In Alfred Place, we love our brothers and sisters who baptise babies. But for most of those brothers and sisters with whom we would engage, they don’t baptise those babies on the basis of believing, and they certainly don’t baptise babies on the basis of their requesting to be baptised. A baby doesn’t request to be baptised, and so we don’t baptise babies for that and other reasons.
There’s also a practice, which is less common now, but was a practice in years gone by, which is forced baptism. People, on the extreme end of things, were forced at knifepoint to be baptised. But then, on the less extreme level, simply compelled to be baptised, and it was not tied to their belief, it was not tied to their request. It was simply something that they were compelled to do: “Get baptised. Get in the water.” We don’t believe in that, and I suppose that the equivalent of that might be when baptismal waters are open to the public, and people are emotionally manipulated into being baptised. This is not biblical.
And this often comes with those who baptise babies, who will pour or sprinkle water on the person being baptised, as opposed to immerse them in the water. I think you can see from the text that they went down into the water, but also it’s undeniable that the word baptised means to dip. And so, for being faithful to the text, then we should dip everyone who comes to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
To be fair to our Eastern Orthodox brethren, they do dip babies—fully immersed. At least there, they’re being consistent. Then, you’ve also got people who do believe in believers’ baptism but only sprinkle those they baptise. There’s every which way combination in this, but our understanding of the Bible is that believers are the ones who should be baptised and that they should be baptised by immersion.
