Crosspolitic guest Jason Farley engaged in some good-old-fashioned, needlessly-provoking Baptist-bashing on a recent episode, claiming that Baptists and other credobaptists are the cause of the transgender crisis. To achieve this end, he explains that the notion of choosing when to be baptized encourages people to have an individualistic mindset that translates to them choosing when to be a boy or girl. He says this is not something pedobaptists and Presbyterians have to contend with, as they baptize their children when they are young and give them no choice in the matter, engendering that mindset and absolving them from any responsibility for the increase in its social acceptance.
When asked whether the church in its current state can deal with the problems of transgenderism, Farley was adamant they can’t.
“This is just the modern individualistic Christianity that says, ‘Let kids grow up a little bit, and then they’ll choose their identity.‘ This is just that in a materialistic setting, this is our understanding of children taken to its extreme and a materialist setting.
…Most of the American church says to their kids; ‘you get to choose your identity once you hit a particular age of accountability’, and we end up debating about the age of accountability, of when they can come forward and get baptized, rather than saying to them ‘Hey, let me tell you who you are. Let me tell you who God says you are. Let me tell you who Jesus says you are. You don’t get to pick your identity, you can act against it, but you don’t get to choose it.’“
He continues:
“Think of the definition that you’ve heard of baptism most of your life, right? ‘It’s an outward sign of an inward truth. It’s a way that I stand up and say to the world, I’m a Christian now’, right?
That is a new modernist understanding of our selfhood that we’re coming into the world and the world said, ‘hey, I can run with that definition of selfhood’ and they’ve been running down this road a long ways. And now, because of the paganism getting to the point where you need a phallic symbol to latch onto, you know, for your identity, right? This is what we run into. But the reality is, this is just American Baptist theology secularized.“
These assertions didn’t sit well with David Shannon, AKA Chocolate Knox, who earlier protested, “I believe male female, I don’t believe in transhumanism. I’m not trans in any way. I’m discipling my kids in the way- I don’t see what the problem is here,” and its pursued further in the aftershow.
Here, Gabriel Rench tried to do a bit of damage control over the comments, but Farley wasn’t having any of it, doubling down:
Rench: “Jason, I was wanting to ask you on the show but didn’t get the chance. You know, let’s say I’m ‘BaptistRench’ and you just said what you said…you came out and said that my view of waiting till my child is ready to confess faith in our Lord and then baptize them, is related to the identity crisis found in transgenderism?”
Farley: “Yeah, and I didn’t say ‘related to,’ I said, is the CAUSE OF.”
Rench: “Connect that.. you know, someone whose got good intentions, raising his family, loving Jesus, you know, all that stuff. And, and then you throw that bomb in their lap, and you’re like, ‘you’re the cause of the transgendered problem.‘”
Farley: “Yeah, well, their pastor is, but yeah.”
Elaborating, he says that unlike Baptists, when Presbyterians baptize their kids, they’re “putting the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit on the child through baptism, because God has claimed them as his own.” For this reason, “God is the one…who gets to define who our kids are. They don’t get to define themselves.” Knox chimes in, saying what we’re all thinking:
“I turn on the show, and I’m trying to figure out how in the world we’re going to fix the transgender problem. And you guys bark at me because I’m a Baptist who believes the Bible, because I don’t want to baptize my kids because they haven’t made a profession of faith, and you’re trying to throw the whole thing on me. Forget all y’all. Because ain’t just because I decided to baptize my kids, don’t mean transgenderism is going to then fall.
…You guys have made this huge jump. And all we’re trying to do is stop people from mutilating themselves, and you’re gonna say, ‘oh, because I don’t baptize my babies.’ That just doesn’t correlate whatsoever.”
Longshore submits: “there is a covenant or relationship. Like, it’s not totally up to you about your citizenship and the nation. It’s not totally up to you about your family membership. You were just born into your family, you were born into your state, and you’re born into the church, as a Christian, that is a covenantal kind of thing,” and says that a failure to understand this “extra layer” is what Baptists do.
Referencing Pilgrims Progress, Longshore offers that there is a latent Gnosticism in the notion of “this world is not my home. I’m just passing through” and that if we don’t understand that “God is actually bringing forth His kingdom right here” then “you’re gonna get swept up in this in this mess that we’re talking.” To which Farley says:
“Yeah, and you’re gonna lose justification by faith alone, too. And you don’t want to do that.”
Knox pushes back and Farley concludes:
…Because if justification is dependent on my choice, rather than on the promises of God, it ceases to be about faith and becomes about works. But if it’s God coming to us and dropping his name, putting his name on to us, and all we do is trust that God has been the one who did everything, like little children, like little babies receiving, then we’re justified by faith and not by our decision or our works. Infant baptism is justification by faith in sacramental form.“
