Not necessarily true

Submitted by Bowman (United States), Jul 4, 2015 at 02:28

"To BECOME a Christian in any recognized sense, a person needs to have been (a) baptized; and (b) confirmed or have received first communion. Careful records are kept of both events."

That is not true for all Christian denominations. For some examples:

Baptists do not believe you need to be baptised in order to be converted.

Church of Christ do not believe that baptisms must be performed by a church or even by a clergyman. In fact, they believe you can baptise yourself or have a baptism performed by a non-believer. They believe that the act is what is essential and that the location and who perforned it is completely irrelevant. Completely.

None of the Christian churches I have ever been part of does "confirmation" since they practice baptism of someone who has made a choice to convert rather than practice baptism of infants and other people who are incapable or unwilling to voluntarily convert.

"First communion" is not very widely practiced among Christian denominations. Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopals...any others?

As far as believer's bapitsm and the regular type of communion, I don't believe I was ever part of a church where that kind of information was written down for a permanent record. Non-heirarchal Christian denominations generally aren't very big on paperwork.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".