Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!shelby!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: hall@vice.ico.tek.com (Hal Lillywhite) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Proper baptism (Was open communion) Message-ID: Date: 9 Feb 90 06:44:05 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR. Lines: 67 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article mangoe@cs.umd.edu (Charley Wingate) writes: >The situation in the Episcopal Church is twofold; there are two different >levels of openness. As far as *individuals* are concerned, anyone properly >baptized is welcome to partake. (Believing JWs, Unitarians, and Mormons >are therefore not welcome.) Well, as a practical matter most Mormons (LDS) would not want to take communion in an Episcopalian service. However as a matter of curiosity I wonder why they think the LDS baptism is improper. Is there some element in the Episcopalian (and other protestant) baptisms not in the LDS baptism? [There was a discussion of this about a year ago. As far as I know, the LDS baptism follows all the necesary forms. I would regard it as valid. Let's start with the Catholic tradition, because that defines acceptability of Baptism pretty clearly. As a result of the Donatist controversy, it was established that even baptisms conducted by heretics and schismatics are acceptable. What is necessary is (1) that it follow the proper form and (2) that the person doing it must intend to do what the Church does, i.e. that he intends it as a Christian baptism. Protestants aren't necessarily bound by church councils, but I don't know of any suggestions by the Reformers that these rules should be changed. Even during the height of Protestant/Catholic misunderstanding, we accepted each others' baptisms. So I think we can assume that the same criteria are used by most Protestants. (The exception is groups that require adult baptism and immersion. But even there as far as I know they will accept baptism by any Christian church that uses those forms. And their baptism is accepted by other churches.) So in order to avoid accepting LDS baptism, we'd have to establish either that there was something wrong with the form they used, or that they didn't intend to do what the Church does. The last time we investigated this, an LDS correspondent said that they baptize with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This seems to take care of the form, except from the Baptists perspective, and as I recall the LDS do adult baptism by immersion as well. They certainly say they intend their baptism to be Christian. The main objection I can see is that apparently (and here I'm depending upon memory of the last go-round in this group) LDS do not accept other groups' baptism. Based on this, one could certainly come up with an argument that they don't intend to do the same thing that the Church does. One way to operationalize "the same thing that the Church does" would be to ask questions like "do you intend your baptism to do the same thing that baptism done by X does?" where X ranges over a number of denominations whose baptisms we don't doubt. Presumably they would have to answer "no" to that question if they don't consider other groups' baptism to be valid. But this may be taking things too literally. It's not that they think they're doing something different than what the rest of us are doing. It's that they don't think we have the authority to do it. I believe they do accept Catholic baptisms done up to some early date, at which point they believe the Church in some sense died. In summary, the answer to Hal's question is that if you don't accept our baptisms, you shouldn't be shocked that we conclude you mean something different than we do and don't accept yours. But in practice I think we should be a bit more charitable about things. Otherwise we're going to have to start refusing to accept Baptist baptisms. I think the Baptists are making a big mistake in rejecting the one area where we still have unity in the Church, but I don't propose to make things worse by putting up the wall from my side too. --clh]