Baptism: What about those with a learning  disability?

Recently in a conversation about when to baptise (paedobaptism or credobelievers’ baptism), one of the questions that came from a paedobaptist was:

“What would you do about an adult with a learning disability?”

The presumption seemed to be that this would be a barrier to baptism.  It seems to align with a perception that credo-bapfists practice adult baptism, or at least identify some kind of age of responsibility/intellectual capacity upon which we will baptise.

My response was that I would treat them the same as anyone else linked with our church.  You see it is worth reiterating a crucial of point. Baptism is for believers. It’s not about age or intellectual capacity, it’s about faith and the profession of that faith. This also means it is about the reality of the faith processed not about the quality of its articulation.

Now, some baptistic churches do place age restrictions on when baptism happens.  Sometimes, that has nothing to do with foundational beliefs about who baptism is for and is more pragmatic. I suspect a strong element is a nervousness about societal perceptions. It’s funny isn’t it that our society has no problem with people baptising small babies with no capacity to indicate consent but would balk at the baptism of an 8 year old. Similarly, I suspect the same frowns would be made by the same people for the baptism of an adult with severe learning difficulties. Another factor in those decisions about age is to do with confidence to assertain the profession.  However, it is worth reminding them too that it didn’t about quality of articulation.  We are not setting an exam with a pass grade.  The problem is not with underlying Baptist theology but the practice of some.  The solution is not to throw out believer’s baptism but to align practice more with belief.

And that means that we have to think more about what we ask of those seeking baptism.  There should be a level of discernment but we need to make sure that the process is about helping those who believe to make profession not  about creating barriers for them.