I'm new here and just read a number of postings to get myself up to speed. Seemed like a good number of them had to do with infant baptism.

I have always been on the Baptist side of the issue. This is mostly due to the fruit I've seen from the practice of infant baptism. Adults I know who were baptized as infants tend to fall into two camps. They either come away from it with a view I believe is called baptismal regeneration, that the ritual itself imparted something to them, physically or spiritually, which made them Christians. Or, they come to think of baptism by itself as the whole definition of Christianity, and their parent's action on their behalf as an infant made them one. The sheer luck of being born to Christian parents made them Christians. The thinking seems to be similar to the error the Jews fell into, thinking that being a genetic descendant of Abraham made them right with God.

However I would prefer to have a view that's actually based on scripture, not just on what I observe around me.

So this is my question:

In articles I have read on the subject, both tonight and in the past several years, I've seen this argument made: Baptism is a sign of the New Covenant, much like circumcision was a sign of the Old Covenant, so we should baptize our children while they're young, similar to how circumcision was performed at 8 days of age. If this is the reasoning, then why baptize baby girls? I'm assuming they were not circumsized under the old covenant. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Dee