Different ways of Baptism
Looking at the many churches today, how many different ways of baptizing do you think there are? These are the ways I have heard about:
- Sprinkling of infants: Practiced by Methodists, Catholics, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and others.
- Immersion of infants: Practiced by Lutherans and Orthodox. In addition, Orthodox will sometimes immerse infants three times.
- Pouring (also called "affusion"): Practiced by Amish and Mennonites. Actually, once Anabaptists changed from baptizing infants to baptizing adults in the 1500s, the method they practiced was pouring.
- Immersion of adults going forward: Baptists began this in 1609. But wait, there are two different ways to immerse. Most churches who practice this do so with the pastor leaning a person back into the water (Baptist, Pentecostal/Charismatics, Disciples of Christ, and others)
- The Church of the Brethren baptizes by the person kneeling in the water and going face-forward three times (to imitate bowing to the Trinity).
- None: Two denominations do not practice a physical baptism: The Salvation Army and Friends (aka Quakers). Instead, they both believe that Christians do not need a physical ritual to bring them closer to God.
- Pouring of sand: I once spoke to a missionary who worked in the Sahara Desert. He said that water was so scarce there that people poured sand on a person's head for their baptism.
- Wiping someone's face with a cloth. A student from a class I taught in Kenya told me this was one of their church's practices.
- Extra: Disciples of Christ/the Christian Church denomination believes that a person is not saved until he or she is baptized. Therefore, they will baptize a person immediately upon confession of faith.