Chad Mason responds
by Chad Mason, Des Moines, Iowa
The debate surrounding my article, “Mennonite but Not Anabaptist”—including the article itself—has exposed confusion among us Mennonites regarding the purpose of baptism and the nature of Christian freedom. Baptism enacts a profound relocation from old to new, from darkness to light, from the world’s culture of death and destruction to Christ’s culture of life and love. For this reason I reiterate my commitment, stated explicitly in the article, to postcatechetical baptism as a practice clearly superior to infant baptism. But I will also reiterate the central question of the article. The world has undergone profound changes with the fall of Christendom, and the purpose of infant baptism has accordingly evolved in the believing communities who practice it. What are the implications of these changes for our longstanding practice of not recognizing infant baptisms?
We have not yet considered these implications well. Our current rationales for rejecting all infant baptism as baptism reveal that modernity has confused us about the very nature of freedom and personhood. Whenever we defend the “liberty” of the unencumbered self to “choose,” apart from cultural influences, I begin to wonder if Descartes and Rousseau have not snuck into the meetinghouse. By contrast, a social conception of the self, participating in God’s own social personhood as Trinity, might enable us to imagine a kind of Christian freedom that includes infant baptism, even if we think it wiser to baptize after formation.
Editor’s note: Chad Mason’s response to the 10 letters we have published in response to “Mennonite but Not Anabaptist” (Jan. 8) concludes the discussion of baptism raised by his article.
Associated Issue: Mennonite but not Anabaptist - Jan. 8, 2008
Associated Article: Mennonite but not Anabaptist
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