Drawing of a Mormon baptism ceremony, circa the 1850s. Public domain.
My son was supposed to be baptized a few months ago. His grandparents had tickets to come to Chicago. He was ready to invite his best friend from school and some other friends who, while not Mormon, have come to all of my kids’ baptisms to love and support them.
And then a global pandemic hit. My parents had to cancel their flight. The church shut down its meetings and its buildings. We worked to recover.
These days my son goes back and forth on when he wants to be baptized. He’d really like to wait until his grandparents can share the day with him but, because of age and health conditions, his grandparents can’t really travel here until there’s a vaccine and they’re able to get the vaccine. While we’re hoping for early 2021, who knows if it will happen before another birthday rolls around.
Which leads me to a question: what is the church going to do about these pandemic-delayed baptisms?
What do I mean? Well, current church policy is that the bishop or a bishopric member interviews 8-year-olds for baptism. But if a child will be 9 or older at their baptism date, they’re taught and interviewed by the full-time missionaries.
I have no idea why the church has implemented this policy. It’s arbitrary, but maybe the thought is that if a child doesn’t get baptized at 8 that child’s family isn’t active?
Whatever the reasoning, it’s disrupted by Covid. We don’t know the shape of the (hopefully) last stage of the pandemic, but it could easily disrupt life for a year or more. It could easily prevent children—especially children who live far from their grandparents and other family—from being baptized in a timely manner.
And honestly, requiring kids to have the missionary discussions and be interviewed by a district or zone leader is tremendously inconvenient and disruptive. Could we do it? Sure. But I’m not sure it adds any value—missionaries have no training in teaching kids and many parents in my situation are perfectly capable of preparing their children for baptism.
So where does that leave us? I don’t know. But it’s something church leaders need to be aware of and need to think through. Because the pandemic has legitimately disrupted parts of our church life, including parts that are probably unanticipated.