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GW what about Baptists? Wesleyans would ,in fact, encourage an adult baptism of a baptised infant (not as a requirement,but as a outward sign)

You'd be better off asking Jerry or other actual Baptist ministers. I expect that Baptists would not re-baptize anyone who was baptized as a believer. I would generally expect it wouldn't be too difficult to find a Baptist minister who would give a believers' baptism to someone "baptized" in infancy. It might be the case they would be more eager to re-baptize those baptized as infants n churches of a certain doctrine. I'm sure you catch my meaning here.

Much of my opposition to paedobaptism is because it seems to me that baptism is one of the few real and meaningful confessions of faith that we give as believers. A confessoin of Christ as Saviour, baptism, communion. The Christian faith is a beautifully simple thing. If nothing else, a baptism tells others that we have professed a personal faith in Christ. Not that our parents did it for us. I think baptism as a believer also makes communion a richer and more personal experience.

That's a very precious thing, something a believer can cling to in hard times. Had I been baptized as an infant, I simply couldn't feel the same way about it. I have wondered exactly how those who have been baptized as infants feel about it, whether in any sense it leads toward deeper devotion or stronger conviction. It's difficult for me to imagine it as a positive. It seems to me that a Reformed believer is robbed of his own baptism experience by his parents' concern that he be baptized in the event of infant death or death in early childhood. Since I don't believe paedobaptism provides salvation to an infannt, then I have no concern about whatever God will do with those who die in infancy. I merely see this as a something done ostensibly for the child but which is actually about parents' concern about their child's fate if they should die very young.

Perhaps Uriel has something to contribute.

Had I been baptized as an infant, I simply couldn't feel the same way about it. I have wondered exactly how those who have been baptized as infants feel about it, whether in any sense it leads toward deeper devotion or stronger conviction. It's difficult for me to imagine it as a positive. It seems to me that a Reformed believer is robbed of his own baptism experience by his parents' concern that he be baptized in the event of infant death or death in early childhood. Since I don't believe paedobaptism provides salvation to an infannt, then I have no concern about whatever God will do with those who die in infancy. I merely see this as a something done ostensibly for the child but which is actually about parents' concern about their child's fate if they should die very young.

Weighing in here as a Lutheran, I can speak to this. I was baptized when I was a month and a half old by parents who, yes, were a little apprehensive about a baby dying, but who recognized that I would probably live a long time. I take great comfort in the fact that my parents, aunts, uncles, and many neighbors saw fit to take steps for my faith at an early age. I don't see my faith today belonging just to me -- I recognize that many, many people have shaped and nurtured my faith in Jesus Christ. That started even before I was baptized and has continued to the present, some 35 years later. Today I am a Lutheran pastor with a strong personal faith in Jesus. But I don't think for a minute that I got here on my own, or that my faith is the simple result of my own decision. In hard times, it is valuable to me to go back to my baptism and consider God's faithfulness and commitment to me when I was helpless. (If I'm honest, in a lot of ways I'm still helpless.) When I face trials, it helps me a great deal to remember the community in which I was nurtured as an infant and a child, and the communities that continue to support me today. "None of us lives to himself, none of us dies to himself; ... we are the Lord's." I recognize a great beauty in the faith of my friends who practice only adult baptism. But often I see that the end result of that practice can become a radical individualizing of faith that denies the Body of Christ -- the fact that we belong to each other as well as to Christ.

I think one of the issues facing us today is the whole question of how to view baptism in the face of a "post-Christian" culture. Do we focus on the individual's faith to the exclusion of community? Do we focus on the communal faith at the risk of missing individual commitment to Christ? Nobody I've been reading lately has good answers to this one at the moment.

Another, perhaps better question is, what is God doing in baptism, if anything? I've heard a lot of argument on this voluminous thread about what we do ... but very little discussion of what God is up to.