Baptism

• In essence, laying aside all the polemics and prejudices and academic
intricacies, what Scriptural principle is being violated if a child is
baptized and matures in his faith?
There is a good reason why these questions are hard to answer for those who
exclusively advocate adult baptism: infant baptism is not an innovation, it is
the practice of the Early Church.”
The Loss of Unbaptized Persons.
There is a much more serious concern that arises from the attenuation and loss
of persons when baptism is postponed or rejected. This is the problem of
seepage from the churches as a result of the ineffective nurture and
evangelism of children and the inept transmission of a meaningful selfidentity.
This is also emphasized in the Mennonite Encyclopedia discussion
on the subject.
“The decennial census of members, children, and ex-members of the General
Conference Mennonite Church reveals some startling statistics in this regard.
From 1960 to 1970, a total of 17,530 people were received into membership
in 222 reporting churches, 51 percent by baptism (mostly teenagers), 43
percent by transfer from another church, and 5 percent by reaffirmation of
faith. During the same decade 15,956 memberships were terminated by death,
transfer, or deletion from membership roles. Thus, the ratio of receptions to
losses was a bare 1.1. Only 45 percent of the children between the ages of 15
and 19 had been baptized; and about one-fifth of the children over 20 years of
age had still not been baptized and received as members. ….. In the
Conference of Mennonites in British Columbia, only 28 percent of the
children aged 15-19 had been baptized,….. Moreover, there was a much
greater seepage of men than of women. In the British Columbia provincial
conference, only 36 percent of the male children (aged 20-24) of members
had ever been baptized, compared to 69 percent of the women. Among
General Conference Mennonites as a whole, it appears that about 15 percent
of the offspring of members are never baptized and are thus lost to the
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