Baptism: How young is too young?

Something just clicked for Charity Roberson, and she knew it was time for her to be baptized. Roberson, now the pastor at Sharon Baptist Church in Smithfield, North Carolina, was nine at the time.

Some of the memories are vivid. “I clearly remember leaving church one Sunday and looking up at my mom and saying, ‘When do I get to go down front?’” Other memories are more hazy. “I think later that afternoon I had a long conversation with my dad,” she said. She recalls a meeting with her pastor, but not much of the conversation.

Fuzzy memories around baptism form a core argument against allowing child conversions in many churches—but not for Roberson, who baptized her five-year-old nephew, Caleb, in 2011.