The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (344 page)

Baoli
(place of ritual bathing)
:

see
PILGRIMAGE
.

 
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Bapak
(father)
:

see
SUBUD INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD
.

 
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Baptism
.

The rite of admission into the Christian church, practised by all denominations. Its origin is probably to be sought in

(i) the Jewish practice of baptizing proselytes; and
(ii) the baptism administered by
John the Baptist
‘for the forgiveness of sins’ (Mark 1. 4)

.
The doctrine which attended baptism in the early church was variable. Baptism might be, for example, the washing away of sins (Acts 2. 38), a dying with Christ (Romans, 6. 4), a rebirth (John 3. 5), or the occasion of the gift of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12. 13).
The theology of baptism gained precision in the 3rd and 4th cents., notably in the West in the writings of
Augustine
. The Catholic view which emerged was of a rite which works
ex opere operato
, which confers a ‘character’ on the recipient (who thus can never be rebaptized, even after
apostasy
).
The 16th-cent. Reformers modified that theology:
Luther
, reconciling the necessity of baptism with his doctrine of justification by faith alone, regarded baptism as a promise of divine grace after which a person's sins are no longer imputed to him or her.
Zwingli
, on the other hand, saw baptism only as a sign of admission to the Christian community.
Calvin
taught that baptism can only be of effect for the elect, who have faith (without which the rite is vacuous). The radical
Anabaptists
understood baptism exclusively as a response of faith on the part of the individual to the gospel, and thus rejected infant baptism.
In the most usual form of early Christian baptism, the candidate stood in water, and water was poured over the upper part of the body. This is technically called ‘immersion’, but the word is now more often used to refer to the method (used e.g. by Baptists and Orthodox) of dipping the whole body under water.

 
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Baptism, forced
.

see
ANUSIM
.

 
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Baptist Churches
.

Christian denomination. Baptists form one of the largest
Protestant
bodies with a worldwide membership of over 40 million, plus a greater number of adherents. Its beginnings can be traced among the
Anabaptists
, and to the ministry of the English
Puritan
John Smyth (
c.
1554–1612), and his fellow separatist exiles, who made believers’
baptism
the basis of their gathered church fellowship in Amsterdam. In England a Baptist ‘General Union’, formed in 1813, was gradually transformed into the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland (1873).
Concerned, since the publication of Helwys's
Mystery of Iniquity
(1612), about religious liberty, some early 17th-cent. Baptists sought freedom in America. Roger Williams began Baptist work at Rhode Island in 1639 which, after early difficulties, spread rapidly throughout the USA, largely inspired by the mid-18th-cent.
Great Awakening
in New England. The majority of their present congregations belong to either the ‘American Baptist Churches in the USA’ with 1.6 million members in 1983, the
Southern Baptist Convention
with 13.9 million, and two (largely black) National Conventions with a combined membership of 10.3 million. Additional smaller bodies provide a total Baptist membership in the USA of 26.7 million.

 
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Baq
'
(S
f
state of attainment)
: