Handbook 2, the public part of the Church’s instructions for the routine operations of the Church, has a lengthy section on baptism. There are paragraphs on who should be baptized, and by whom, and where, what should be said, how people should dress, the role of witnesses, the connection between baptism and confirmation. Among those paragraphs of rules and advice are these words about the use and preparation of fonts, or the use of natural bodies of water:
20.3.5 Baptismal Fonts
Missionaries coordinate their use of a baptismal font with the agent bishop or with another person designated by the stake presidency. The schedule for using a font should permit missionaries to baptize once a week or more often, if necessary. However, missionaries should not expect to use a font at unreasonable times. No charge is made for using a baptismal font.
A responsible adult should be present while the baptismal font is filling and remain until it is empty and secured. The font should be drained and cleaned immediately after each baptismal service. Appropriate safety precautions should be taken whenever water is in the font.
When the font is not in use, all doors to it should be closed and locked.
When a baptismal font is not available, any body of water that is safe may be used for a baptism if it is large enough to immerse the person and to permit the priesthood holder who performs the baptism to stand in the water with the person. Water is not dedicated for baptisms.
It all makes sense, I think, although it suggests some untold stories: Have missionaries in some times or places expected to use fonts “at unreasonable times”? Somebody somewhere charged for the use of a font? You don’t expect rules to be made for seemingly odd contingencies unless those contingencies had been occurring. I can’t help with those questions – I haven’t read of any occasion when an elder wanted to use a font at 3:00 a.m., or when the Deadbroke Branch charged the elders for the cost of water.
But that last line … “Water is not dedicated for baptisms” … that I do know something about …
Sometime in the first part of the 20th century – perhaps during World War I, or shortly after – the practice arose, first noticed in Europe, of “dedicating the water” prior to baptisms. That is, a priesthood holder would offer a separate prayer upon the water – always, in that time and place, a natural body of water; the Church owned few buildings and had not yet started installing fonts – on the water itself. Only after the water had been dedicated would an elder and convert step into the water to proceed with the baptism.
I have not yet discovered exactly what the water was dedicated for; if we knew that, we might have a clue as to how the practice began:
It might have been patterned after the dedication of a temple or chapel, as witnessed by some missionary. That is, just as the various parts of a temple are mentioned in the dedicatory prayer that each might fulfill its intended purpose, perhaps the waters were dedicated to wash away the sins of the baptismal candidate.
Or, perhaps – and this is rank speculation – someone had taken to heart the supposed “cursing of the waters” in this dispensation: During the 1831 march of Zion’s Camp, W.W. Phelps claimed a vision in broad daylight where he “saw the destroyer in his most horrible power, ride upon the face of the waters.” That colorful vision was connected with Doctrine & Covenants 61:14-19, which speaks of the cursing of the earth’s waters – and an earlier curse on the earth’s land – saying that in future days (at an unspecified period) “no flesh shall be safe upon the waters” and that “the destroyer rideth upon the face thereof [i.e., the waters].” Although the scripture seems to speak only of dangers in coming to the land of Zion, and does not actually say that Satan has dominion over the world’s waters, in our lazy shorthand way, some have assumed that “Satan controls the waters.” So perhaps someone somewhere sometime thought it was a good idea to revoke Satan’s dominion over a baptismal site to make those waters safe for God’s purpose. Maybe.
Or maybe the custom arose merely from the natural human love of ritual – the flowery language of some opening prayer about dedicating lives to God through baptism might have extended that dedication to other things, which sparked someone’s imagination, which led to a new practice. Maybe. I don’t know.
What I do know is that the practice was well enough established by 1928 that a visitor to several Continental European missions noted it: “I witnessed baptismal services in three different Missions, and found them very different, except in the actual words used in baptizing the candidates. In one Mission it was the set practice to have an Elder dedicate the water for baptismal purposes.” (He did not mention the baptismal variations in other missions, recording only the dedication of the waters in one case.)
The practice bothered him enough that the traveler was still brooding over the possible consequences more than a year later. Discussing again “that the water is dedicated before baptism,” he noted that “Missions are far from headquarters … The Great Apostasy probably came in such a manner. Slight divergences among the widely scattered branches grew into major schisms. The activities of far-away members must be made to conform more and more with general Church practices.”
Let’s not think, though, that this was a practice confined to far-away missions, or suppose that it was due to inexperienced members introducing unauthorized practices in the absence of “wiser” leaders. ((And while we’re on it, I suspect that some commenter might bring up the potentially related claim that during World War II, European branches quickly fell into such supposedly apostate practices as using candles on altars or having women administer the Sacrament. Please note that despite keeping a careful watch for indications of those practices in primary documents during the years immediately following the war, when I once had access to everything I could think to explore, I found absolutely zero evidence supporting those claims. Elder Benson was told several times that such things were going on, but always – always – in the next branch up the road. Never in the branch of the one reporting such claims. Never any eyewitnesses, only rumor-mongering. I do have one slight evidence of women possibly administering the sacrament in a European mission, but a generation before the war, and not in Germany. I offer this footnote to peremptorily avoid the repetition of those claims, so that I don’t have to tell any particular commenter that he or she is perpetuating an error.)) The practice was not limited to Europe, but was in full sway in parts of the United States, where most local members, not just their missionary leaders, had grown up in Utah and had no excuse for ignorance of standard practice.
A year or two before his death, for example, James E. Talmage became aware of the innovation in one of the missions in the western United States. Recording an informal chat with a Salt Lake man who had recently visited the mission, Elder Talmage said:
A casual remark was made that a baptismal service was conducted at that place and time, and in answer to my inquiry as to the order of procedure the statement was made that before the actual ordinance of baptism a prayer of dedication was offered, consecrating the water in the font for the baptism to follow.
This is an erratic and wholly unauthorized procedure, and one that has been brought to the attention of the First Presidency and the council of the Twelve on earlier occasions. We have thought that this practice was entirely of the past. yesterday at the meeting of the council the matter was considered, and the former decision reiterated that such dedication or consecration of the water prior to baptism is out of order and should not be performed or permitted.
Writing to the president of the implicated mission, he asked, “I am wondering how extensive this practice is within your Mission; and I am sure that from the information I now give you will take steps to prevent any repetition of this unusual procedure. … Any information you may be able to give me as to the extent of the practice within your field, and as to the origin of it will be appreciated.”
(So I’m not the only one uncertain as to how the practice began!)
The response of that mission president to Elder Talmage suggests how widespread the practice actually was:
It has been the practice in this mission before baptisms are performed that a short service be held and a prayer offered. It has been my pleasure to be in attendance at some of these services. Some of our brethren in praying have dedicated the waters, others have not. However, in keeping with your recommendations a letter shall go forth immediately from my office to all our branch presidents as well as the district presidents and the instructions of the council of the Twelve in this matter will be strictly adhered to.
When I came into the mission I found that this practice was being adhered to and as I had received no instructions to the contrary and having myself been a Bishop for many years in two different stakes I found this same thing being practiced.
Last night I met with our branch presidency and council. I read your letter to them. These brethren, the most of whom have served as missionaries in various parts of the world, some of them in Bishoprics and in stake presidencies, admitted that it was the custom in their stakes, wards and missions to carry out this policy, so to give you any information as to the origin of the practice, I cannot, but you may rest assured that it shall be eliminated in this mission.
Was the president successful in eliminating the practice in that mission? I don’t know – but I can tell you that the practice was still not stamped out elsewhere. In 1938, a man wrote to Church leaders in Salt Lake to straighten out some questions about his son’s baptism, at which there had been some irregularities. Noticeably not considering the dedication of water to be one of those irregularities, this father actually relied on that practice to strengthen his claim that his son’s baptism had been acceptable.
I asked the Bishop if it would be all right and he told me if I dedicated the water and had witnesses to the baptism that it would be all right. I did the baptizing and now the question has arisen that he was not baptised. …
I contend that since I had authority from the Bishop and that the water was dedicated for the purpose of baptism that the boy was baptized.
Because Joseph Fielding Smith had been mentioned in connection with that baptism, the query was forwarded to him for response – which he gave in his usual pointed language:
There is no efficacy in dedicating water for a baptism; to dedicate water and then improperly baptize does not add to the virtue of the error. … No Bishop has authority to change the order of the ordinances which the Lord has instituted.
I cannot guess how many other times Church officers had to work to quash this unauthorized addition to the baptismal ordinance. Eventually they were successful. That line in the Handbook – “Water is not dedicated for baptisms” – is a relic of the effort it took to eliminate this creeping irregularity.
And now you know.
Great, as usual, Ardis. I can’t help wondering if Jonathan Stapley would have anything to add to this.
I’m anxiously waiting for him to discover this post, Gary.
You guys know me too well! And while I’ve kept a file on this topic, Ardis has gone far deeper than I have. This is wonderful.
So depending on the date of Talmage’s experiances, he may have elicited a formal ruling. In September 1832, the Deseret News ran this:
And while the 1936 Missionary’s Handbook doesn’t mention this, the revised 1946 edition most certainly does (among several other innovations to avoid).
I think that there are likely at least a couple of related antecedents: 1) fonts had been regularly dedicated before their use, sometimes repeatedly. 2) the Exorcism of baptismal waters is common in Christianity, and 3) Mormons like to pray for stuff.
Your September DN notice, J., is only a couple of weeks after Talmage’s exchange, so it is undoubtedly a follow-up. (I ordinarily try to obscure the secondary details that would allow a googling stranger to easily duplicate my work and claim it as his own. I do have all quoted sources, fully cited, in my records — of course.)
Its appearance in the 1946 Handbook makes me think of those letters that are occasionally read from the pulpit today, that seem to be responding to something you’ve never heard of. There must be a story behind every one of these pronouncements.
Excellent post! I can give an example of use of the baptism font. When I was a teenager in Southern California (1968 or 69), there was a mission president who sent notes to all his elders to tell them that since they were the missionaries they had control over the baptism fonts in the wardhouses and gave them permission to use them whenever they wanted; a permission that was not his to give. This mission president expected the bishops to comply. Since the fonts were usually in the Relief Society rooms, this meant the missionaries were attempting to dictate to the Relief Society when they could use their room. The bishops did not comply, and they explained to the mission president that the bishops were in charge of the whole building. The mission president rescinded this instruction. If there is more to this story, I do not know. I have no clue if this issue made it all they way to church headquarters, but I remember that it was resolved within a month.
Ah! I hadn’t thought of “during Relief Society meeting” as being a time the elders demand use of the font — certainly an “unreasonable time.” Thanks for that example.
The tension between “we should do simply what is necessary, in plainness” and “some little extras are nice” is interesting to me. Candles on the sacrament table are imagined to be apostate, but an altar/table cloth is generally provided. (There is some practicality in uncovering either the bread or the water, but I imagine that the words “this bread” and “this water” in the prayers are adequate to identify what is being blessed).
The baptism prayer must have nothing added beyond the specified words, but the confirmation prayer often goes on for quite a while after “receive the Holy Ghost.” A child does not need baptism or a religious naming ceremony to have a name, and to be recorded in the records of the church, but we do the naming and blessing anyways. None of our doctrines about the resurrection suggests that it matters where or how one’s mortal remains are disposed of, but we consecrate burial plots anyways.
Dedicating or consecrating the baptismal water seems like it at least could fit as one of those extras. I’ve seen baptisms in the Episcopal church, where the full liturgy involves the baptismal candidate (or godparents), the congregation, and also a prayer to sanctify the water (exorcism wasn’t mentioned), but I believe almost none of that is required for a baptism to be regarded as valid — they need water, and the right words at the moment of baptism. I can easily imagine an Anglican or Catholic convert to Mormonism going out as a missionary a few short months later, and thinking that dedicating the water would fit nicely with the other “extras” like hymns, speakers, or white clothing.
(In case I sound like a curmudgeon, grumbling about unnecessary frills, I do regard “extras” like blessing infants or dedicating graves as an important part of a shared religious life — saying they’re more than what’s merely necessary doesn’t mean I think they are useless.)
That was a pretty good roundup of illustrations, Mike R., and I can’t argue with any of them — or with your supposedly curmudgeonly tone (I thought it was fine). I’m not sure I could come up with convincing reasons why this is okay to add but that is not. Perhaps in most cases, there really is no doctrinal urgency beyond acquiescing to First Presidency/Quorum of the Twelve directions when they do see fit to issue directions.
I remember, at least enough to paraphrase, something Arnold Friberg once said about the difference between painting and writing. When you paint, at least in a representational way, you have to fill in a lot of details that are probably not mentioned in a written account: You have to dress your characters. You have to put hair on their heads — or not. If you paint a ship, you can’t just paint “ship” — you have to represent its construction, and size, and its setting in the water, probably none of which is spelled out in a text.
Same with ordinances: The baptist and candidate “go down into” the water, but the scripture does tell us what they should wear. Scripture does dictate the words of the prayer, but not where their hands should be in relation to each other. Obviously we have to “add to” the scriptural description just like Friberg had to “add to” scripture to decide what Lehi was wearing or what Nephi’s ship looked like. You couldn’t administer the sacrament without choosing some kind of vessel for the water, even though that isn’t specified in scripture. Ditto the color of the deacons’ shirts. But somebody has to decide, and has to decide when something has gone too far.
Now you’ve set me to trying to find patterns that probably aren’t there, and that will probably keep me awake at night!
I’m sure we had missionaries here within the last 20 years or so who wanted to use the font in our ward building late at night, just before one of them went home…
At baptism meetings on my mission, sometimes Catholics or recently converted Catholics would get water out of the font to take home and use as holy water. So the man conducting the meeting would sometimes mention that it is Priesthood authority that makes the baptism effective, not holy water.
That is also the reason that the drinking fountains were taken out of some meeting houses.
This reminds me of a story of a high school sports team in Alaska that was travelling. The coach and several team members were Mormon. I don’t know how it was arranged, but they spent the night in a Mormon meetinghouse. Some of the boys wandered around at night and found the font. They used it as a hot tub for a few hours.
The next morning when the coach found out, he told them that it was used for Mormon baptisms and now that they had been in it, they were Mormons. He had them going long enough to get them really worried about how they would tell their parents that they were Mormons now.
Another kinda, sorta, maybe story related to things getting out of hand within the last 40 years where a branch president tried something and the Brethren shut it down with a very quick phone call directly to the stake president. (Ardis, if this is a tangent you don’t want, just delete. Feelings will not be hurt).
In the South, Baptist churches hold week long revivals to “revive” their members and commit non-members to Christ. In one of our branches in my previous stake, an inventive branch president wanted to excite his “tired” membership and “be like the other nations” (in 1 Samuel). On the front lawn of the meetinghouse (a converted home) located on the main street running through this small town beside the permanent brick and iron sign of the name of the church was a banner “Revival Nightly Here, March 23-29”. A young full-time missionary assigned to that branch wrote home casually about the Revival. The father of the missionary was good friends with a member that worked in the Missionary Department who then told the GA who told his assigned member of the Twelve who told the First Presidency. The stake president got an immediate phone call at his work from the First Presidency to, under no uncertain terms, not allow that to happen EVER again. I am sure Elder Packer or Elder McConkie would have been even more animated about it.
I wonder sometimes if some of the seemingly obvious statements in the handbook — such as not charging for use of a font — have been added, not because there’s been a problem within the Church, but because the Brethren are aware that, like it or not, in an age of Wikileaks, there is now a larger audience for the handbook than just the leaders of the Church.
The recently replaced training films for temple workers largely consisted of admonitions correcting bad practices that had been introduced by temple workers over time. It was rather amusing to watch and mentally check off: seen that, heard that, done that…
Of far more interest, however, was to try to figure out what happened to prompt some of the cautions. I had rational, well thought out reasons for my mistakes. Those others must have been blithering idiots. 🙂
That’s great, David. I would not have expected a revival to be so ticklish.
(My warning had in mind only that one tangent of the oft-repeated but unsubstantiated claim about German wartime apostasy, because I would have felt duty-bound to object and didn’t want to embarrass any sincere commenter.)
I think you’re on to something, STW! The whole world’s [blithering idiots] but me and thee, and I look askance at thee!
STW — I’m reminded of what someone has said: If there’s a warning to not do something, then you know it’s been done. I’m sure that applies to worker-introduced things in the temples as well as well-intentioned leaders who misuse the baptismal font and other church properties. I know a few things that might have been in the training film you mentioned, but this isn’t the place for that conversation! 🙂 I’m just thankful that we have leaders who recognize something that needs to be corrected and does so.
The main thing I remember from President Benson’s post-war mission regarding changed practices involved priesthood group meetings that combined different Melchizedek Priesthood quorums. I thought that was amusing, because at that time I found out about it, I was in a branch MP group just like those he had condemned.
N.B. this was from his book about the mission, so I am pretty sure it did happen.
The way I heard the story (perhaps from a BYU Religion professor, but I’m not sure anymore), is that the rumor had been going around that European members during the war had put candles on the sacrament table. When asked about it, the members said yes, we did have candles on the sacrament table. And on the pulpit, and in the aisles, and all around the chapel. We had no electricity at the time.
Two ‘personal’ stories about baptismal fonts. My father, who was baptized in 1918 was baptized in what would be the equivalent of a swimming pool (and this was in Utah), and while on my mission in the British Mission in the 1960’s, there was a convert who wanted to be baptized in the Thames River. We contacted the Mission President, and he OKed it, and so she was baptized in the Thames in February. BURRRR!! (I didn’t do the baptizing 🙂 )