Infant Baptism Refused for Incorrect Reasons

Dylan Stewart

Yesterday morning I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed and noticed a headline written by a local news station that caught my attention. The headline read, Reverend Refuses to Baptize Baby, Says Unwed Parents Are ‘Living in Sin’. To summarize the article, a Methodist preacher in Mississippi, after initially accepting a request to baptize an unmarried couple’s newborn child, changed his mind at the last minute for the following reasons: (1) the baby’s parents are “living together in sin,” (2) the baby “was conceived before marriage,” (3) although the couple are members at the congregation, they do not regularly attend the church services, (4) the grandmother of the baby is “living with a man in sin,” and (5) the preacher believes “it would set a bad example for the youth and children of the church” if he went ahead and baptized the newborn child. This article is worth consideration because although the preacher’s concluding action (not baptizing an infant) was correct, his reasoning actually makes him the one in the wrong. 

The preacher was correct in declaring it sinful for the couple to live together while unmarried and he was accurate in noting it was a sinful union whereby the baby was conceived (Hebrews 13:4; 1 Corinthians 7:1-3). He was also warranted in pointing out the sin of forsaking the assemblies (Hebrews 10:23-26). However, every reason that the preacher listed to defend his actions are all unsound justifications for rejecting the request of a newborn child being baptized. The District Superintendent where this Methodist church is located realized the error in the preacher’s reasoning and stated, “The parents of an infant being unwed would not be reason enough for a United Methodist pastor to refuse to perform an infant baptism.” This Methodist preacher serves as an example of how doing the right thing for the wrong reason invalidates our correct conclusions. 

Instead of using false arguments based on Biblical truths to not baptize this infant, the preacher could have pointed out that a person must believe in Christ in order to be baptized. For instance, Jesus said in giving the Great Commission, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mark 16:16). That coordinating conjunction “and” links two things together – belief and baptism. Belief alone cannot save; baptism alone cannot save. Philip’s conditional statement to the eunuch in Acts 8:37 also serves as an example that proves this very point. Philip told the eunuch “if” he believed in Christ he could be baptized, directly implying that if the eunuch did not believe he could not be baptized. Having belief in Jesus as the Son of God, per John 3:16, and being willing to confess Him as such, per Romans 10:9, are things a baby is incapable of doing. If the preacher would have used this reasoning to refuse the request for baptism, his argument would have been sound. Similarly, he also could have explained that baptism is for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38; Acts 22:16), and since babies have no sin (Ecclesiastes 7:29; Ezekiel 18:20; Romans 9:11; Matthew 18:3; James 4:17), the newborn child did not need to be baptized. Instead, this Methodist preacher misapplied the Scriptures, leading to poor reasoning that invalidated his otherwise correct conclusion.

As result of this Methodist preacher’s unsound reasoning, he comes off as hypocritical. The mother of the child explains, “He knew all of the information of us not being married, all of that . . . We did, in fact, sin. But he knew all of that and he still agreed to it. If he had been straightforward from the get-go, this wouldn’t have been a problem with either of us.” Maybe put another way, if the preacher’s reasoning had been sound from the get-go, there wouldn’t have been a problem. This situation should serve as a lesson for all those practicing the unscriptural act of infant baptism. If those who practice infant baptism would accept the simple truth that there is no Bible authority for baptizing babies, they would avoid situations such as the one described in this article. Instead of manipulating the Bible to make it consistent with our false practices, let’s all trust and accept God’s Word exactly as it is written, thereby rejecting every false way.