Why TWO Baptisms?

[Real Presence]

I was on the USMB website, and I found this statement.
"Practice
We practice water baptism by immersion administered by the local church. Local congregations may receive into membership those who have been baptized by another mode on their confession of faith. Persons who claim baptism as infants and wish to become members of a Mennonite Brethren congregation are to receive baptism on their confession of faith."
Now, what bothers me is that they give the Bible passage Ephesians 4:4-6 as backup for this, yet that passage states: "3Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."
So why would the church make some take baptism again if they had already received?


http://www.usmb.org/beliefs/faithFullConfession.cfm#confessionArticle8

[Diane_Windsor]

"Practice
We practice water baptism by immersion administered by the local church. Local congregations may receive into membership those who have been baptized by another mode on their confession of faith. Persons who claim baptism as infants and wish to become members of a Mennonite Brethren congregation are to receive baptism on their confession of faith."

(Bold emphasis mine)

I believe what that means is that they will accept a person's baptism in other modes such as poring or sprinkling, as long as that baptism was done after they had made a procession of faith. I don't know too much about this denomination, but I'll go ahead an assume that they teach and believe in credobaptism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Believers_Baptism) as opposed to paedobaptism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_baptism). IOW, they don't recognise infant baptism as the Lutherans do.

Here is a Wikipedia article on the U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Conference_of_Mennonite_Brethren_Churches) and on of the Mennonites (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonite).

So why would the church make some take baptism again if they had already received?

It appears those who were baptised as infants will not become a member of the local congregation until they have been baptised. Notice the wording, "Persons who claim baptism as infants and wish to become members"-the bolded phrase indicates future tense.

Hope that answers your question.

Diane
:wave:

[ZiSunka]

I was on the USMB website, and I found this statement.
"Practice
We practice water baptism by immersion administered by the local church. Local congregations may receive into membership those who have been baptized by another mode on their confession of faith. Persons who claim baptism as infants and wish to become members of a Mennonite Brethren congregation are to receive baptism on their confession of faith."
Now, what bothers me is that they give the Bible passage Ephesians 4:4-6 as backup for this, yet that passage states: "3Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."
So why would the church make some take baptism again if they had already received?


http://www.usmb.org/beliefs/faithFullConfession.cfm#confessionArticle8

First baptism was meaningless to me, since I was 22 days old at the time. I considered myself unbaptized because that baptism wasn't my choice but something done TO me without my consent. I wanted a believer's baptism to demonstrate to the world my faith in Jesus Christ, something I didn't have until I was 30 years old. My "first baptism" did nothing for me, my real baptism demonstrated my faith.