Baby Dedication Instead of Baptism

What you may hear

Announced from the front, warmly, with the family standing:

“This morning we’re dedicating little Emma to the Lord. Mom and Dad are promising to raise her in a Christian home, and when she’s old enough to decide for herself, we hope she’ll follow Jesus in baptism.”

Or in a class, as a plan: “We’re doing a dedication now and letting her choose later.”

Why it matters

This is entry 9’s doctrine made into a liturgy, and it is more dangerous in that form because it occupies the slot baptism would have filled. A family that has dedicated a child feels that the churchly thing has been done. It has not.

Look at what the two rites actually deliver. In a dedication, the parents promise. In a baptism, God promises. Every verb points the wrong way: the family gives, resolves, commits; the child receives nothing, and leaves the service exactly as she arrived.

There is nothing wrong with parents vowing to raise a child in the faith — that vow is part of the baptismal rite anyway. The problem is the substitution. A child who has been dedicated has a family’s intentions attached to her. A child who has been baptized has God’s name attached to her, and the difference will matter enormously at two in the morning twenty years from now.

And the delay is not neutral. The reasoning is always that the child should choose. But the thing being withheld is a gift, and no one asks an infant to consent to being fed.

What to do instead

Name the substitution gently. Not dedication is wrong — the vow is fine. The question is what the child receives.
Put the two side by side and ask who acts. This teaches faster than any argument. Parents promise; or God promises. Let the class see the grammar.
Answer the choice objection. She will choose, for the rest of her life, and every choice she makes will be a return to something already given rather than a leap from nothing. That is a better starting place, not a worse one.
If a family in your class is planning a dedication, do not ambush them. Teach what baptism is, and take the pastoral conversation to the pastor.
If a dedication has already happened, the answer is not shame. The answer is that the gift is still available and there is no expiration on it.

One line you can actually use

“A dedication is a promise your family makes. A baptism is a promise God makes. Only one of those will still be true when she’s forty and doesn’t want to hear about it.”

If the student asks

“Didn’t Hannah dedicate Samuel? Didn’t Mary and Joseph present Jesus at the temple?”

Yes, and the question deserves a straight answer rather than a deflection.

“They did — and neither one was a substitute for anything, because baptism didn’t exist yet. Presenting a child to God is a good and old instinct. The question isn’t whether we can do that. It’s whether we’d stop there when Christ has commanded something that actually gives her something.”

The confessional citation

Binding:

Augsburg Confession IX — children are to be baptized; by baptism the grace of God is offered. Decisive: the Confession does not treat infant baptism as permissible but as what is done.
Small Catechism, Holy Baptism, Second Part — the benefits: forgiveness of sins, rescue from death and the devil, eternal salvation, to all who believe this as the words and promises of God declare. Set this beside the content of a dedication and the comparison makes itself.
Small Catechism, the Creed, Third Article — the Spirit calls by the gospel; faith is not generated by the one who has it. The answer to let her decide.

Supplementary: the Large Catechism on Baptism.

Scripture: Mark 10:13–16; Acts 2:39.

What not to do

Do not sneer at dedication services. They are usually the practice of a church that loved these families and had nothing better to offer.
Do not tell parents they have failed their child. They have delayed a gift. Say the gift is still there.
Do not turn a class into a referendum on a family’s plans. Teach the doctrine; leave the family to the pastor.
Do not imply the unbaptized child is lost. The guide does not claim more than the Confessions give — see entry 8.