It Takes a Church to Baptize

This was very interesting! The liturgy and procedure during infant baptism is very similar to the one in my Lutheran church. Definitely gave me some things to think about! I would definitely recommend this book to others, I highlighted a lot of things I'm going to discuss with others interested in this topic as well.

This books has been on my reading list for a long time because of the author. Not only have I been a fan of Scot McKnight's books, but I found him to be a uniquely apt author to write on this topic as McKnight was raised Anabaptist only later finding his way into the Anglican church.

While I initially dove into this book for McKnight's perspective on infant baptism, I quickly found that this was really a secondary issue (to be sure, it does get a full two chapters dedicated to it) to McKnight's main point: baptism is a community affair. McKnight emphasizes the ideas that we are baptized into a Covenant community (not merely an individualistic statement) and that this is a work of God in us (not a work of ourselves). He frames his argument by taking the reader through the Anglican liturgy on Baptism, because in Anglicanism belief is expressed through worship (it even has a Latin phrase: lex orandi, lex credendi).

Regardless of whether I am convinced of infant Baptism (McKnight does make a decent argument that I'll have to chew on in addition to other arguments I've read since then), “It take a church to Baptize” has helped me gain a deeper appreciation of Baptism and its meaning.

Recommended for anyone interested in deepening their understanding of Baptism or learning a little bit about the Anglican faith.