Baptism meeting with father

seven-day-weekend

Mojisola wrote: »

If someone comes from a family who aren't Christians (and so wasn't christened as a child) and has managed to reach the age where they are getting married and having children without getting involved in a religious community themselves, why would they want to get married in a church or have their own children christened?

I was brought up in a family of atheists and found faith when I was 30. There are plenty around like me.

However, I then got baptised (by immersion) by my own choice. This choice of course is open to any non-christened/baptised person who has found faith.

I personally do not think baptism is for babies. IMHO it is for people who are old enough to make up their own mind (and may include older children) and is an outward physical demonstration of what has happened to them inside spiritually. Many churches have this doctrine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Believer's_baptism

seven-day-weekend

arbroath_lass wrote: »

I didn't say furious, I said resentful. I don't hate my parents. I do resent having that choice taken away from me.

I am not a Christian, I don't want anything to do with the Christian Church yet I have had this tie forced on me.

If the OP had posted she was getting her children's ears pierced she'd have been shouted down. This is worse, in my opinion. This is my spirituality. It should have been my decision.

These things should only be entered into by people capable of deciding for themselves.

It is your decision and you have decided not to be a Christian, as is your right. No-one is forced to follow Christianity.

arbroath_lass

jaylee3 wrote: »

However, I do actually know of a number of people who have encountered problems and issues because they were not christened. EG; when they came to get married in Church. Also, when they wanted their own children christened.

And that's the point they can decide to be baptised themselves. After all why force it on your children if you are not prepared to do it yourself?

arbroath_lass

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

It is your decision and apparently you have decided to be an atheist. No-one forces you to believe in Christianity.

No, I am Pagan. I had no wish to be "welcomed" into the Christian church. As I said, my spirituality is important to me, it should be my choice.

seven-day-weekend

arbroath_lass wrote: »

No, I am Pagan. I had no wish to be "welcomed" into the Christian church. As I said, my spirituality is important to me, it should be my choice.

I have edited my post when I realised it was not you who said you were an atheist. Sorry I got you muddled up with someone else.

Nevertheless it is still your choice which religion, if any, to follow. No-one has forced you into anything.

Mojisola

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

I was brought up in a family of atheists and found faith when I was 30. There are plenty around like me.

However, I then got baptised (by immersion) by my own choice. This choice of course is open to any non-christened/baptised person who has found faith.

And I know people who have done the same and their faith is a major part of their lives.

What I can't understand is wanting to get married in a church if you don't have any belief in the faith or wanting to baptise your children if you haven't taken that step yourself.

I can understand parents whose faith teaches them that you can't go to heaven unless you're baptised having their children baptised - they wouldn't be doing their job as parents (as they see it) if they didn't "protect" their children's souls through the sacrament.

seven-day-weekend

Mojisola wrote: »

And I know people who have done the same and their faith is a major part of their lives.

What I can't understand is wanting to get married in a church if you don't have any belief in the faith or wanting to baptise your children if you haven't taken that step yourself.

I can understand parents whose faith teaches them that you can't go to heaven unless you're baptised having their children baptised - they wouldn't be doing their job as parents (as they see it) if they didn't "protect" their children's souls through the sacrament.

I can't really understand that either.

Neither myself nor my husband had any faith when we got married in 1971, so we got married in a registry office. Neither of us wanted to marry in church. In our opinion, it would have been hypocritical.

I became a Christian the year our son was born, in 1980, my husband four years later, but as we belonged to the type of church that has believer's baptism, we didn't have him baptised. He chose to do this when he was about ten, although now he would say he is agnostic.

The pastor of our last church, before the one where we worship now, would marry people who were not churchgoers, especially if they were already living together. He would interview them and take each case on its own merits. His attitude was, that if they really wanted to be married in church then that was a good thing and gave him the chance to tell them about Jesus.

The church where we worship now is not licensed for marriages.

notanewuser

Another thought. Much is made of the census nowadays, and how much of the UK population defines themselves as "Christian" or otherwise. I'm convinced that many people that were baptised as babies or children would tick that box despite not actually having that faith, because they think that they've been officially registered as Christian, IYSWIM. Those figures inform some public policy, so there is a greater impact on the rest of us than there should be.

onomatopoeia99

jaylee3 wrote: »

So it was being dragged to Church every week that affected your life, and the fact that your parents were clearly very religious. It was not just the fact you were christened... .

No, they weren't religious at all. I was christened to get me into the RC infants school as they didn't like the local secular school. The previous time they were in church before my baptism was for their wedding about nine years previously. Like many Christians, they are weddings, funerals and christenings type churchgoers.

The whole eight years of Roman Catholic indoctrination at the hands of the school and its allied church was all a consequence of the christening, without that none of it would have happened.

I guess what I am really furious about is that religious schools exist in the state sector and I ended up going to one as a consequence of being christened just to get me in to it. Had I been christened and nothing more been said about it and my life otherwise unaffected, I'd be much less bothered (although still disagreeing with making a choice like that for me rather than waiting until I could make it myself).

arbroath_lass

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

I have edited my post when I realised it was not you who said you were an atheist. Sorry I got you muddled up with someone else.

Nevertheless it is still your choice which religion, if any, to follow. No-one has forced you into anything.

Perhaps it is because I actually respect what the baptism represents. It is not a meaningless thing to me. It is deeply spiritual, a commitment, it should be done only when a person can choose it for themselves.

I WAS forced into a baptism I did not and do not want. If, at some point in my life, I became Christian, I'd want baptised then. When it meant something.