There are however two denominations that do not practice baptism. The Salvation Army and the Quakers. The reason for this is that neither church believes it is necessary to have an outward sign of your devotion to god. They believe that it’s what’s on the inside that counts.
Ao2
Baptism is an initiation ceremony, used my many Christian denominations, that inducts someone into the Christian church. It is a sacrament and an outward sign of the beginning of a person’s life with god. In Mathew 28:19 Jesus says to baptize all nations in the name of the trinity. Baptism for Christians is at once a funeral and a birth. It is the death of your old body and the rebirth of your new self. In a sense, when you go under the water you die and come up as a new person. It signifies the washing away of our sins. In Mark 1:10 it says “As Jesus was coming up out of the water he saw heaven being torn open and the holy spirit descended on him like a dove”. In some Christian denominations it symbolises the washing away of original sin. Original sin is the idea that we all have a flaw that lies within us that makes us able to sin and through baptism the holy spirit enters the person and strengthens them to resist this.
Baptism dates back to the Old Testament tradition where a gentile who wanted to join the Jewish nation would be baptized, to become a Jew. In the same manner john the Baptist began to baptize Jews telling them that essentially, it wasn’t enough merely to be a Jew that, that you had to do something more. This paved the way for Jesus.
Infant baptism is the baptism of children and babies who are too young to comprehend what is happening to them. So they must have people to take vows for them, these people are called godparents. Along with the parents of the child they must vow to provide the child with a Christian environment, to pass on the teachings of the church, to encourage the child to attend church, to teach the child about god and how to praise and worship him. Infant baptism evolved from members of the early church who wanted to be baptized so that they could become a member of the Christian church as soon as possible. Another reason for baptizing for baptizing children at a young age is that many Christians believed that there are four different places you go when you die, heaven, hell, purgatory and limbo, and its limbo that people were afraid of. They believed that if an un baptized child died then they would go to limbo, which is, in essence, nothingness.
There are many important symbolic traditions within an infant baptism ceremony. The most prominent of which is the use of candles. There are two candles, the paschal candle and the baptismal candle. The paschal candle is lit to symbolise the death and resurrection of Christ, this then lights the baptismal candle which symbolises the light of Christ and the dedication to god.
Believer’s baptism is where a person of adequate age to judge for themselves weather or not they want to join the Christian community. The principle of believers baptism is that belief in Christ should come before baptism. Believer’s baptism is use as an outward sign of the person’s dedication to god. It shows that the person is ready to take there place in Christian society. Like Infant baptism it is also symbolic of the person dying and being reborn like Christ. People who celebrate believer’s baptism believe that as Christ himself was baptised as an adult that they themselves should follow his example.
Ao3
I think that Christian sacraments should be reserved for believers. This is my opinion because, the entire point of sacraments are that they are rites of passage through Christian life, and so, if a person doesn’t believe in god then why should they be inducted into his church.
Marriage is a good example of this. In the eyes of the church, marriage is seen as a sacred vow between a man and a women, to love and cherish each other, and to have children and raise them in a Christian environment. The problem is that a lot of people take these vows without really meaning them. People who do not believe in Christian values, meaning that the vows are empty, and meaningless. A lot people see marriage as a sort of life sacrament, separate from religion. They see it as a rite of passage, like passing your driving test or going to university. So in this instance we have to ask weather no-believers should be allowed to take part in a sacrament from a religion that they don’t believe in and in my opinion they should not. If people like this want to get married, but do not believe in Christianity, they probably just like the idea of a big white wedding in a church. And there decision to get married in the house of god has nothing to do with god.
Another sacrament that I think should be reserved for believing Christians is conformation. Conformation is a Christian sacrament that more or less fully inducts someone into the Christian church, and because of this there is little interest in conformation from non-believers, except in the case of people who have religious families and are only getting confirmed to please them. If this is the case they should not be getting confirmed.
But there are sacraments where it’s not so simple. For example, baptism is a ceremony that brings a child into the church. Children of this age are obviously too young to make the decision for themselves, so the parents of the child must make the decision to have the child baptised. It can be argued that if the parents of a child are non-believers, then the parents will not for fill the vows of baptism, to bring up their child in a Christian environment, making there little point in baptism. I do not agree with this point of view. I believe that no matter what circumstances we are brought up in, we still have the power as individuals to choose what to believe in. So even if a person is brought up in a house of non-believers, if they are religious in their heart, they will eventually discover their faith, and because of this I don’t think that baptism should be denied to anybody.
Another sacrament that I don’t think should be denied to anybody is a funeral. When somebody is deceased, like when somebody I born, they are unable to say what they wish for as far as burial is concerned, if they have not vocalised it in life. Because of this, it is not always clear how this person felt about there religion, so therefore it must be presumed, if that is the wish of friend and family, that a Christian burial is appropriate.
In conclusion I think that some Christian sacraments should be reserved for believers, but there are those where it is not always clear weather or not the person is a believer and I do not believe that in these circumstances people should be denied christen sacraments.