Been Debaptized?

July 13, 2009 By Guest Contributor 11 Comments

If any of you atheists have been “debaptized” at a ceremony or conference, please let me know. It’s for a reporter.

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Filed Under: General 11 Comments
  • wintremute

    I don’t quite get debaptism. Since I don’t believe that the baptism actually did anything, why would a debaptism do anything? Better to just have a “yay I came out as an atheist” party if you want to make it somewhat official.

  • http://www.juanformoso.com.ar Juan Manuel

    @wintremute, it affects the churches statistics… I’d love for them to see a drop in the “debaptism graph analysis” :)

  • Fizzy

    Well, I haven’t been debaptized, but when I was baptized, as an infant, it was into a church that neither side of my family was affiliated. Satisfied the remaining “faithful” in the family and got my parents off the hook for the rest of my upbringing. I don’t even know what church I’d have to notify to get my name cleared.

  • georgie

    I heard the catholic church says that if you simply say…I deny the father, son and holy ghost then your baptism is void. Don’t know what that means really since the baptism doesn’t really mean anything to begin with.

  • Delphine

    I don’t get it either. I’m baptized by both a Protestant church and a Catholic church, and I also sort of kind of am a part of the Buddhists.

    … considering I don’t believe in any of it, quite frankly, I don’t really care if people want to baptize me, as long as I don’t have to provide any effort and/or time. If I happened to be there when my friends are there, or if I happened to be there because my mom decided church = cheap childcare, then so be it. Just baptize me and shut up about god.

    I never bothered to “debaptize” and don’t think I ever will.

    Fizzy has a point. I never actually bothered to remember which churches/temples baptized me. I think it’s some Catholic church in Ohio (I remember there were nuns and I thought it was old looking), and some Protestant church in Taipei.

  • Daniele

    Once again I try to explain what debaptism’s about.

    It’s not about erasing a sacrament, that cannot be done and we don’t care about that, it’a about stating publicly that you have nothing to do with a particular church.

    I only know about catholicism in Italy so I’ll talk about that: here in Italy the church used to claim the 98% of the population was catholic. Since the introduction of debaptism and the beginning of the analysis of the data (evidently made up) in the reports presented by the church, that percentage continuosly dropped.

    This reflects in the tax money the State passes to the church (last year there has been the first drop since 1984, year of introduction of the law that gives money to churches).

    I know in the USA it works differently, but saying out loud that you are no longer affiliated with any church causes them to lose their power.

  • Gaga

    what Daniele said (another spaghetti-eater, here)

    wrt the post: does getting wasted among friends upon receipt of the written certificate count as a ceremony?

  • Jeff

    Even though I’m a lifelong atheist, I was going to a Baptist church with my wife for a while for sake of family harmony (and I was a bit curious to learn about fundamentalism). I even went through a baptism ceremony. After a couple of years, I stopped going and my wife also started to loose interest. With the bad economy, the church collections were down and the church sent everyone an email asking for a commitment prediction for their next year’s tithing for budgetary planning. I took this as an opportunity to not just “fade away” but formally tell them that we had theological differences and we would seek our spiritual fulfillment elsewhere. The pastor asked for a meeting with me and I invited him over to my house and we had a nice discussion about religion. I told him I didn’t believe in the supernatural aspects of the bible including heaven, hell, and the divinity of Jesus. He admitted that many in the congregation were probably too focused on the belief aspect of Christianity and not enough on good works. Anyway, for me, this meeting was kind-of like my de-baptism.

  • tduvally

    There is a site that does debaptisms for you. http://debaptized.com. They even create a certificate for you.

  • http://. Marsha in TN

    For a debaptism, does that mean I jump out of the water, instead of jumping into the water? I do that everyday getting out of my pool. The whole thing is silly, my only baptism was performed when I was young and ignorant. Now that I’m older and smarter, I’m not going to waste my time on some meaningless ritual.

  • Philosos

    ^ **Sigh***
    Anything creates a website these days.

    As an atheist:

    Why waste anytime going through a process to do away with something that you have come to realize doesn’t make sense.

    Debaptisms are for people who are leaving one religion and heading off into another direction towards a new religion.

    As an atheist or agnostic, to participate in a debaptism “legitimizes” the original hocus pocus of baptism.