At the annual American Atheists Convention, one of atheism’s premier provocateurs, Edwin Kagin, faced the crowd and raised high a hairdryer labeled “Reason and Truth.”
Said one woman who travelled from Cincinnati to undergo the de-baptism, “I was baptized Catholic. I don’t remember any of it at all.” The woman, Cambridge Boxterman, 24, added, “According to my mother I screamed like a banshee, and those are her words, so you can see that even as a young child I didn’t want to be baptized. It’s not fair. I was born atheist and they were forcing me to become Catholic.”
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Kagin, who is American Atheists’ national legal director, firmly believes that regardless of one’s religious beliefs, each person has the right to say or do what he or she wants, provided it is within the law. In the past, he has reportedly called out parents who subject their children to strict fundamentalist religious education, referring to it as child abuse.
It is quite possible that the great hair dryer is the only way to get de-jes-a-fied.
I have in the past written to theCatholic, Baptist and Pentecostal churches where I had been dunked, sprinkled and immersed, asking to have my baptism removed, revoked and rescinded but to no avail. Catholic and Baptist refused and Pentecostal said I would have to take it up with the lord.
So, take it from a man who has been baptized over a dozen times in my life, its easy to get wet, a lot harder to dry off.
I spoke with a Catholic priest about it and he named a number of ways to get excommunicated, mostly involving contradictions of church teachings or performing church ceremonies and not being a priest. In essence, declaring oneself an atheist is grounds for excommunication. Yet, he couldn’t recall an excommunication ever occurring in our area and took more of an interest in converting me than condemning me.
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I suppose they have more productive uses of their time than ceremoniously kicking people out. They’d rather spend their time recruiting/indoctrinating believers and with fun activities rather than depressingly condemning folks to hell. As a bonus, those who would otherwise be ex-commed might still someday rejoin, as the priest hoped. This flexibility in rule enforcement is characteristic of religion, and key to their success (see Leviticus’ strict prohibition on eating shellfish). In more theocratic eras, excommunication becomes useful as a political weapon.
If you don’t pay attention to them then they will go away.
De-baptism might be a fun atheist tradition, but it also implies that baptism is somehow meaningful. If there is no magical transformation that occurs with baptism, there’s no need to undo that magic. If you were kidnapped by natives in the Congo or Amazon basin and your soul was dedicated to one of their invented gods, would you worry about that once you escaped? No. Working to undo their “magic” would only reveal that you think there’s something to it.
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Yes, it might be offensive to still be claimed a member by a church somewhere, but so what? Unless they’re using your name to steal public resources, file it under “sticks and stones.” Same thing when people say they’re praying for you. You don’t counter-pray.
Don’t forget, you don’t need to wait for the hair-dryer. You can get yourself debaptized at http://debaptized.com over the internet. You’ll even get a printable certificate that you can hang on your wall!
Thank you for the link; what a great site. I was never baptized, but my wife was and some atheist friends were, so I’m letting them know how to formalize their escape from the dark side.
I loved – “Prayer: Helping people feel better about doing nothing.”
Wow. Epic stuff =D
Does anyone even say ‘da bomb’ anymore?
eww nooo da bomb is old its “bombin” noww soz ha thats my fav word sozzzzzz