{"id":393,"date":"2007-12-09T14:54:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-09T14:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2007\/12\/youre-all-wet.html"},"modified":"2007-12-09T14:54:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-09T14:54:00","slug":"youre-all-wet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/12\/youre-all-wet.html","title":{"rendered":"You’re ALL Wet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
It was a very tough fall this fall in the old South. The chief cause of difficulties was the drought which struck us all. While it could be said that it was not a drought of Biblical proportions, you know its pretty severe when the Mayor of Atlanta starts talking about a water pipeline from various points west, including Montana (!) to solve the crisis. In the midst of this dilemma, baptismal practices seem to have been revisited. One person joked:<\/p>\n

“It’s so dry in Georgia that the Baptists are starting to baptize by
sprinkling, the Methodists are using wet-wipes, the Presbyterians are giving out
rain-checks, and the Episcopalians, Catholics, and Lutherans are praying
for the wine to turn back into water.”
Now THAT’s Dry.<\/p>\n

This reminds me of the instructions in that first century Christian guidebook the Didache, which suggests that one should use running water, or if its too dry for that, still water and pouring in the baptismal rite. <\/p>\n

On more as to why baptismal practices vary so much– see my ‘Troubled Waters: Rethinking the Theology of Baptism”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a very tough fall this fall in the old South. The chief cause of difficulties was the drought which struck us all. While it could be said that it was not a drought of Biblical proportions, you know its pretty severe when the Mayor of Atlanta starts talking about a water pipeline from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nYou're ALL Wet - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/12\/youre-all-wet.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"You're ALL Wet - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It was a very tough fall this fall in the old South. The chief cause of difficulties was the drought which struck us all. 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}