Sabbatical Picture No 6 The Baptist Font

Baptists are in short supply in Jerusalem.  There is nothing new about that.  You may find some near an American Pilgrimage Tour Bus (though there are, to be fair, a handful of Baptist churches in Jerusalem).  Baptists might wish to point out that the first Christians in Jerusalem (Acts 2) were practicing Believers' Baptism which basic jewel of Christian truth was recovered largely thanks to our Baptist forefathers in church history.

Commonly Christian visitors to the Holy Land think of being baptised in the River Jordan, where Christ himself was baptised by John.  A minor tourist industry engages in indiscriminate baptism there which I would howl at theologically were it not that in one of my churches I discovered that one of the most conservative, dependable and hard-working ladies of the church was baptised there on a pilgrimage and it had been her key spiritual moment (as well as her only baptism).

The picture here is not the River Jordan though.  It is in the Anglican Cathedral - St George's - in Jerusalem.  Was the Bishop who built this (otherwise very English) cathedral a closet Baptist?

The answer is no.  This is a diplomatic baptistry (the icon behind it is a clue).  The high Anglican Bishop had it built to indicate his positivity toward the Orthodox Christians in the city and its surrounds.  (As most Baptists probably don't know, the Orthodox Church generally practices baptism by immersion, though most commonly (and scarily) to not-yet-believing infants.)

Today the baptistry is used sometimes, though ironically it was built with no real intention that it should be.

Baptist Churches in Britain usually have a baptistry that was built with the intention that it would be used.  In last year's submitted statistics (though the strongest churches can't be bothered with such things as a rule) the 2000 churches in the Baptist Union averaged one baptism each.   So we have built baptistries that were intended to be used and we don't use them.