Is There Anybody, OUT THERE…

That’s a line from a Pink Floyd song off the album, The Wall, in case you didn’t catch on to my attempt to emphasize how the song on the album stresses ‘out there’.

This is not a bait or a taunt or a vailed attempt to get under anyone’s skin. I have a true and genuine request for my paedo brothers and sisters ‘out there’. My recent discussions concerning household baptisms in the NT, and the resulting remarks by some paedobaptists have caused me to want to know something. So here is my question:

Are there any paedo churches out there who practice the household baptisms as they see them in the NT?

The reason I ask that question is because I have heard time and again how the household baptisms in the NT were the result of just the head of the household believing, and then the whole household getting baptized. My paedo friends seem to use this defense quite a bit to support their practice of baptizing the infants, toddlers, and young children of believing heads of households. But, my interest is in those other members of the household who may not believe, such as the ones who apparently were present and baptized in the NT accounts of household baptisms, but who we don’t hear much about today concerning their baptism in paedo churches.

One commenter on this site who is a peado-baptist said this:

We do not force an adult to be baptized. Adults are baptized upon profession of faith.

To which I asked the following:

Why? That is not what happens in the examples you cite in the NT regarding household baptisms, where you say that only the head of the household believed but the whole household was baptized.

Is not the NT example that of the WHOLE household being baptized? Were the jailer’s children baptized, but his wife was not? Were Lydia’s infant children baptized, but her teenage children not? Were Crispus’ children baptized, but his mother was not?

So, my question is one of pure curiosity. Are there any peadobaptist churches out there who practice what they preach concerning who believed and who was baptized in the household baptisms in the NT? Are there any out there who will actually baptize the WHOLE household when the head of that household believes? And, if not, why the change? Why are you not practicing the same mode of baptism that you believe was being practiced in the NT (the mode on which you base a large portion of your defense for paedobaptism)?

The reason I am asking about this is because I see a lot of what is being said concerning the NT household baptisms being used to defend the practice of baptizing unregenerate children. But, does that not ignore a rather large portion of the households in the NT that were also baptized? And does that position not also assume that there were children in the households, but not other unbelieving adults? And if there were other adults in the households who were baptized but did not believe, then why do paedobaptist churches today not practice the same thing they claim was happening in the NT? Or, is it the paedobaptist’s position that, in those NT households, ALL of the adults believed, and so that is why peadobaptist churches today wait for a profession of faith from adults who already belong to a household of a believer before baptizing them?

Just some thoughts running through my head as I try to understand the paedobaptist position and how it lines up with the examples they cite in the NT.