A first response to the baptism article explosion:

     Well, perusing the objections to my article has been interesting. Most of them have been in the realm of what I expected, plus a few things I’ve not considered before. However, while I wait for the more substantive responses to keep rolling in, I’ve found it necessary to comment on one particular issue, a worry that is worryingly reasonable.

     To put it bluntly, I’m not trying to make Anglicans Baptists, nor to make Baptists Anglican. Though with a title like The Case for Baptist Anglicans, its not hard to see why someone might be confused. So what’s going on?

     Well, very simply, THAT’S NOT MY TITLE! When I saw it on the website Friday I nearly fell over. My title for the article was, “An Anglican Case for Dual-Practice Baptism.” Now let’s be fair, it is rather academic, stuffy, and yeah, even boring – but it also happens to be quite accurate. The purpose was to try and show that certain authoritative Anglican sources are, surprisingly enough, consistent with dual-practice baptism.

    Of course you might respond, “But yeah, that still includes acknowledging credobaptism—and that’s what those darn Baptists believe! So, you really are trying to twist things around to make us Baptists!”  Now I must admit, it is true that there would be more credobaptism in Anglicanism and hence it would be closer to the Baptist.

    HOWEVER, ironically enough, dual-practice baptism is flat-out inconsistent with standard Baptist baptism theology! It’s a form of (often militantly) credobaptism onlyism!* So when I advocated that Anglicanism move from tolerant paedobaptism to dual-practice baptism, I advocated that Anglicanism move from one position that’s inconsistent with Baptist theology to another position that’s inconsistent with Baptist theology. So here I am arguing for a conclusion that Baptists can’t hold, and yet I am accused of trying to make people Baptists! (though again, given the title, I do understand.)

    To me, this accusation is all the more odd, and a bit amusing, because my personal view of church unity is rather broad. I’m actually quite happy for Anglicans to be Anglicans and for Baptists to be Baptists. Now I do want them both to be nice to each other and treat each other as Christian brothers, but I love them both. Let one person esteem Baptist over Anglican, another Anglican over Baptist—let everyone be convinced in their own minds.

    So why the article? Because it seems to me that dual-practice baptism could be consistent with Anglicanism and could be good for Anglicanism—something I don’t think could even happen in Baptist theology.

    Could I be wrong about this consistency and/or goodness? Of course! As the critiques keep piling on we’ll see how things work out. Though I will note here, I do think there is much more of a case to be made for dual-practice than fit in my one little article.

    But the main thing here is this, I’m not trying to reforge the world and create Baplicans. I don’t think such a thing is possible. I’m arguing from two authorities that Baptists don’t accept to a conclusion that Baptists can’t hold. I’m not trying to make Anglicans into Baptists.

* I have on rare occasions seen Baptists hold a tolerant credobaptism, e.g., a very few don’t require the re-baptizing (or first real baptizing in their perspective) of people baptized as infants for church membership. However, I’ve never heard of any Baptist being ok with any of their clergy baptizing infants. So even the rare tolerant form of Baptist credobaptism is inconsistent with dual-practice baptism.