A Uniting Church pastor-friend wrote:

Sometimes I have my doubts about "christening" too (maybe I should have been a Baptist)?

But then I remember the part of my theology that it is God who acts in baptism and also the bit that wants to celebrate new life... (I wonder, though whether we have gone the wrong way... Maybe we should have one celebration of a new-born child and another as an initiation into the church... With baptism and confirmation we seem to have got it the wrong way round)!

Anyway, as it stands I want to find ways to help the parents take their promises (and they are serious promises) with as much integrity as possible...

hmmm [ ]

I responded:

And this Baptist agrees with you. I have a hunch that chronology and the amount of H2O matter less to God than commitment-in-community! The ceremony/celebration of that comitment in baptism can occur before, at or after conversion/public commitment. (And we Baptists need to find a parallel to godparenting, and we need to be less legalistic about others' mode/occasion of their baptism).

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher