The Morality of Teenage Baptism

by metatron 14 Replies latest jw friends

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  Room 215

  This deplorable pressure put on kids-- wherein kids not yet teenagers -- as young as 10 or 11-- have been praised and held up as examples by the boys of Bethel, is but another example of how far the organization's scruples have eroded. Tome was, in the mid fifities, when the increases were hefty, sometimes even double-digit, youngsters who aksed about baptism were parised for their good intentions but told to think carefully and prayerfully over whether they were ``really ready'' and whether they were doing it to please their parents.

  In fact, the Society once went so far as to offer re-baptism as an option to those young ones who in time came to realize that their sole reason to get dunked was to please their parents, and that this realization had invalidated their baptism.

  Fast forward to today: beset by scandals, their chronology in tatters, the emergence of the Internet as a source of relentless exposure, the growing list of failed expectations and back-tracking on dates and ``this generation" etc., they despaerately seek to show numerical growth or at least to mitigate losses, by baptising their own guileless children.
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  rwagoner

  dantheman -

  Boy you hit it on the head ! I was brought in by my parents at 5 years old, was baptised at 12 and did the whole rabid jw until I started to question things... I went inactive for a few years and when I met a great woman (worldly) I did what I thought was the "right thing"...the truthful thing...the non-hippo thing so I wrote a letter saying I was "leaving the faith" as it says on the official JW page and DA'd myself. I was shunned and then "un-shunned" about 13 years ago when they got the first "new Light".

  If you can believe their own page...if you simply leave you are not shunned...Yeah Right !!!

  Since the "New Light" (read- yet another rehash of the old light) I am once again shunned.

  No accusations of wrongdoing...NO "charges"...No DF....and this time I'm...well...not going away quietly. I know that it will probably make it even more difficult for my parents, who are still in, but since they have chosen the dubs over their son I guess they'll have to deal with it.

  A 12 yo kid can not enter into a lifetime contract and know the ramification that will come up later in life. In the mainstream church infant baptism doesn't lock you into contractural terms that may potentially separate you from family and friends in an extreme situation such as shunning. Dedicating an infants life to God and publically stating that the parents will try to raised the child with Christian values and teachings isn't the same as swearing allegiance to an organization that you may leave only under the penalty of shunning.

  RandyW

  Edited by - rwagoner on 3 October 2002 13:53:39
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  deddaisy

  In the mainstream church infant baptism doesn't lock you into contractural terms that may potentially separate you from family and friends in an extreme situation such as shunning.

  or have a twelve year old JW child's lawyer trying to convince a judge that this child is a "mature" twelve and capable of making her own medical decisions ! If getting baptised as a JW is a verbal contract not to receive blood, even is it means death, minors should not be able to enter into that agreement.

  sooner or later a minor, who has parents that aren't JWs, is going to end up baptized and in the hospital with a "no blood" card. We'll see what happens then.
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  alamb

  "As regards the alleged involvement of children, the [WatchTower Bible and tract Society] submits that children cannot become members of the association but only participate, together with their parents, in the religious activities of the community."
  {Sworn testimony submitted by the Society in evidence before the European Human Rights Commission Jul 3 1997}
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  caligirl

  I was "dunked" at 14. Did it because I thought that for a short time, maybe someone would look at me in a positive light and stop viewing me as bad news and an evil temptress. Didn't work. By the way, after my teenaged stepchild was baptized this summer (because some elders kid had done it), I tried to make the point that Jesus was 30 to my mother as an argument against teenage/child baptism . It gets you nowhere. Her response was that Jesus was fulfilling prophesy, so if not for that he likely would have been baptized at a much younger age. Ugg! I pretty much ended the conversation there so that I wouldn't say anything she'd regret hearing. I think it is utterly ridiculous to expect a child or teenager to make a life long commitment!