ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with various aspects of baptism in terms of the difference between a sociological and a theological approach. It discusses the certain of these issues: in particular the politics and economics of baptism. A sociologist begins by identifying baptism as a rite of passage which accomplishes a transition from ‘the world’ to membership in the Christian body. The rite employs a symbolism of death through water and the emergence of a ‘new creature’ into life and light to signify initiation and incorporation. The sociologist seeks to place baptism as one variant of initiation alongside others which receive and incorporate for rather different purposes, such as communist youth ceremonies. One particularly interesting similarity would be in the exaction of cost as a precondition of being received. In certain rituals there may be excoriation, subjection and humiliation, or a painful process of marking, or a test of capacity or endurance.
