We didn’t baptize our daughter. We didn’t give in to family and we didn’t do it “just in case”. I think it’s disrespectful when people know you’re atheist and think you should baptize your baby anyway.
I love to write poetry and I hope you don’t mind me sharing a poem I wrote on this topic:
Baptism
Every innocent baby
is born tainted
new to the world
but on a direct path to hell.
A cold splash of submission
followed by pictures and cake
saves their blank slate souls
and fulfills a family’s outdated duty.
The child has been marked
for indoctrination, brainwashing,
and conformity –
A fresh young mind in chains and shackles.
Water should just be water
in a meaningless ceremony
but it becomes a deadly weapon
recruiting for a dangerous army.
Let the well dry up.
Let the children free.
Let’s defeat the army
that has imprisoned us all.
Baptism is such a bizarre ritual. I’ll never understand it.
Loved the poem. The denomination I grew up in practiced full immersion baptism (mine was in a local lake), and only on those who could make a verbal commitment. At least that was a ceremony that might have some meaning for the victim, I mean the participant. What can infant splashing mean to the baby?
Of course it is all only a cultural ritual.
24 years ago, we caved and did the Baptism thing to my infant to placate the extended family, which is what convinced me that I didn’t believe in any of it. I hadn’t stepped foot in a church in 20 years–I certainly wasn’t practicing any faith. Not at any point did anyone involved in the whole process care whether we believed or not, and my baby’s baptism was one of many that same hourlong mass. Nobody in my nuclear family (self/spouse/sprouts) has been in a church since.
I can see the point of infant baptism coming out of an age when most people died in infancy, and now it’s mostly an excuse to gather the extended clan to celebrate. I understand older baptism as an initiation rite into the clan but I really don’t get multiple adult baptisms. That just seems like bragging.
Fortunately we got zero pressure to baptize. Of course it probably helped that we’re a gay couple, and my MIL was very happy to finally have grandkids.
It’s not just the conformity. Cults think they own you permanently until they say otherwise.
After you’re “baptized” as catholic, voluntary or involuntarily, the cult can legally interfere in your affairs and bodily autonomy. If you had a living will with a “Do no resuscitate” order (terminal illness, brain death, etc.) and the cult locates you, they’ll try to interfere. Among other examples.
I’m still trying to find a way to get excommunicated other than abortion (which will never happen) and without hurting people so that they leave me alone.
@4: I dunno; I was baptized Catholic as were my now-adult sprouts…and nobody from the church has shown the least bit of interest that none of us goes to church. I’ve seen the Mormon and the Baptist churches get possessive of “their” members, but I’ve never had anyone from the Catholic church show any need to monitor or control me or mine.