Infant baptism became the primary method of baptism by the 5th century. It's because people cared about their kids. Two factors played significant roles in this decision:1) Disease and epidemics were taking children at very young ages.
2) The idea of original sin was widespread. The teaching was that children were born with sin. They were born separated from God.
So, in a culture where people were taught that children were born as sinful creatures and infant mortality rates were off the charts, it becomes fairly easy to see how people could come to the conclusion that infant baptism would be necessary. People wanted to make sure their kids were saved. Plus, they had the Jewish tradition of circumcision on their side where infants would enter into divine-covenants when they were 8 days old.
Infant baptism quickly became more than a spiritual covenant. It had significant political undertones. At the baptism, the infant also became a citizen of the empire. Ultimately, you became a child of God and a listed soldier at the same time.
For over a 1,000 years in the western world, people were not immersed in baptism as believing adults.
This all changed in 1525.
The Printing Press changed the cultural landscape. People now had the resources to read Scripture with their own eyes. Up until this point, your knowledge of Scripture was primary whatever you heard from the Priest's mouth at church. And a lot of times it was in a different language, so good luck with that one.
A group of people were diving into Scripture and they began to ask, “Church wasn’t intended to include everyone, but only those who really wanted to follow Christ.” They began to question how a baby could join a church if they knew nothing but to cry, eat, and poop? The conclusion was that the only true baptism comes when one is old enough to understand its meaning.
There was one "minor" problem: it was against the law to not have your child baptized as an infant. Remember, infant baptism had spiritual and political connotations.
However, Conrad Grebel and his wife were expecting a child and they decided to not baptize the newborn as an infant. Other families close to them followed their example.
The Zurich City Counsel wasn't very happy about this. Quite frankly, it ticked some people off. So, they handled this civil disobedience like they would anything else: they held a public debate. Conrad (a great name of a revolutionary) and his buddies shared their recent conviction about baptism by immersion as adults, and the other side shared their 1,000-year-heritage of infant baptism.
Then, they voted, and infant baptism won.
Conrad and his friends were commanded to discontinue their "radical" meetings full of nonsense and to baptize their infants within 8 days...OR ELSE!
Conrad and his friends met that night to discuss what they should do. They prayed and they talked. They worried and they prayed. Then, George Blaurock, one of Conrad's friends, made up his mind that not only should they not baptize their infants, but if they believed that the NT teaches that adults should be immersed as the method of baptized, then they should be baptized themselves. So, Conrad baptized George and George baptized all of the adults who were present.
The high-up leaders of the city caught wind of their actions.
They were told to quit with their meetings, but they kept meeting.
They were told to quit with their teachings about baptism, but they kept teaching it and practicing it.
They were told to stop "OR ELSE", but they kept doing it and they were arrested, persecuted and executed.
Conrad and his wife were put to death within a year of their baptisms.
One pretty cool story is about a woman named Elizabeth Dirks. She was arrested because she had become one of the "radicals" who had been baptized as an adult. They began interrogating her with some sick methods. All they wanted was to know who had taught her these radical ideas and who had baptized her, but she was silent. They proceeded with all kinds of Jack-Bauer-like techniques. They drove screws underneath her fingernails, but she remained silent. They drove larger screws into her legs crushing her bones until she fainted. Still silent. (Needless to say, Jack Bauer would have had greater success, right?) When they realized they couldn't get any info from her, they put her in a bag and tossed her into the river.
This dude named Balthasar Hubmaier baptized over 6,000 people in a time when it was illegal to baptize adults. He was burned at the stake and his wife was drowned.
Thousands of adults were baptized and thousands were killed for it. Drowning became the chosen method of execution. It was performed out of sarcasm, "You people want to be immersed as adults...we will immerse you." Then, they would tie them to chairs and toss them in rivers or lakes.
So, here's my question, what does it say about baptism that thousands of people would risk their lives because they believed in it so much?
I don't want to read too much into the actions of the anabaptists (the radicals in this story), but it doesn't seem that they engaged in acts of adult-baptisms just to get to heaven, but they actually believed that the "baptized-life" could transform their "here and now." They seemed to be eager to live in a different story. And...I like that.
