Why do so many churches practise baby baptism?

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All babies are inherently evil, it comes naturally.


It depends on wether God considers personhood to begin at birth or at conception, and if the baby is a product of sin.


True.

From my reading and interpretation of the Bible, it suggests at several points (I can't remember which ones) that if a person is ignorant of good and evil (as a baby would be) God will not hold that against them.

And Wombat, Judaism incorporates several bathing rituals into it's doctrine. You can read about them in the old testament. That is presumably where John got the idea.

That's not true. The thief on the cross wasn't baptised, but Jesus said to him, "this day you shall be with me in paradise." Moses and Elijah weren't baptised, but they were seen talking to Jesus on the mount of transfiguration. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob weren't baptised, but Jesus cites them as proof of resurrection when He says that God is the God of the living, not the dead. David's unnamed son by Bathsheba wasn't baptised, but he is understood to be in heaven, because David says that he will join him... come to that, David isn't baptised, but he wrote prophetically of the One Who grants access to heaven, and writes extensively of heaven in his psalms.

It isn't baptism that gets you into heaven, it's Jesus, and HE knows the heart.

Baptism is a sign of repentance, and like any sign it can be faked, or co-opted. I was baptised three times as an infant, once by my father the minute I was born, because they thought I was going to die, once by a priest who didn't realise I'd already been "done" when I came out of the incubator, and once for my Granny when she came over from Ireland to visit us.

I was baptised in church as an adult after I came to believe in Jesus, by full body immersion.

But I could have been baptised seven hundred times, and still go to hell... or I could not have been baptised at all, and still go to heaven. It's to do with Jesus, not rituals, one way or the other.

By the way, to answer the OP... people baptise their children because a birth seems to merit a celebration of some sort. Some churches present the child instead of baptising them. It's just cultural.

Well, baptism is a Jewish thing... First century synagogues found in Israel have baptismal pools, and if you convert to orthodox Judaism there is a baptism ceremony (full immersion). The priests who served at the Temple were washed in water and dressed for the occasion... a description of the (very massive) font for the washing of the priests is imbedded in the description of Solomon's Temple. Christian believers are said to become not just sons and daughters of God, but also priests. So the washing, and the being clothed in clean white garments ties in with the Temple rituals.

The washing away of sins is a very Jewish thing... it's all through the Torah. That was the whole point of the animal sacrifice, you see sin offerings throughout. God makes it clear that obedience is better than sacrifice, and animal sacrifices can never be sufficient, they are makeshift until the coming of Christ, but right through the first five books, particularly Leviticus, running through psalms, through the books of history... it is obvious that humans mess up, and need to be redeemed. Try reading the book of Judges to see how hopeless our attempts are. By the end of the OT it's obvious we need a saviour, we cannot save ourselves.

The entire ancient world offered animals to gods as propitiation, or to beg, or to gain favour. Only in the New Testament do we find a God who sheds His own blood to wash away our sins. But it is foreshadowed in the Tannukh, the Torah particularly. That's what Passover was all about. The angel of death was sweeping over the land, and the children of Israel obediently sacrificed a lamb, painted the blood over the door, and the Angel, seeing the shed blood, passed over.

In the same way, Christ, "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" died for us, and anyone, Jew or Gentile, who shelters under His blood is passed over, and can enter into eternal life.

This theme is reiterated right through the Bible. Once you see it, it's very hard to miss.

It's generally based on a misunderstanding of what baptism is. I take the baptist view because I find it closest to what's represented in scripture (baptism as a repentance of sins - "socio-political" affiliation with a movement). A lot of times in the Early Church, baptism was nearly a death sentence, as the surrounding communities shunned and persecuted Christians, and yet baptism was very often a public display to that very same community. It's lost a lot of significance over the years and now is just a hallow form of what it once was.

I had a baptist pastor friend who told me that he refused to baptize anyone unless they understood what baptism represents and what it's significance is. I think he was influenced by some of Bonhoeffer's early work in some profound way, but I can't say that I blame him for that... it's hard to read Bonhoeffer and not be moved by it, given the life the man lived.

mgran: Pesach is a very interesting topic. I found it reverberated into Genesis, when God killed an animal in Adam and Eve's presence to offer them a covering for their shame, once evicted from the garden (Genesis 3:21). I think most of the Torah stands as a reiteration and attestation to the severity of man's alienation and what would eventually be required to bridge the gap between God and man.

It is a ritual. Rituals are very important in that they confirm the religion in time (meaning transcendentality) and in essence (what the religion is).

That depends. Often rituals in most religions don't have a specific meaning behind them, they're designed to produce some physical or spiritual effect that's mysterious and unexplainable. The function of Christian rituals are more theological and coherent (as I understand them) as they point to something which the Christian affirms through the act of the ritual, rather than producing some external effect by virtue of the ritual's correct performance.

The Bible does say that people are supposed to be baptized after converting to Christianity. However, the reason Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant churches baptize babies in because they believe in the concept of "orginial sin".
Original Sin is the idea that when Adam and Eve sinned, their sin was passed down to the rest of the human race. The thinking is that babies need to be cleansed of sin in case they die before they can make thir own decision (because of an accident or a disease).
I'm a Protestant and I've always thought baptizing people when they're too young or against their will is more than a little creepy.