In a Discord community, an acquaintance asked for thoughts on the idea of children and teens making a profession of faith and getting baptized. I gave some thoughts on the topic. I would like to now share them here and even expand on them.

My own thoughts are influenced by a number of factors. First is the factor of being brought up in an American Baptist church that was a staunch believer in the believer’s baptism. We did not do infant baptism. Baptism was a choice a person had to make for themselves when they were able to do so.

One of the big questions among Baptists tends to be the question of at what point CAN a child make that choice for themselves. When do they have the maturity and cognitive ability to make that choice for themselves? There’s no easy answer to that question. There’s also no one-size-fits-all to that question. Individual children develop and mature differently, each at their own pace. The moment we pick an age, we will have children that would have been ready for such a decision sooner and children for whom that age is still too young.

In the long run, I think belief in a child’s right to personal autonomy – and that is a belief I hold as fiercely as my belief in any adult’s right to personal autonomy – we may need to trust individual children to make this call for themselves. After all, getting baptized is typically not as dangerous as operating a chainsaw, imbibing alcohol, or driving a car. If a child gets baptized “too soon” or decides it was a mistake later for any reason, no harm, no foul. Or at least, I would hope so.

There are some obvious caveats here. Hopefully, they are getting baptized in a church and not some sort of cult. Hopefully, that church is healthy and espouses theology that is non-toxic.Hopefully, that church is not authoritarian and allows its members to establish friendships and other relationships outside of the church as well.

I acknowledge that this is a lot to hope for, and there are a lot of churches that do not match my desired attributes.But I think it is an error and an injustice to a child to try and resolve these potential pitfalls by deciding said child is “too young” to make that decision for themselves. In fact, I’d suggest that doing so would be to fall into the same kind of paternalistic, controlling behavior we’re concerned about the church engaging in.

Before I move on to my preferred way to mitigate these pitfalls, I want to offer another insight, this one influenced by my experience as a witch. And that’s an appreciation for the importance of praxis and religion as a communal practice and identity. I’ve come to see baptism as not only a profession of belief, but as an act of joining community and even a family. In fact, that may be the most important part to a child. Maybe they don’t believe in God and Jesus, but find meaning in singing the hymns or worship songs alongside others. And if the community/family is healthy, I think it is important to encourage a child who wants to join it and partake in it. After all, if they decide they no longer want to be a part of that community later on, they are (hopefully) free to leave it. No harm, no foul.

As an aside, I wonder how many of us balk at the idea of kids getting baptized or professing a belief is bad are acting out of old ideas about apostasy. We seem to have this reaction that “once we’re in, we’ll never get out” or something. Granted, that thinking also grows out of our own – often traumatic – experiences with Christian – particularly evangelical, as that’s the background of myself and a lot of the people I talk to – churches. We have an understandable and noble desire to protect others from experiencing the same or similar things.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we can always protect others. Even children. I also think there comes a time when our attempts to do so become controlling in their own way and rob others of their own – possibly positive – experiences.

So what do I think we should do? I think we should encourage children to think for themselves and to make their own choices – even if those choices sometimes make us nervous. Here are some concrete things that I think go into that:

1. Instilling a sense of self-esteem and self-trust in the children around us.
2. Teaching children that their needs and wants matter and are valid.
3. Teaching children critical thinking skills and encouraging them to always think things over.
4. Ensuring that children don’t end up in an echo chamber or solely reliant on the church (or any other source) for support and companionship.
5. Teaching children that they are allowed to change their mind and that it’s okay (and probably even inevitable) if their beliefs change over time.

I believe that a child so equipped can and should be trusted to make their own choices about what they believe and whether they want to be a part of any given religious community.