From Nativity's September Newsletter

            People sometimes wonder why I am so joyful, even giddy when I baptize someone.  What’s the big deal?  When visitors get a welcome letter from me they see, “As a community of faith we take to heart our baptismal promises”.  What does that mean? 

            Let me tell you a story. It goes back about 50 years when The Episcopal Church did some soul-searching about what it means to be a Christian in our modern world – a world of racial injustice, immoral wars, disparity between the “haves” and the “have-nots”, and rapid social change.  Then they took a good long look at our liturgy, especially the two great sacraments of Communion and Baptism.  How, they wondered, do our Sunday rituals reflect and inform our Monday-through-Saturday lives?

From this came a renewal of our understanding of Baptism.  It’s no longer thought of as a “let’s-get-the-baby-done-while-Aunt-Edna’s-in-town” social event.   Baptism has become a communal event, done as part of the Sunday liturgy, in which the person being baptized (adult, child, or infant) is brought into full fellowship of the Body of Christ.  No more half-measures that are completed at confirmation, but full initiation. 

 And to make sure that we don’t forget what it means to be a baptized follower of Christ, they added a Covenant – promises that we try to live by and help our children and god-children live by, promises that center on ways we can live out the faith we proclaim, and make a difference in our world.  We are reminded as a community of those promises every time someone is baptized and at every Baptismal Feast day on our calendar.  This is a unique practice of The Episcopal Church.  The promises can be found on pages 304-305 in The Book of Common Prayer. http://www.bcponline.org/ 

There is a church that was built during this time of Baptismal renewal in the Episcopal Church, St. David's in Topeka, KS, and the congregation lived out their baptismal promises very publicly. I was blessed to be a part of the story. 

If you have never heard of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS led by the late Fred Phelps, please take a few minutes and google it.  Although they claim to be Christians preaching the Gospel, they in fact proclaim a hateful god that delights in death and pain.  They are the ones who picket funerals of soldiers.  They have been picketing in Topeka for decades.

Back in the 90s, the folks of St. David’s Episcopal Church in Topeka, let by Fr. Bob Layne, felt called to proclaim the God we know – the God of justice and peace and love.  For three years we stood against the Phelps cult, even going as far as the Supreme Court.  We stood on the sidewalk with signs countering the Phelps’ hateful messages while we endured vulgarity, insults and threats.  We led our community in prayer and non-violent protests, and drew people from all walks of life and every faith tradition (and no faith tradition) to join in the cause.

Others in Topeka, including most churches, told us to ignore the Phelps and they will go away.  The problem with that was the group only got stronger, bolder, and louder when we tried to ignore them.  The other problem, as Fr. Bob reminded us, was “to ignore evil is to acquiesce to evil”.  Besides, we couldn’t ignore them because we had all promised to “persevere in resisting evil”, to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ”, to “seek and serve Christ in all persons and love our neighbor”, and to “strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being”.  How could we not do what we did?  As far as I know, St. David’s is the only church who has directly challenged the Phelps’ cult.

All this took place during my discernment period of the priesthood.  It taught me that a Christian community can stand up and make a statement; they can be a unifying force for good, and that we don’t have to be afraid.  I cherish our tradition of promises, our call to live out our baptism publicly in the world.  So that’s why I get so giddy when we baptize people at Nativity, and it’s why we use a version of the baptismal promises as our dismissal from church every Sunday.  It’s because we take to heart our baptismal promises. Alleluia!

Mother Rita