The number of British athiests and agnostics wishing to publicly declare their baptisms invalid are reportedly on the rise. More than 100,000 people are said to have downloaded “certificates of debaptism” from the internet to renounce their Christian faith.
The initiative was launched by the National Secular Society which campaigns for the separation of church and state in Britain.
Spokesman Stephen Evans told Sky News the certificates have no legal or official meaning and are “just for fun”.
“People feel that they were forcibly baptised as children, and feel the need to separate themselves from organised religion,” he said.
The society believes the trend is also a result of people becoming more anti-religious than unreligious. Even though the numbers of people choosing to get ‘debaptised’ remains relatively low, the Catholic Church has acknowledged it is an important issue.
Sky News (Thanks Neda)
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*applause*
Excellent…
LOL !
I once watched people being baptized in the church of baptists … you know, the ones that have an indoor pool. I really could not see it so well so I was stretching to see, not really knowing that people were not supposed to watch but prey … (I was a guest, child and just curious). I did not get the idea of baptizing at all I have to say …
Geeezzzz .. if I had been them I’d not ask for debaptism … you never know … never throw something away that is not bothering you, it might become usefull … (some doorman in a high place asking you … were you baptized ?) ….
Well, to me I wouldn’t even bother. The holy water looks like it does something but… it doesn’t. It’s just water!
If you are a baptised atheist, don’t bother with it. It means nothing.
Ah-ha! I was literally talking about this a few days ago, I hate that I was Christened and there’s a paper record somewhere confirming a connection between my name and Christianity.
I mean, I’m ‘on den’ and everything because I wear my Dawkins ‘A’ badge but still feel like I’ve got church-gypsy-germs. Will have to scour Christening photos for evidence that I had my ickle baby fingers crossed when I was manhandled into the font, so maybe then it won’t count.
This got me thinking, I had a discussion recently with my sister sort of half heartedly saying that we should ask the Catholic Church to take us off of their list of the faithful as we are both atheists, then a more serious discussion after the publication of the Ryan report about how neither of us wanted to be in any way associated with Catholicism any more,
Went off and did a bit of research, for anyone who is interested look up ‘defectio ab Ecclesia catholica actu formali’.”
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/intrptxt/documents/rc_pc_intrptxt_doc_20060313_actus-formalis_en.html
how do you de-baptize someone? wipe them with a towel?
I wonder how that will work in predominantly Catholic nations in Asia and the Americas…
I always wonder if baptism means that lapsed christians who are now atheist still appear on statistics and registers as officially christian. I was baptised before I had a choice in the matter.
I sometimes wonder if I should go out of my way to get myself removed from said list, but whether or not it matters in the grand scheme of things is a moot point.
(The name I got baptised under isn’t the name I actually use anyhow!)
Can’t see the point. To me it seems like giving the church a weight and importance that it really shouldn’t have in your life if you’re an atheist. It’s kind of like voting for UKIP because you hate Labour.
For every atheist out there that think that’s not important… IT IS. Here in italy most of all. Infact is a hard sign to give the church that we are fed up with them and we don’t want our names to be associated with their values, dogmas and all the rest that comes with faith. Of course for us it has no “metaphysical” meaning, it has just (or I must say most importantly) a “political” meaning.
Just think for a sec if all the atheist and humanist etc would cancel their name from their registry… what kind of messages would pass to the clergy? and the politicians?
@Flapjack. I suspect the statistics come from those innumerable ethnicity , etc forms that you have to fill in when you use any kind of public service. Just make sure that you either refuse to answer or classify yourself as ‘no religion’ like I do for myself and my children.
@ KatM… Actually I think they use the Baptisimal register, so as long as you were baptised and don’t ask to be removed from the register then you are counted as one of the faithful.
@Siobhan. You are probably right that the churches keep their stats this way and there is probably no way of getting removed from their list without a fight. I’m sure though that the stats that government bodies use probably come from the census taken every 10 years in the UK, other countries may be different.
@ KatM: have a look at comment 6 – you can formally defect if you want to (if I am reading the Vatican website correctly)