Preparing for Baptism with Rev. Mike
A word to families preparing for Holy Baptism
If your family is preparing for a baptism in the coming weeks (or years), you may have questions about what we believe is actually happening at the font. That is a good and important question, and here are a few of my thoughts.
Let me share how I think about baptism, starting from where I came from theologically, and ending with what Anglicanism confesses.
Baptism as Covenant Sign
My background is in Reformed Presbyterian theology, and whatever else I have learned since, that tradition gave me a solid foundation: baptism is the sign and seal of the new covenant. This idea is not invented by Presbyterians. Paul draws a direct line between baptism and circumcision in Colossians 2:11-12, describing Christian baptism as a "circumcision made without hands."
Circumcision, whatever else it was, was the sign and seal of the old covenant. Baptism, whatever else it is, is the sign and seal of the new. Circumcision and baptism are full of rich theological meaning, but whatever else they mean it is no less than a sign and seal of the covenant. And in every meaningful way, the new covenant is better and broader than the old. Circumcision was restricted to males. Baptism is not. The old covenant was primarily aimed at Israel; the new covenant is explicitly aimed at the nations. The old covenant required that infants receive the covenant sign. The new covenant, if it is truly more inclusive than the old, cannot offer less.
Why We Baptize Children
This is where many people push back, so let me be direct about the reasoning.
When God threatened Moses for failing to circumcise his son (Exodus 4:24-26), the point was stark: withholding the covenant sign from a child of the covenant was a serious offense. The covenant community was not a community you aged into. You were born into it, and the sign marked that reality.
When we read Acts, we see this same priority in the early church. The spiritual head of a household comes to faith, and the household is baptized. Luke does not pause to confirm that every family member made an individual profession before the water was applied. The household was the unit of covenant inclusion. Children were part of that.
There is also a historical case worth mentioning. There is good early Christian evidence of parents baptizing their children, particularly among Jewish converts who understood covenant membership as something extended to one's whole family. That this practice is never corrected in Paul's letters is not nothing. For someone who wrote extensively about nearly every other contested practice in the early church, the silence on infant baptism is, as has been said, a “screaming silence.”
The Passover is my favorite analogy here. When God instituted the Passover in Exodus, there is no instruction to seat the children at a separate table until they were old enough to understand the theological significance of the lamb. Children of Israel were at the table. Children of the covenant community belonged to the covenant community, and were treated as such. Likewise, whether you’ve baptized your children yet or not, you bring them with you to church. You treat them as if they are Christians in every way and that includes the sign of the covenant.
The Element and Form
Water is the element of baptism, applied in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That Trinitarian formula is what makes a baptism valid. The mode is a secondary question, whether immersion, pouring, or sprinkling. The errors in baptism we actually find in the New Testament were not failures of mode. They were failures of form: people who were baptized without the name of Jesus, or with John's baptism only. It is the name invoked, not the amount of water used, that matters.
I was myself baptized by sprinkling as an infant, and sprinkling or pouring is my own preference and practice. But I have no theological objection to immersion, and I will gladly accommodate it when it is meaningful to someone. One of the most beautiful services I have ever presided over included, in a single ceremony, the sprinkling of an infant, the immersion of a middle-schooler raised in the faith, and the immersion of an adult convert. Every possible instance of baptism was celebrated together: paedobaptism, the baptism of a covenant child coming into their own faith, and the baptism of a new believer. It was a gift.
What Baptism Does
Article 27 of the Thirty-Nine Articles describes baptism as a sign of profession and a mark that distinguishes Christians from the unbaptized. But it goes further: baptism is a visible sign, seal, and promise of the whole scope of Christian salvation.
This is not baptismal regeneration in the sense that the water mechanically produces new life regardless of any other factor. But it is also not "just a symbol" in the reductive modern sense. Baptism is where God makes a promise, and promises from God are not empty. The question of regeneration is best understood this way: God is not constrained by the sacrament, but He is present and active in it. For those who receive baptism in faith, or who are raised in the covenant community to embrace what their baptism signified, the promise is fulfilled.
On "The Age of Accountability"
The most common objection I hear to infant baptism comes from the idea that children must reach a point of moral and spiritual understanding before they can meaningfully receive a sacrament. This idea is well-intentioned. But it is not found in Scripture, and it does not have serious historical grounding.
What Scripture does say, in passage after passage, is that covenant membership extends to families. It says that children can be filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb (Luke 1:15). It says that children of at least one believing parent are "holy" in a covenantal sense (1 Corinthians 7:14).
The "age of accountability" is largely a product of two things working together. The first is proof-texting, pulling passages that address adult converts and applying them as universal requirements without reckoning with the larger narrative of how God relates to his people across generations. The second is a deeply individualistic framework that many Western Christians absorb without realizing it. When faith is understood primarily as a personal, emotional decision that each person must arrive at on their own, infant baptism stops making sense almost by definition. The covenant logic of Scripture, in which God deals with families and communities across generations, simply does not fit inside that framework. The objection is not just a biblical argument. It is a collision between two different ways of imagining what it means to belong to God.
A Word on Rebaptism
Children who were baptized as infants and who later come to genuine, personal faith should not be rebaptized. Their baptism was real. What they are doing in coming to faith is not receiving something new; they are entering into what was always promised to them.
Likewise, if you are coming to The Mission Cincinnati from another tradition and were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that baptism is valid. I once had a parent tell me they were considering rebaptism because it seemed like a good idea, like renewing wedding vows. I told them, perhaps a little too bluntly, that it was more like asking to be circumcised again. The Book of Common Prayer has a better answer: a Renewal of Baptismal Vows on page 194, used at the Easter Vigil or on other appropriate occasions. This satisfies the desire without undermining the work of God in baptism.
Coming to the Font
If you are bringing your child to be baptized, you are bringing them into the covenant community, marking them with God's promise, and committing to raise them in the faith. That is no small thing. It is a serious and joyful act, and the church will celebrate it with you.
And to the rest of the congregation: when a child is baptized, they are baptized into your community too. Their formation in the faith is not only their family's responsibility. It is yours as well.
We look forward to welcoming your family at the font.
