the court would eventually overrule Roe and its finding that women have a fundamental right to end their pregnancies was unclear.

But none of the six conservatives who make up the court’s majority expressed support for maintaining its rule that states may not prohibit abortion before the point of fetal viability, which is generally estimated to be between 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy.

At Christianity Today, Kate Shellnutt reports that “pro-life evangelicals who had rallied for the cause for decades were encouraged that the conservative-leaning court appeared willing to uphold a contentious Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks.”

Other helpful religion coverage:

• How faith groups feel about this major abortion case (by Kelsey Dallas, Deseret News)

• Before there was Roe: Religious debate before high court’s historic ruling on abortion (by Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service)

• Religion abortion rights supporters fight for access (by Holly Meyer, The Associated Press)


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In COVID-19 lockdown, should churches perform baptisms, and how?

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THE QUESTION:

With lockdowns in place, should U.S. churches do baptisms, and how?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

American religious congregations are implementing all sorts of accommodations during the COVID-19 crisis. Most are streaming services online to replace in-person worship till reopening is allowed. Under these conditions, many Protestant groups are allowing viewers to take Communion remotely by themselves at home during streamed services, which is not feasible for Catholic Mass.

Catholic priest Tim Pelc of St. Ambrose Church in Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan, even administered holy water via a squirt gun through car windows! And speaking of water …

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Fayetteville, Ark., affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, follows the ancient custom of baptizing new members as part of the Easter Eve vigil. This year’s annual observance could not occur due to COVID. Now Pastor Clint Schnekloth is preparing to conduct the postponed baptisms during a live-streamed service, most likely on Pentecost Sunday, May 31. He hopes the video feed can allow close-ups of participants so members of the local congregation, and family and friends who live elsewhere, can “feel as if they are there.”

But how do we keep “safe” and honor the need for “social distancing,” Schnekloth wondered. He shared his thinking in a blog post for patheos.com. The first aspect to consider is that while some churches practice full immersion of the body (see below), Lutherans are among those who baptize infants or adult converts by pouring water three times over the candidate’s head. This occurs while pronouncing the triune names of the divine Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in accord with Jesus’ “great commission” in Matthew 28:19.

Schnekloth figures the only people allowed in the church building will be the pastor, those to be baptized, and minimum participants, all carefully spaced throughout the sanctuary. Each candidate in turn will come forward with the parents and any godparents to receive the sacrament at the font of water. After a baptism, the pastor will thoroughly wash his hands before the next one.

To be extra careful, the pastor and others may wear masks throughout, and perhaps a family member will conduct the actual baptism while the pastor stands apart.


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Is Europe 'Christian'? That depends on how, and when, someone asks that question

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Is Europe 'Christian'? That depends on how, and when, someone asks that question

THE QUESTION:

Is Europe Christian?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The intriguing question above is the title of a brief new book (from Oxford University Press) by prominent French social analyst Olivier Roy, a professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and critic of political Islam.

To Roy, the correct answer is that it all depends on what you mean by “Christian.”

The Religion Guy agrees. If the answer is no, that’s an epochal change. The continent has served as the faith’s heartland through much of history, symbolized by Catholicism’s headquarters in Rome and the World Council of Churches offices in Geneva, though thriving churches in the Global South are now taking the numerical lead.

Across the continent, the Christian heritage involves some cultural and moral influences, nostalgia, folkways, and a residuum of respect. But actual belief, practice, and church participation are weakening steadily. Is Shrove Tuesday February 25 merely about pancake recipes, or Christmas a season of street markets and consumer excess? Pope Benedict XVI and allies could not even win acknowledgment of the continent’s past Christian roots in the European Union’s constitution of 2004.

The Pew Research Center tells us Europe is the only sector of the world where the population labeled Christian in whatever way is shrinking by demography as deaths steadily outnumber births, resulting in a net loss of 5.6 million in just the years 2010 to 2015.

Before turning to Roy’s argument, let’s scan relevant data from Pew’s 2018 report on telephone interviews with 24,599 randomly selected adults conducted in 12 languages in 15 nations of Western Europe (post-Soviet Eastern Europe was not surveyed).

It’s striking that only 27 percent of West Europeans “believe in God as described in the Bible” any longer.


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Salt Lake Tribune has best take when covering LDS shift on status of gay members' children

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Well, that was weird.

Just over three years after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced its policy of refusing to baptize children of gay church members until said children are 18, the church’s leaders reversed themselves.

Left hanging amidst all the news coverage yesterday was an answer to why the church leaders changed course so quickly. The big question: Was this a matter of doctrine or changing political realities?

The Deseret News, which is as close as one can get to an official voice of the church, said the following:

SALT LAKE CITY — Children of parents who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender may now be blessed as infants and later baptized as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to updates announced Thursday to November 2015 church policies intended at the time to maintain family harmony but perceived as painful by some supporters of the LGBT community.

The church also will update its handbook of instructions for leaders to remove the label of apostasy for homosexual behavior that was applied beginning in November 2015, said President Dallin H. Oaks, first counselor in the First Presidency, who announced the changes on behalf of the First Presidency on Thursday morning during the leadership session of the church’s 189th Annual General Conference…

In a news release, the First Presidency said the changes were the result of extended counseling with the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and "fervent, united prayer to understand the will of the Lord on these matters."

The article added that the switch was a change in church policies, not in church doctrine, but then added that “current revelation overtakes past teachings.”

So, maybe someone had a revelation about this? You see, “revelation” is not a word typically associated with policy decisions. That’s a doctrine word.


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Amazing grace: KKK leader transformed by baptism, repentance and other vague stuff

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What an amazing religion story NBC News offered the other day about sin, repentance, forgiveness and a Christian pastor showing some genuinely amazing grace to a KKK leader.

Well, it would have been an astonishing religion feature, if only the newsroom team had included a reporter or a producer who recognized that Christian faith was at the heart of this story of human hatred that was baptized – literally, in this case – in love.

It's hard to leave religion out of a born-again story like this one, but the NBC team did its best.

So here is the dramatic, but faith-free, headline on top of the report: "Ex-KKK member denounces hate groups one year after rallying in Charlottesville." And here is the faith-free overture:

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Nearly one year ago, Ken Parker joined hundreds of other white nationalists at a Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. That day, he wore a black shirt with two lightning bolts sewn onto the collar, the uniform of the National Socialist Movement, an American neo-Nazi group.

In the past 12 months, his beliefs and path have been radically changed by the people he has met since the violent clash of white nationalists and counterprotesters led to the death of Heather Heyer, 32.

Now he looks at the shirt he wore that day, laid out in his apartment in Jacksonville, and sees it as a relic from a white nationalist past he has since left behind.

So where is the faith element in this born-again story? Well, Parker had some contacts with opponents of the alt-right that left him somewhat shaky, in a good way. He began to think twice about his beliefs.

Then this happened:



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Why do churches baptize infants? Why did ancient churches baptize people of all ages?

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Why do churches baptize infants? Why did ancient churches baptize people of all ages?

THE QUESTION:

Why do most Christian churches baptize babies?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

This classic issue unexpectedly popped up as news on June 23 due to an Irish Times interview with Mary McAleese, an attorney and the former president of Ireland. McAleese assailed her Catholic Church for its practice of baptizing infants shortly after birth with parents making vows on their behalf.

That treats children as “infant conscripts who are held to lifelong obligations of obedience,” she protested, and that’s a violation of their human rights. “You can’t impose, really, obligations on people who are only two weeks old” or inform them “at seven or eight or 14 or 19 here is what you contracted; here is what you signed up to,” because they did not give their own consent to be church members.

To her, the church’s age-old baptismal practice “worked for many centuries because people didn’t understand that they had the right to say no, the right to walk away.” But she says modern people “have the right to freedom of conscience” although “the Catholic Church has yet toi fully embrace that thinking.”

Baptist-type churches that arose in the Protestant Reformation, and many of today’s independent evangelical congregations, agree with McAleese and practice “believer’s baptism” based on the personal decision of each individual. The Church of God in Christ, probably the largest African-American denomination, puts its outlook this way: Baptism “is an outward demonstration that one has already had a conversion experience and has accepted Christ as his personal savior.”

Groups that baptize only youths and adult converts, not babies, almost always insist that the rite involve full bodily immersion in water, not mere pouring of water over the head as in normal Catholic practice.



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How not to cover a YouTube story: Seeing isn't believing in the Greek baby baptism

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The Internet furore over the violent baptism of a Greek Orthodox baby has seeped into the mainstream press.

The story in itself is amusing, but it also provides a teaching moment on how not to do journalism.

The difficulty is how to report on YouTube videos. Is seeing believing? How do you report accurately and fairly on a video that cannot be authenticated?

On my Facebook and Twitter feed I received a post linking to a video of an extraordinary baptism. Within a few days the story made its way into The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Mirror, News Corp., and other television and press outlets.

The British tabloid The Sun, which was reprinted in News Corp.’s Australian and New Zealand papers, had this story, opening like this:

A GREEK orthodox bishop has come under fire after appearing to baptize a tiny tot a little bit too vigorously. In the footage that has appeared online the man of the cloth repeatedly dunks the naked baby into the baptismal font.

The tot is rapidly dunked three times into the water before being handed back to his unperturbed parents. According to reports the footage was taken in Ayia Napa, Cyprus, at a Greek Orthodox church.

With the church, baptisms are usually done ‘forcefully’ which is seen as a solution to the declining birth rate. Many online commentators have criticised the bishop’s rather rough approach.

The article closes with a summary of comments and criticisms of what viewers saw in the film. The Daily Mail ran a condensed version of the story, omitting the word “Greek” from the text as well as the extraordinary assertion that aggressive dunking results in a population boom. The Mirror kept the cleric Greek Orthodox and promoted him to archbishop.

What nobody appears to have done is ask the Greek Orthodox Church about this baptism.


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Inquiring minds still want to know: Was Meghan the wrong kind of 'Protestant,' or what?

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No matter that happens today (the big US news is tragic), for millions of people the force of gravity in global news will pull toward St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

We are talking about a wedding rite in the Church of England, so royal wedding coverage has included all kinds of dishy details about liturgical issues rarely seen in the press. That has been the case for several months now for one simple reason: American actress Meghan Markle was raised as a Protestant by her mother Doria Ragland, while her father is an Episcopalian (and, thus, part of the global Anglican Communion).

Thus, an unanswered question still hovers in the background, because of silence from Kensington Palace: Precisely what kind of Protestantism are we talking about, in Markle's case? For a refresher on this drama, see my earlier post: "Royal wedding quiz: Must a 'Protestant' be baptized in order to become an Anglican?" In that post, I noted:

... The Church of England split off from the Church of Rome. For most people, especially low-church Anglicans, this (a) makes it part of the wider world of Protestantism. However, it should be noted that some people argue that (b) the Anglican via media -- a "middle way" between Protestantism and Catholicism – is its own unique form of faith. The odds are good that some Anglican readers will be offended by my description of (a), (b) or (a) and (b). This is complicated stuff.

There continue to be clues that Markle was the "wrong kind" of Protestant, since she was baptized – Again? – before being confirmed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as an Anglican. How does that theological question affect the royal rite?

Read carefully this passage from an explainer piece in The Washington Post, that ran with the headline: "Why Meghan Markle, raised a Christian, still got baptized before her royal wedding."

“Miss Markle did not need to become an Anglican in order to marry Harry in church, but at the time of their engagement last November she made clear she had chosen to be baptised and confirmed out of respect for the Queen’s role as the head of the Church of England,” the Daily Mail wrote.

The Church of England recommends that couples either include a Communion service during their wedding or take Communion shortly after getting married. That means that Markle, if she wants to take Communion with Harry (italics added by tmatt), did need to be confirmed in the Church of England or in another Anglican church, such as the Episcopal Church, which the Church of England welcomes to take Communion at its services.

Wait a minute.


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