Living Under Water (Kevin J. Adams) -- A Review
LIVING UNDER WATER: Baptism as a Way of Life. By Kevin J. Adams. Foreword by Cornelius Plantinga. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2022.
I was
baptized the day I was born by nurses at the Catholic hospital where I was
born. Because I had a difficult birth the nurses wanted to make sure I was
eternally covered in case things didn't work out for me. My parents later took
me to their Episcopal Church in the months following my birth and again had me
baptized (sprinkled). That should have been enough but during my teen years, I
decided to get immersed in a creek by my youth pastor because I wasn’t sure
that my earlier baptisms (and my confirmation in the Episcopal Church) were
efficacious. Besides my own baptisms, as a pastor, I've baptized a number of
people, including my son. Being part of an immersionist tradition that baptizes
on confession of faith, all the baptisms I've performed have been in that mode.
Oh, and I was fired from a teaching position because my view of the essential
nature of baptism came into question. In other words, I've had some experience
with the waters of baptism.
It is with
this background that I took up the review copy sent to me by the publisher of Kevin
Adams' book Living Under Water: Baptism as a Way of Life. Adams is the
senior pastor of Granite Springs Church in greater Sacramento, California, and a
minister within the Christian Reformed Church. Therefore, he serves in a
tradition that practices infant baptism. While this is true, in his ministry he
sprinkles and immerses both the young (read infant) and the old (read adults).
Whether it’s immersion or sprinkling Adams demonstrates a strong commitment to
baptism as a marker of being all in when it comes to being a Christian. He
writes this book hoping that it will help Christians answer the question, why
baptism? The focus here is not on the mode of baptism (immersion or sprinkling)
or even timing (adult or infant), but rather on meaning and purpose. The book
emerged out of conversations about the meaning of baptism undertaken within the
church he serves.
In LivingUnder Water, Adams mixes stories about the persons he's baptized with
explorations of biblical and historical texts. It is the stories that most
shape his theology and the book. He notes that while the baptismal experiences
of members of his congregation were diverse, by discussing them they found
unity among themselves. It is a unity, he tells us, that bound the participants
in the conversation not only to themselves but to the global church, together with
the saints and believers of the past, including those whose stories are told in
the Bible. He writes that "when we approach baptism through story, we
find, to our great relief and delight, that our truest identity isn't dependent
on our mode of baptism." That is because "it is a gift we receive"
(p. 7). While Adams describes this as being a book about baptism, it is, more
specifically, a book that speaks to the question of identity that flows out of
baptism. It is a question that many Christians, including myself, have asked.
Now that I’ve been baptized, what does that mean?
Adams
divides the book into four parts. Part One focuses on "Baptismal
Identity." Part Two looks at “Baptismal Liturgy for Life.” Part Three
discusses what he calls "Baptismal Abuse." This section might be the
most important section because the four chapters in the section look at ways in
which baptism has been misused to oppress and abuse. Finally, Part Four speaks
of "Baptismal Hope." In the end, Adams invites us to develop a
“Baptismal Imagination.”
In his
opening chapter, Adams introduces us to the conversation about baptismal
identity by telling several baptismal stories, including the author's own
baptism experience at age ten days, along with the stories of a man baptized in
a waterfall by a topless woman, an experience that his friend ultimately
decided was not true baptism, so he was baptized a second time in a more
traditional setting. Nevertheless, it was that rather odd experience that
started the man on his Christian journey. So, we never know how the journey
will begin. The important piece, when it comes to the script of baptism, is
claiming the generative power of baptism.
He
moves on in a chapter titled "Kiddie-Pool Piety" by taking note of
baptismal experiences that are high on enthusiasm but perhaps low on meaning.
In this regard, he tells the story of an event he observed at a Christian
college where he was teaching. It was filled with applause and shouts, but not
much emphasis on meaning. In reflecting on this story, he suggests that some
baptismal experiences might be rather light in their spiritual efficacy. In
other words, baptism is just something we do without thinking about the
implications, theological or otherwise. Adams concludes Part One with a chapter
titled "Drowning in a Coffin." In this chapter, he connects baptism
with suffering. That is, to be baptized in the name of Jesus does not prevent
us from experiencing suffering. Rather, since Jesus suffered, we may also
expect to suffer if we’re baptized with his baptism.
In Part
Two, Adams takes a look at the liturgical elements of baptism. He begins in
chapter 4 with a chapter on Baptism as exorcism. He opens this chapter with the
story of Delmar’s baptism in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou (one of my
favorite baptism scenes). With that story in mind, Adams reminds us that in the
ancient church and many current liturgies, part of the process of baptism includes
the renunciation of evil. He writes that “to be baptized is to clearly and
repeatedly turn our backs against evil and injustice and to denounce them
wherever we see them” (p. 80). As Delmar
realized, to be baptized involves a behavior change. In chapter five, Adams speaks
of baptism as ordination. Here he begins with Jesus' own baptism as the
starting point of his ministry and then applies that ordination to our
baptisms. In baptism, we are anointed with a missional identity that expresses
divine grace to the world. Finally, in
chapter 6 he speaks of baptismal clothes. That is, to be baptized is to be
clothed with Christ. He draws here from the historic practice in the ancient
church of giving new baptismal clothing after being baptized as a marker of
one’s new identity in Christ.
Having
addressed our baptismal identity through discussions of exorcism, ordination,
and clothing, we move to Part Three. This might be the most important section
of the book since Adams addresses ways in which baptism has been used in
abusive ways. There is a chapter titled "Identity Politics," which
focuses on using baptism as an ethnic/national divider. As Adams notes,
"Baptism reminds us that we—with our cultural experience and country of
origin—are deeply included in this new community called the church." (p.
121). At a time when Christian nationalism is on the rise, not only in the
United States but around the world, this is a good reminder that to be in
Christ transcends culture, nationality, and ethnicity. When religion is used in
nationalistic ways, as we are seeing, it can be abusive and dangerous. Chapter
8 explores forced baptisms. He speaks to the practice of forcing people to be
baptized against their will. Unfortunately, history is replete with examples of
people being forced to be baptized, often at the point of the sword, and there
continue to be examples of such baptisms. Chapter 9 is titled “Widow Waters,”
and it focuses on baptism as spectacle or as a magic formula. He points to the practice
of mass baptisms at Elevation Church where baptism is more show than
meaning-making. Finally, Adams offers us
a chapter on race and baptism. Here he tells the tragic and horrific story of
how baptism was used abusively in support of slavery and other forms of racist
efforts, such as apartheid. In other words, he speaks to how baptism has been
used to reinforce white supremacy.
The
final two chapters that make up Part Four offer us as the reader a word of
hope. Adams speaks in chapter 11 about Healing Waters. He does so by bringing
his own battle with Parkinson's into the conversation. Baptism might not bring
a cure to the body, but it can be healing in other ways. If chapter 11 speaks
of healing the body, chapter twelve, the final chapter, speaks of the One
Baptism. In other words, it speaks to another kind of healing, the healing of
the Body of Christ through the unity of the Global Church. He speaks to the
fact that not everyone accepts the baptisms of others as being valid.
Therefore, baptism can be a marker of division. Nevertheless, baptism serves as
an entry point into the global church. While Baptism often divides, it should
be a sacrament/ordinance that unites us as members of the Body of Christ.
Living
Under Water is not a doctrinal treatise, though it does speak to theology. Rather,
it is a gathering of stories under different headings that invite us to explore
and deepen our understanding of baptism. My theology of baptism might differ at
points from his, but I appreciate what Kevin Adams does here in bringing
different dimensions of baptism together in ways we rarely see. By engaging
this book, perhaps we can gain a better sense of what baptism means so that we
can live into its promise. We might even develop, as the title of the Epilogue
suggests, a baptismal imagination. Therefore, we can imagine through baptism something
that is powerful for the good of all.
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