Out of curiosity, where (what denomination) were you baptised originally? Why do you believe it may be invalid? I’ve had some experience with this and I’d be glad to try to give you some direction.
I have already spoken with a priest about this, and he is someone whom I trust completely 100% (or maybe 99.9% as only God can really be right 100% of the time)…
but for the sake of discussion, and to get some more opinions on this matter:
The denomination of my baptism was the United Church (St. Luke’s), supposedly.
The trouble is, my mother specifically remembers me
not getting baptised. I was born around the same time that she and my father were in the middle of a divorce; as such, the Evangelical Lutheran tradition would not consent to baptise me, especially as my mother was not Lutheran.
Also, the Anglican Church of my mother’s childhood would not baptise me because my mother no longer practiced, and because of the divorce.
My mother specifically remembers being turned away from various churches for similarly specific reasons, and walking away from one because it required the parents take a course before the child was baptised.
She also happens to be against infant baptism, and only half-heartedly sought it out for me in an attempt to smooth things over with her ex-in-laws (my dad’s parents)…
I can’t picture my Lutheran grandparents allowing a United Church baptism, because they are
very firm Lutherans who are
very firm in their pride at being perfectly Lutheran (even if it requires lying and refusing to allow me to question their pastor about their faith, incase it is realized that I was raised atheist by their son, as opposed to Evangelical, Fundamentalist Lutheran).
In fact,
no body in my family specifically remembers me being baptised - if they think about it, they come up with details from my brother’s baptism and think it must be mine… for example, my brother’s baptism happened in an entirely different city, and they think that’s were mine occured as well, but the only record of me is at St. Luke’s United in the city I’m in now.
No one can tell me who my Godparents are supposed to be, though according to my mother the couple who (from the US) have been filling that role are actually my brother’s Godparents, of which there is actual proof.
I
do have some old baptismal gifts, however - things like a children’s picture-bible with a leather cover (I think it’s St. James version), and a little white and gold music-box/jewelry-box/piano.
Plus, the Priest who has been working with me has said that he doesn’t really trust United Church baptisms after about the eighties, because they started trying to be ‘creative’ in their ceremonies (using ‘creator’ instead of “Father”, “redeemer” instead of “Son”, and “Intercedor” instead of “Holy Spirit” and so on),
and
I don’t trust St. Luke’s as I know their last few pastors have not been truly Trinitarian (they don’t believe in three seperate persons, just three different faces of the same person - fine distinction, I know, but it seems important to me), and the last student minister (my mom’s ex-fiancée) was actually an atheist who felt he could enjoy preaching ‘nonsense’ to all those ‘weak fools who needed God’.
love,
Saoirse
ps - I am sorry my posts are so long, and that there are three consecutive ones… I can’t figure out how to work the quote function without posting seperately in response to each quote, and I wanted to explain more fully what my meaning is.
