Participating Witness. Anthony G. Siegrist
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and social.”28 The revivalist obsession with crises conversion as the basis for the Christian life, what we might call ‘conversionism’, is now woven through the fabric of North American Christianity. This has found resonance with the larger social trends of individualism and religious consumerism, thereby amplifying its impact. In a society where it is assumed that faith is a matter of individual voluntary choice and where spiritual experience has been commodified, it is not surprising that Anabaptist communities have been affected by revivalism’s emotional appeal and individualized focus. The crucial questions are whether or not the revivalist influence on Anabaptist baptismal practice has transformed it into something else altogether and whether or not this new phenomena can be coherently integrated into the larger form of Anabaptist life.
The child in O’Connor’s story is baptized under his own volition. However, we must ask if this sort of minimalized qualifier is capable of making sense of the seriousness of the Apostle Paul’s words when he asks, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Or if it can be congruent with his continuation, “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”29 The gravity of being joined to Jesus is not a marginal theme in the NT. The words of Paul evoke those of Jesus in Mark’s gospel: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”30 It is by no means self-evident that being voluntary is sufficient to render a ritual washing as the practice that initiates persons into this sort of a life. The fact that Anabaptist communities have adopted revivalist approaches to baptism, chiefly the assumption that children are eligible candidates, is one indication that the theology of baptism needs to be revisited.
To avoid being too dismissive, let us consider this issue further. We must first ask what it could possibly mean for a child to confess faith, in a revivalist context or any other. In Matthew 19 Jesus forbids his disciples to banish children from his company, saying, “it is to such as these [children] that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”31 Clearly the community of Jesus’ followers should have a ready place for children; however, Jesus’ words maintain the categorical distinction between children and disciples. Though Jesus blesses children he instructs disciples. Does discipleship then demand an end of childhood? For Anabaptists to undergo baptism is in the words of Mark’s Jesus to take up one’s cross. In the gospel of Matthew the risen Jesus tells his disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”32 Here discipleship, baptism, and teaching are tied together. Anabaptists have long denied that this can be applied to babies. Yet the prevalence of child-baptism in the twentieth-century runs headlong against this.
The case that the baptism of children represents a theological problem can be further supported by observing the incongruity of several of the assumptions that support it. First, this practice assumes that what is being done is actually a coherent form of baptism. To receive any benefit of doubt it must make sense within one of the traditional approaches to baptism. Though some elements of folk-revivalism might, like the fictional story “The River,” hold to a sacramental understanding, this is not generally the case in Anabaptist circles. And though Anabaptists likely have absorbed many spiritualist assumptions through the pietism implicit in revivalism, the fact that baptism is still practiced mitigates against this being the operative approach. More likely these communities ostensibly hold to some form of the testimonial approach.
If the baptism of children is understood as a testimonial form of the practice it must be assumed that these children are capable of making the sort of statement that this theology of baptism requires. However, might it not be the case that the same sort of plausibility structure and related social pressure that convinced parents in Christendom to baptize their infants now pressures children to request baptism? Might it not be the case that a child’s request for baptism, as well intentioned as it likely is, is not the sort of statement demanded by believers’ baptism? This is not to question whether children want to identify with Jesus in some way or whether they might want at some level to have their sins “forgiven.” The crux of the matter is just that it is difficult to understand how a child is capable of making a non-coerced confession of faith. This means that the semiotic character of baptism is blurred; intentional discipleship cannot be differentiated from socialization or the desire of a religious community to secure its future. Modern society realizes this: we do not allow children to fight in our wars or to marry even if they volunteer to do so. For children to join the church through baptism is to reduce the practice to a gate-keeping ceremony that initiates children into the next developmental stage of their lives. It reduces baptism to the weak formality of connecting to a community without risk or distinctive ethical commitments.
A second operative assumption in child baptism is the conversionist belief that children are in danger of divine judgment—that a nine-year-old needs to repent of his life of sin. The assumption that children are objects of God’s wrath did not begin with modern revivalism. It has a long history going back at least to Augustine, who avers in his Confessions, “The harmlessness of babes is in their body’s effect, not their mind’s intent.”33 For many groups that practice believers’ baptism the doctrine of the age of accountability is used to make some sense of this pre-pubescent predicament. In the Assemblies of God context a document endorsed by the Commission on Doctrinal Purity and the Executive Presbytery exemplifies this approach clearly: “The Assemblies of God believes that children are loved by God, and until they come to an age of understanding (some call it ‘the age of accountability’), they have a place in the kingdom of God.”34 The underlying assumption is that after reaching this age the child is left vulnerable before God. The doctrine is traditionally grounded in biblical references such as 2 Sam 12:23, in which David states that his son will not return to him, but rather that David will “go to” his son (thereby affirming the son’s innocence), or Deut 1:37–40 in which the children of the rebellious Israelites are not subjected to judgment because they “do not yet know right from wrong.”35
The age of accountability is an attempt to reign in runaway repercussions of the doctrine of original sin. However, it is precisely in its tentative formalization that it creates irresolvable pastoral dilemmas. One cannot help but wonder at precisely what age one is actually accountable before God. Would it not be fairer if accountability was linked to developmental progress instead of age? Might there then be a quantitative test to determine when a child qualifies as one accountable before God for her sin? The doctrine of the age of accountability is at best built on marginal biblical references. Furthermore, it fails to provide the clarification it suggests. In Anabaptist circles it is further undermined by the implications of the term “accountability,” which implies a specifically forensic understanding of the atonement. According to Thomas Finger’s analysis of the roots of Anabaptism this was not the dominant view. Finger claims that the primary soteriological model for early Anabaptists was more akin to divinization, involving a gradual ontological transformation intrinsically patterned by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.36 This does not dismiss the need for the process of conversion, but it does downplay any sort of legal necessity for quickly baptizing children out of fear for their eternal destiny. It undercuts the assumption that children must be baptized as soon as possible to avoid divine judgment.
In his book Believers Baptism for Children of the Church Marlin Jeschke argues convincingly that significant