Like a Fish in Water: Reclaiming Baptism in an Anabaptist Church

The 2019 Bechtel Lectures in Anabaptist-Mennonite Studies will host Dr. Irma Fast Dueck from Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) in Winnipeg. Fast Dueck is a practical theologian whose lecture will explore the topic of young people in the Mennonite church today.

Join us for a public lecture on reclaiming baptism in an Anabaptist church.

Baptism is one of the most primordial of Christian practices and until recently, has been a defining act, marking the believer as Christian and initiating them into the Christian community. For the early Anabaptists, critical of the sacramentalism of the medieval church, this primitive act of pouring water on heads was hardly a benign act, as that act of pouring eventually resulted, for many of them, in their own martyrdom. Indeed, for the early Anabaptists, the practice of baptism was a political act. The past couple of decades have presented serious challenges for those practicing baptism in the Anabaptist tradition—do Christians even need to be baptised?  Does baptism require church membership? This lecture will explore the contemporary practice of baptism in the Anabaptist tradition in light of these challenges. Baptism is not simply an event in time but it carries within it the contours of the Christian life. Baptism fuels the Anabaptist imagination for peace and justice. 

Reception to follow.

Read more about Irma Fast Dueck and the Bechtel Lectures.