Friday, March 03, 2006

Getting baptized here? Bring a snorkel!

At that church I wrote about in my post about acolyte training, I learned that they have plans to spend as much as $100,000 to install a huge baptistry in their sanctuary. How could you spend that much on a baptismal font, you ask? Ah, but this will be no mere font. It will be a pool, large and deep enough to allow full-immersion baptism -- which, I was told, has been mandated by our bishop. That is, all adult baptisms in our diocese are one day to be performed by submerging the poor catechumens completely, it seems.

I'm sure glad I was baptized in the bad old days, and as a child. A little water, poured with dignity and decorum over the forehead. I won't need to pretend I'm a Southern Baptist, getting dunked in the Chattahoochee.

Talk about an impediment to adult conversions! I don't know about you, but if I was a potential convert and heard that I had to endure this:



... I'd think again about the whole thing.