What does baptism do?
Baptism is a Christian sacrament, and the theology of it is that it removes original sin. The child, once baptised, becomes a Christian and can enter into eternal life.
Some Protestants challenged infant baptism, at the time of the Reformation, saying that it ought to be a choice taken by an adult (as it seems to have been in Gospel accounts.)
There are Protestant sects such as the Quakers, who do not believe in baptism, or any other sacrament.
The Eastern Orthodox Christians do not hold to the doctrine of original sin, therefore see baptism having a different significance - of welcoming the child into the church community, and santifying it. But in their view, the child was not damned by original sin before the ceremony.
The baptisms in Gospel narratives were closely related to the Jewish practice of immersion in pure water, as a gesture of repentance from sin and rededication for prayer. If continued in this form, baptism would have become a practice whereby Christians practiced it often throughout their lives. But that faded out, and it became a single ritual performed by the clergy.
Through Baptism, Original Sin is taken away, we then become adopted children of God and heirs to heaven.
Protestants believe that baptism is a proclamation that one has made a decision to accept Jesus Christ as one's Lord and Savior. Jesus Himself was baptised, and since He was without sin, His baptism could not take away any sin.
I have personally never been able to find, nor have I ever heard of any comandment in the Scriptures that infants be baptised. Since baptism is basically a public announcement of a decision to accept Christ, and infants are incapable of making that decision, there is no justification in Christianity for baptising infants. It can actually be harmful in the sense that it can give individuals who were baptized as infants the (in the absence of an actual salvation decision and experience) false belief that their sins are forgiven in God's eyes based on their infant baptism.
Baptism is a public statement that a person makes to show what they are confessing to believe:
Romans 6:4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Becky
It is designed to create controversy on this forum ;~)