Ministry News

We've Heard of Anabaptists, But Debaptists?!

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Friday, 17 April 2009 14:05

You are now officially debaptized. That sentiment was originally offered as an online tongue-in-cheek joke in 2004 by the National Secular Society (NSS). Now the London-based atheist group reports that more than 100,000 one-time believers have paid to download a "certificate of debaptism" to renounce their faith-and the numbers continue to swell by the thousands each week.

"Churches have become so reactionary, so politically active that people actually want to make a protest against them now," said NSS President Terry Sanderson. "They're not just indifferent anymore. They're actively hostile."

Proving Sanderson's point, last week 56-year-old south Londoner John Hunt succeeded in getting the Archdeacon of Croydon and the church where he was baptized as an infant to essentially strike the record of his baptism. "It's about time that some of us stood up to be counted," Hunt said. "I am hoping that others will follow my lead. It is important that we send a signal to the church and to the government that an increasing proportion of the population don't place any faith in the various churches."

NSS offers the document, as stated on its Web site, to "liberate yourself from the Original Mumbo-Jumbo that liberated you from the Original Sin you never had." According to Sanderson, many of those participating were baptized as infants into the Roman Catholic Church, have spent most of their lives as nonbelievers, and now want to set the record straight.

The surging wave of interest isn't restricted to Britain either. In Italy, the Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics held a "Debaptism Day" last October, while in Argentina atheists and feminists banded together for a recent Internet campaign "Not in My Name" to get people to announce their departure from the Catholic Church. [telegraph.co.uk, 4/9/09; time.com, 4/14/09]