Hello, while I'm not an Anglican myself, I do have an interest in other denominations and, in particular, British Church history. Looking forward to learning from, and perhaps contributing to the forum
I woke up one morning only to discover I'd turned into a presbyterian lol. Well, I guess I should change my caption to read "AFs presbyterian member"
Scottish, I'm confused. What do you mean? I was just getting used to you being our token Baptist. Anna
Not an awful lot has really happened, it;s just been a gradual almost accidental change over the last few years, but I realised that I had no problem with infants being baptised, and I liked the presbyterian church government better. What is there left to mark me as a baptist? lol I like the idea of the Church being involved in government, having it's own influence and voice,however this this can't be possible with isolated congregationalist government. The presbyterian model seems muchbeter for this and the interconnectedness of the congregations, the fact of the elders being lifelong gving leadership stability -it won me over Soemthing I had been thinking of a long time is quite often, and I can give my own example christians can have no particular moment where they can claim to have ahd a conversion experience. Some do, a lot don't. So what happened to soemone who doesn't have a one point in time conversiion experience? When should they be baptised especially if they've grown up in a christian household. By baptising children of believers as infants I think makes a lot of sense. It gves them soemthing to look back on. If they have a lving faith they can look back to when they were baptised on the faith of their parents, having made their faith their own they can claim the surety of God's promise and seal in baptism I guess the final straw came when I was talking with my lomg term girlfriend (and I hope soon to be fiance) about going to chruch together if we married. And I seriously felt strongly against my church's position of asking infant baptised christians to be rebaptised as a believer. My girlfriend wants to be a full part of a church together but really couldn't accept being rebaptised and I see no reason why her baptism shouldn't be valid.
I wish you well on your journey within the community of a new Church... I also hope you manage to convert your long term girlfriend to a short term fiancé and a long term bride..... I also have no issue with infant baptism given the community the child is baptised into takes on the responsibility of the ongoing teaching of the child until the child is old enough to make up their own mind, and have some form of confirmation such as we do in the Anglican Church.