Dedication vs Baptism: What’s the Difference, and Why Do Churches Choose One?

A baby dedication is a service where parents thank God for their child and promise to raise the child in the faith, and the church blesses the child. Infant baptism is a sacrament in which, its churches believe, God gives his grace and the child is received into the Church. Churches that baptize only believers dedicate babies instead.

Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian churches baptize babies. Baptist churches, and Pentecostal churches such as the Assemblies of God, dedicate them and baptize them later, when they believe for themselves. Some call the service a presentation. The Baptist Union of Great Britain names it “Infant Presentation”, or “the blessing of children and the dedication of parents.”

Whichever service a family chooses, they are asking for what Mark saw Jesus give. When parents brought their children to him, he “took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them” (Mark 10:16). Both kinds of church want that for a child. Where they part is over the water: what baptism is, and when it should be given. Each side explains its practice from the New Testament, and each is given here in its own words.

Dedication and infant baptism side by side

Each column is drawn from the churches’ own words: for dedication, the Baptist Union of Great Britain’s guide to children in the church; for baptism, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church in America, the Lutheran Augsburg Confession, the Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian churches and the United Methodist Church’s statement on baptism.

What happens at a baby dedication?

A dedication ceremony usually takes place in a regular service of worship, and the Baptist Union of Great Britain describes the common pattern. The child is welcomed and introduced to the congregation by name, and the minister explains that this is a service of thanksgiving, dedication and blessing. Passages are read, often ending with the one where Jesus blesses the children. Someone gives thanks for the child in prayer. Then the parents are asked to dedicate themselves to bringing the child up in a loving way and teaching the Christian faith, and the congregation stands to show it will help them, through prayer and nurture.

The minister blesses the child by name, often with the priestly blessing from Numbers: “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace” (Numbers 6:24-26). The prayers that follow ask that the child will, in time, “come to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and confess him as such in the waters of baptism.” A small baby is often carried round the congregation, and the family may be given a Bible.

The word dedication can mislead. The child is presented and blessed, but the people who dedicate themselves are the parents, which is why the Baptist Union calls it a blessing of children and a dedication of parents. It is plain about what the service cannot do: “Infant presentation does not claim to make the child a Christian.” That, it says, “can only happen as the Spirit of God awakens faith and the response of repentance and faith is given.” A dedication is a beginning. It waits for an answer.

Why do Baptist and Pentecostal churches dedicate babies?

Because they believe baptism follows faith, and a baby cannot yet believe. The Southern Baptist Convention says it in one line in its Baptist Faith and Message: “Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 says that those who “do actually profess repentance towards God, faith in, and obedience to, our Lord Jesus Christ, are the only proper subjects of this ordinance.” The Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal fellowship, teaches the same: “All who repent and believe on Christ as Savior and Lord are to be baptized.”

These churches still want to welcome a baby, give thanks and bless the child, and they go back to that scene in Mark 10. Jesus took the children in his arms and blessed them, and the Baptist Union draws its lesson from what he did not do: “when the children were brought on this occasion Jesus did not baptise them but blessed them, and this was enough.” In the new covenant, it adds, “we do not become members of God’s people through birth but through new birth.”

Baptists are open about why they do not baptize infants. They “are not persuaded that infant baptism is truly based upon the teaching of the New Testament,” the Baptist Union says, and infant baptism “makes baptism into something that it is done to us rather than something we choose to do.”

Why do other churches baptize babies?

Because they believe baptism is God’s gift, and a child can receive it before he can ask for it. The Catholic Catechism teaches that “Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission.” So it does not want families to wait: “the Church and the parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer Baptism shortly after birth.”

In the Orthodox Church a baby is immersed three times and, like any adult, receives chrismation and Holy Communion straight away. Before the baptism the godparent proclaims the Creed, because, as the Orthodox Church in America puts it, “the godparent speaks on behalf of the child.”

The Reformation churches that kept infant baptism give their own reasons. The Lutheran Augsburg Confession teaches that “children are to be baptized who, being offered to God through Baptism are received into God’s grace.” The Westminster Confession says: “Not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one, or both, believing parents, are to be baptized.” Presbyterians point to Peter’s words at Pentecost: “For the promise is unto you, and to your children” (Acts 2:39).

Methodists once let the two services run together, and the United Methodist Church says so. Before its 1964 baptismal service, many Methodists had come to regard baptism “as a dedication rather than as a sacrament.” Its worship commission drew the line in one sentence: “in a dedication we make a gift of a life to God for God to accept, while in a sacrament God offers the gift of God’s unfailing grace for us to accept.” Parents still make promises at an infant baptism, the church says, but “Neither parents nor infants are the chief actors; baptism is an act of God in and through the church.”

Is baby dedication in the Bible?

Not as a service in a church. But the churches that hold one draw on three stories of parents bringing a child to God, and the first is Hannah’s. She had prayed for a son, and when Samuel was weaned she brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh and said: “For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of him: Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord” (1 Samuel 1:27-28). Hannah’s story goes on to tell how Samuel grew up serving there.

The second begins in the Law of Moses, which set every firstborn son apart for God: “Sanctify unto me all the firstborn, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast: it is mine” (Exodus 13:2). Every firstborn son was to be redeemed, bought back from God (Exodus 13:13). So forty days after Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph “brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord” (Luke 2:22). The third is Mark 10, where Jesus told his disciples, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). Suffer them, that is, let them come.

Churches that baptize infants claim the presentation in the Temple too. An Orthodox newborn is “churched” alongside baptism, and the Orthodox Church in America explains that “The rite of churching imitates the offering of male children to the temple according to the law of the Old Testament, particularly the offering of Christ on the fortieth day after his birth.” Both kinds of church read Luke 2 as a pattern for bringing a baby to God.

Can a child be dedicated and later baptized?

Yes. In churches that dedicate babies, that is the path they intend. The prayers at a Baptist presentation look ahead to the day the child will confess Christ “in the waters of baptism,” and that day may come in childhood or in adult life, whenever the person professes faith. The dedication is the parents’ promise. The baptism is the child’s own answer.

Churches that baptize infants hold no separate dedication, and they baptize once. “The sacrament of baptism is but once to be administered unto any person,” says the Westminster Confession. Here the two practices rub against each other. A person baptized as a baby who later joins a Southern Baptist church will usually be asked to be baptized by immersion, which the former church would count as a second baptism and the Baptists as the first. Many churches in the Baptist Union of Great Britain instead accept infant baptism followed by confirmation, “provided there is every sign of personal faith in Christ and discipleship.”

Some infant-baptizing churches do offer a service of thanks for families not ready for baptism. The Church of England has a Thanksgiving for the Gift of a Child, and tells parents: “It’s possible to have this service instead of a christening if you decide that now isn’t the right time to have your child baptized. Or, you could even have the Thanksgiving service as well as a christening.” The United Methodist Church has a similar order of thanksgiving, but it insists that this “is in no way equivalent to or a substitute for baptism. Neither is it an act of infant dedication.”

Is a christening the same as a dedication?

No. A christening is a child’s baptism under an older English name, so a christening uses water and a dedication does not. The Church of England, which uses both words, says it simply: “There is no difference between a christening service and a baptism service.” Baptism vs christening explains where the word comes from and which churches use it.

When did infant baptism and dedication begin?

Infant baptism is attested by about the year 200. “There is explicit testimony to this practice from the second century on,” says the Catholic Catechism. Early in the third century Tertullian of Carthage argued for waiting: “the delay of baptism is preferable; principally, however, in the case of little children,” he wrote, and “let them become Christians when they have become able to know Christ.” He would not have needed to argue it if no church was baptizing little children. In about 253 Cyprian of Carthage and his fellow bishops in council, sixty-six in all, answered a bishop who wanted to wait until the eighth day after birth, as with circumcision. They would allow no delay at all: “we all rather judge that the mercy and grace of God is not to be refused to any one born of man.” In 412 Augustine of Hippo, arguing against the Pelagians, taught that infants are baptized for the forgiveness of original sin.

In the same centuries some Christian parents waited. Gregory of Nazianzus, born about 329, was baptized at around thirty. His mother, like Hannah, had given him to God early, and he wrote that it was a great undertaking on her part “to promise me to God before my birth, with no fear of the future, and to dedicate me immediately after I was born.” The scholar Andrew Messmer, writing in the Journal of European Baptist Studies in 2022, argues from texts like this that the early Church knew a form of infant dedication followed by instruction and later baptism, though he warns readers not to confuse it with modern practice. The dedication services Baptist churches hold today are younger: a 1969 study traces child dedication services among British Baptists to the seventeenth century.

What if your family belongs to both kinds of church?

Sometimes a grandparent is Catholic or Anglican and hopes for a baptism, while the parents belong to a Baptist or Pentecostal church that will dedicate the baby. The two services share more than it may seem. In both, the family thanks God for a child, asks the church for help and promises to raise the child to know Christ. They differ over what baptism is and when it should be given, and each church holds its view from Scripture and in good conscience. Parents who dedicate a child are not holding back anything they believe the child needs. Parents who baptize a child are not rushing a decision they believe belongs to God.

The choice belongs to the parents, and their minister can help them make it. The Methodist Church in Britain tells parents who are unsure to “talk it through with your minister.” Baptist churches shape a presentation to a family’s situation and take care that “no-one is asked to make promises that they are unable or unwilling to fulfil.” If you want to work through what baptism means before you decide, Baptism and First Steps is a free course of six short lessons on baptism and the Christian life that follows it.

Relatives from the other church can come to either service, stand with the family and pray for the child. Whichever it is, they will be doing what those parents did on the road in Mark 10: bringing a little one to Jesus and asking him to bless it.

Related reading

• Baptism vs Christening: A Christening Is a Child’s Baptism
• 19 Bible Verses About Baptism, and Where Christians Read Them Differently
• Baptist vs Catholic Beliefs
• Protestant vs Baptist: Are Baptists Protestant?
• Prayers for a Baptism: For the Child, Parents, Godparents and the Service