Sharing More About My Journey Over at Anglican Compass

I recently had the pleasure of being invited to write a guest post for Anglican Compass about my journey into the Anglican denomination! You can check it out via this link below:



Categories: General, Personal

Tags: , , , ,

2 replies

  1. Greetings! I assume due to your charismatic background that you were more aggreeable with credo baptism. If this is the case, maybe write a post on how you now reconcile infant baptism within Anglicanism. Yes, the ACNA is good for lay worshippers, but if one is more agreeable with credo baptism and seeking ordination within the ACNA this will be a disqualifier. They are not so “both/and” in this area. One seeking ordination has to follow “the tradition.”
    Have you studied infant baptism? Arguments for and against? What the early christian writers (before Constantine) say about it? I suggest it is not as clear cut as some would argue. Such murkiness is why there is such a great debate on this topic. This is why the reformer Martin Luther is on record for saying something to the extent that he could not reason infant baptism other than it was “the tradition” of the church. His reformed ideas only went so far. The radical reformers (Anabaptist) took it futher by rejecting infant baptism.

    There are movements that are liturgical and sacramental as you describe within the ACNA, but these movements don’t put so much emphasis on tradtion but are still connected to tradition.

    If interested, I’m willing to participate in a series of debate post between our readers.

    Like

    • Ryan, as you say, I did grow up credobaptist and was incredibly unfamiliar with (and honestly disinterested in) arguments for pedobaptism. It never really entered discussions in my circles.

      However, I did survey the arguments for and against infant baptism while I was entering Anglicanism. I now see it as a logical element of a covenantal framework (with regard to Scripture and ecclesiology), and I think there actually is pretty strong evidence that it was practiced in the early church, though as you say there is some debate about that. Even so, I personally think it can be seen as something rather like Trinitarian theology — the concepts are there in Scripture implicitly, even if it maybe wasn’t settled as the traditional/universal practice of the church until there was more reflection on the implications of the covenant nature of the community. Another thing that was helpful for me in terms of accepting infant baptism as a practice was reading about the ways in which evangelical Anglicans like John Wesley reconciled a belief in infant baptism and baptismal regeneration with the real need for active, personal faith and/or conversion later in life. I found Wesley’s discussions of it in particular gave me peace of mind in adopting the practice for my own family. Also, for me personally it was important as an act of submitting in humility to the collective wisdom of the church over centuries.

      I might be willing to do a series of posts on this in the future, but I’m afraid I don’t really have the bandwidth for it presently. If that changes I’ll reach out.

      Like

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