Baptism: 'A Lifelong Conversion'

Which meanings of baptism are you most and least familiar with?

Which biblical metaphors for baptism would you like to highlight in your own life and the life of your church?

What first steps could you take to do so?

What do you think — is art essential in shaping religious experience?

How comfortable are you with meeting God through your senses when you can’t explain this knowledge with words?

These are a few of the questions for discussion that accompany a new article that features a look at a new book that examines the meaning of baptism from various perspectives. A range of other resources related to baptism are also part of the article.

Published on the website for the , the article by Joan Huyser-Honig says that many Christians know only one meaning of baptism, usually either cleansing from sin or initiation into the community of faith.

Some of people think of baptism as a single moment in time.

But there is another way to consider it.

The new book by an expert on early Christian worship and art offers a way for people to experience baptism as a lifelong conversion to God’s wide, long, high, and deep love.

The book is Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity: Ritual, Visual, and Theological Dimensions by Robin Margaret Jensen, who teaches at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tenn.

The book makes the point that early Christians, for instance, not only heard scripture, but saw and experienced it, because their worship was rich with biblical symbols and images.