Can baptism unlock the key to church unity? 

by Mark Woods
Ecumenical News International 

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Could denominations recognizing each other’s baptisms be a key to promoting the unity of Christian churches? 

      That’s a challenge currently being debated by theologians and church leaders of the world’s major Christian traditions at a meeting in Malaysia of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC). 

      “The journey towards mutual recognition of baptism is one step towards full recognition and communion,” the Rev. Jorge Scampini, a Roman Catholic university professor from Argentina, said at the meeting in Kuala Lumpur. 

      The Roman Catholic Church is not a member of the WCC but has had official representatives since 1968 on the Faith and Order Commission, which promotes theological dialogue to help resolve differences between the churches.  

      Baptism, a religious ceremony performed with water, is acknowledged throughout the Christian world to be a commandment of Jesus and the fundamental rite of initiation into the church. Many denominations now acknowledge each other’s baptism. The hope is that if this can be formally recognized it will lead to progress towards the unity of churches. 

      Last year, the then general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Konrad Raiser, said greater progress towards church unity could be made by focusing on baptism, rather than the Eucharist, also known as the Lord’s Supper, the sacrament that     commemorates Jesus’ last supper and in which bread and wine are consecrated and consumed.  

      Raiser said there would be “a ‘Copernican Revolution’ in ecumenical dialogue if churches were genuinely to recognize each other’s baptism.”  

      However, the way baptism is performed in the various denominations can be very different. Each church may harbor deep misgivings about the baptismal practice of the other, sometimes to the extent that they refuse to acknowledge such a baptism as valid at all.  

      So, if a Lutheran or a Roman Catholic joins a Baptist church, he or she may have to be baptized by immersion, since many Baptists believe infant baptism is invalid, because they believe that baptism requires the personal expression of faith.  

      “Many questions remain to be answered, and they form a large part of the Faith and Order agenda,” noted Scampini. 

      Still, the Catholic Church recognizes the validity of baptisms administered with water in the name of the Trinity and “with the intention of doing what the church does,” in whatever denomination they are conducted, he told the WCC gathering.  

      Baptisms performed by Roman Catholic priests are also recognized by many Protestant denominations. 

      But, warns the Rev. Peter Donald, a Church of Scotland minister and member of the WCC commission, “We may be less mutually recognizing of baptism than we pretend.” 

      “If we really are recognizing it, that has huge implications for what we understand the church to be,” Donald said. “It’s inherently illogical to recognize baptism and not recognize communion. Visible communion is the holy grail, and you get towards that by sorting out baptism.” But he added: “It’s not terribly easy to get real agreement, because the implications are so massive.”  

      One of the documents presented to the Kuala Lumpur meeting which started on July 28 July and ends on Aug. 6 — “One Baptism: towards mutual recognition of Christian initiation” — aims to help reach such an accord.  

      “The One Baptism text points to the extent to which the mutual recognition of baptism has provided a basis for the increasing common witness, worship and service,” said the Rev. Neville Callam, a Jamaican Baptist minister who helped draw up the document.   

      Still, the Rev. Michael Tita of the Romanian Orthodox Church said that baptism is only part of the issue.  

      “It’s not just recognition of baptism that leads to Holy Communion,” he said. “That’s an initial step that can represent a stage on the way, but it’s a matter of having a growing, deepening faith that is going through different stages.” 

      The Rev. James Massey of the Church of North India (CNI), a united church of six different denominations, one of them Baptist, is, however, adamant that mutual recognition of baptism should not be delayed. 

      He tells the story of one CNI minister who was unable in conscience to baptize infants, but who regularly invited him to perform the rite himself. “The beauty of it was that even he, a Baptist, wore a cassock, and while I baptized the child he held the water in his hands. He recognized me.” 

      He said: “You should not wait for 100 per cent agreement. The consensus has to lie in respect. If you hold that together, that’s the end of the arguments in Faith and Order.” 

      Christians make up about 33 per cent of the world’s population, of whom about 53 per cent are Catholics according to David Barrett’s World Christian Encyclopedia. Protestants and Independents make up 36 per cent and 11 per cent are Orthodox.