Open Baptism and Evangelism

Following on from my last post, and tying in with some recent comments from the Church of England, I thought it would be worth saying something about the relationship between baptism and evangelism.

In some parts of the Anglican world, there is an 'open' baptism policy. That is, some church leaders are committed to the idea that the rite of baptism ought to be available to anyone who's interested in it, without qualification. For some, this is not just a passive position, but one that's quite actively and publicly promoted. The most notable recent advancement of the open baptism policy came from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who has given his thoughts as they've been prompted by today's baptism of Prince George. You can watch him on it here.

I think there are a couple of great things going on behind this policy. The first is that those who are pushing it understand that connecting over a baptism provides a great opportunity for talking about Jesus. No doubt this is what ++Justin is trying to do with his video for the royal baptism. And that's fantastic. The second thing in the open baptism policy is the desire to show that anyone can become a member of Jesus' church. By saying all can come for baptism, there's a good chance to reinforce that there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female when it comes to salvation. Anyone and everyone can become a member of the body of Christ. That is also an excellent thing to say. But good as it is to communicate these two things, the open baptism policy misses many other, most critical, things. It misses belief, faith, repentance, submission, commitment - it basically misses out on the idea that people actually need to lose their life to Jesus in order to gain it eternally through him. The open baptism policy says that just an interest in Jesus, or a generally positive disposition towards him, or the church, is enough.

To be fair, I'm sure that not all open baptisers want it to end there. Some may be universalists and think that all will be saved in the end and so don't see why baptism shouldn't be administered quite freely. But I suspect others don't think that at all - and I doubt that any of them are praying for a church full of nominal Christians. I imagine that for some, what they're really hoping is that the baptisee's positive experience of the church will make them want to keep coming back, and as they do, that they will become more and more convinced of the claims of Christ. Again, this is a very commendable intention, but the open baptism approach really means that baptism is being used as an evangelistic strategy, as a winsome missional tactic, not as the symbolic marker of the people of God.

The baptism-as-evangelism approach is very mixed up and just doesn't reflect the Bible's purpose for baptism in mission. In the New Testament, it seems quite clear that baptism is not part of an evangelistic strategy, but it's what is appropriate to mark someone's conversion to faith in Jesus. The idealised process would seem to be something like: A person becomes interested in Jesus > Christian believers tell them about Jesus > by God's grace they accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour > we mark their conversion by baptising them to symbolise their being washed clean of their sins and their rising to new life. Given this, if you baptise an inquirer who hasn't yet accepted Jesus, it's hard to understand what anyone thinks is going on. You might be communicating universalism. You might be communicating that Jesus is satisfied with a little bit of interest. You might be communicating that the church really is 'lovely', but that it doesn't have any firm convictions about what it means to be the set aside people of God. You might be communicating that the church will change its beliefs to cater for the preferences of punters that it desperately wants to become new members...

The real challenge in all this actually has to do with how we connect with, welcome, love and give real time to people who are inquiring. I think these things are what many open baptisers are wanting to do, and they are most excellent things to want to do. Surely though, we can do them without compromising the sacraments.