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    Flowing Water, Uncommon Birth: Christian Baptism in a Post-Christian Culture
    Flowing Water, Uncommon Birth: Christian Baptism in a Post-Christian Culture
    Flowing Water, Uncommon Birth: Christian Baptism in a Post-Christian Culture
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    Flowing Water, Uncommon Birth: Christian Baptism in a Post-Christian Culture

    By Samuel Torvend

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    About this ebook

    Flowing Water, Uncommon Birth explore a rich, ancient, multifaceted, deeply Christian baptismal practice and theology. This book invites us to ask important questions about the central mystery of Holy Baptism and the fullness of the baptized life. The Worship Matters Studies Series examines key worship issues through studies by pastors, musicians, and lay people from throughout the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Features include the following: 1) Informal and insightful writing for all readers; 2) Study questions at the end of every chapter; 3) Examination of vital issues in weekly worship; and 4) Increased ability of leaders and congregants to understand and experience worship more richly.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAugsburg Fortress
    Release dateApr 15, 2011
    ISBN9781451420920
    Flowing Water, Uncommon Birth: Christian Baptism in a Post-Christian Culture
    Author

    Samuel Torvend

    SAMUEL TORVEND is senior historian in Religion at Pacific Lutheran University and associate priest for adult formation at Christ Episcopal Church in Tacoma, Washington. He is the chair emeritus of the Commission on Liturgy and the Arts in the Diocese of Olympia and a much-published author on liturgy and social justice. He lives in Lakewood, WA.

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      Flowing Water, Uncommon Birth - Samuel Torvend

      Bibliography

      Introduction: Why Baptize?

      Here the innocent sheep,

      cleansed by the heavenly water,

      are marked by the hand of the Good Shepherd.  

      On January 5, 2003, the festival of the Epiphany, Rex Torvend Rainsberger was baptized in Seattle, Washington, on a cool but sunny day. Surrounded by the worshiping assembly, relatives, family friends, and his parents, the two-month-old infant was carried by his mother to a font of water where a large beeswax candle stood burning next to it. In his white garment, he was handed to his Filipina-American godmother.  The presider exhorted the parents to bring their son to worship, to teach him the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer, to place in his hands the Bible, and to provide for his instruction in the Christian faith in communion with the church.

      The presider then offered thanks over the local water in the font, water that comes from the Cedar River flowing out of the Cascade Mountains. The whole assembly renounced all the forces of evil and then confessed an ancient Roman baptismal creed. His Norwegian- American grandfather poured water over his head as he was baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Large hands were laid on his tiny brow as the minister offered thanks to God for his new life and prayed for the outpouring of the Spirit upon him. A cross, the first century emblem of a humiliating death first devised in the ancient Persian Empire, was traced over his forehead. A small candle, lit from the large one, was given to his father. A prayer was offered for his parents, and then a member of the assembly declared that Rex, the infant, had been made a priest so that he might bear God’s creative and redeeming Word to the world. He yawned, long and deeply, as the assembly announced that they had received him as a worker in the kingdom of God. Then, quoting the words of the risen Christ, the presider said, Peace be with you, and the whole congregation erupted into loud chatter, shaking hands, kissing, embracing, laughing, blotting out a few tears, cooing over the baby—a small, contained, and controlled chaos.

      Throughout this ancient ritual, Rex did not cry out once. He simply gurgled once in a while. He appeared docile if not oblivious to the questions, the washing, the hand-laying, the cross traced on his head, the burning lights surrounding him, the declaration made over his small body. So much ritual action. So many prayers and expectations for a newborn child. A light-bearer? A priest? A worker in the reign of God? Honestly, did anyone really think about what they were saying when all these things were affirmed on behalf of the yawning infant? Or is it possible that few of us were really paying attention to the words and actions and were focused rather on the charm of the newborn? Or were we wondering if his eighty-two-year-old grandfather would begin weeping as he poured water on the head of his only grandchild—so incredibly tender and so precious the moment across the generations? Or is it possible that all the words and actions—the intense focus for one full day on this little boy’s life—were simply superfluous in light of the bottom line: he was safe now—safe with God for all eternity. Whether he died in eight minutes or eighty-five years, he would not be lost to God or his parents or the church but would, in the consoling words of the Reformation hymn, stand among the glorious heavenly band of every tribe and nation (Evangelical Lutheran Worship #442; Hymnal 1982 #298).

      Here, then, we ask the questions of the catechism: What does this mean? My godson’s English, Danish, Norwegian, and Swiss ancestors lived in cultures that understood themselves in some way to be Christian. They believed that baptism was a normative action through which a person was not only identified religiously but also ethnically. Thus, Swiss Calvinists, English Anglicans, and Scandinavian Lutherans have practiced the baptism of infants for close to five hundred years. Indeed, they did not depart from the practice of Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Yet the European churches of the magisterial reformation are now almost empty, Christianity perceived as a cultural artifact of Europe’s rich heritage or as the willing consort of colonial oppression throughout the globe. Indeed, if there is any lively growth on the landscape of European religions, it is among Muslims and Christian Pentecostals. One must look to Africa, India, Asia, and Latin America— the southern hemisphere—to find a flourishing and diverse Christianity.

      In North America, a few regions seem to be saturated with or at least hospitable toward religion. Yet church and cultural historians suggest that the pervasive presence of the film and television industry and the Internet have initiated succeeding generations, since 1945, into a cultural ethos—a way of experiencing, thinking about, and living life—that may have little if any relationship to the gospel of Jesus Christ. What does this mean? What does it mean to practice Christian baptism at a time in which one’s identity and purpose in life are being constructed or shaped, from the moment of one’s birth, by a constant stream of visual, musical, and textual messages created by those who want one thing and one thing only: a profit? Is the way in which our ancestors thought about the relationship between religion and national identity no longer helpful? Is there a way in which the claims of Christian baptism are eroded by or assimilated into a larger and more powerful cultural ethos? Has it become increasingly difficult to discern anything distinctive within the Christian baptismal community—in its way of understanding life and living with others—that would distinguish it from the values or practices portrayed daily on television? Should he choose to do so, my godson could watch reality shows every day; programs whose one clear purpose is to demonstrate the ways in which human beings can eliminate or fight with each other, shows which sanction the diminishment of shared life and the common good. Of course, such programs make perfect sense in a cultural context where the strong survive and those alleged to be weak perish. What does this mean? 

      Some of my colleagues in the academy claim that Christianity has had its day. At best, it is perceived as an interesting historical artifact or a coping mechanism for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. Indeed, it can be difficult for some people—inside and outside the academy—to imagine that curious, intelligent, and world-engaged human beings can find any life-giving meaning or purpose within a Christian community. Here’s the sad thing: there is a good measure of truth in what they claim. Christian communities and their leaders can offer mind-numbing and soul-destroying experiences of legalism, neurotic leadership, over-weaning optimism, dreadful pessimism, exclusion, censorship, ugly music, terrible art, techno-pop, uninspired preaching, and plain inattentiveness to real human need. They can reject the use of reason in the search for truth and dismiss what they perceive as any threatening claim made by scientists, historians, and artists. Good heavens! Who would want to be baptized into that way of life?

      Yet what of those young people who, with increasing numbers, sit in the back pews of the church where I serve? What of the psychologist, teacher, banker, bike messenger, webmaster, poet, school bus driver, and single mother—all remarkably thoughtful people, all horrified by the mind-numbing and soul-destroying capacities of Christianity— who are nonetheless curious about the Christian way of life? What does it mean, in this increasingly secularized culture, where religion is pushed out of the public square, that they watch what goes on in our parish week after week? And then, in an off-hand remark, one of them says,

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