Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/07/19/two-people-drowned-in-river-ba.html
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Sounds like that episode of “Boardwalk Empire.”
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Without some more information about the failure mode, this comes off sounding like gossip.
First reaction:" I would have thought that after the first man drowned, the pastor would have known to use less force holding down his second victim"
Oh, wait, there was a fast-moving current involved…
“Maybe swimming lessons might be offered as part of the church’s religious preperation for babtism?”
Unless the story specifies how they came to be dead, we have no way of guessing why the police were involved. It might as well have been an overenthusiastic exorcism.
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But while being baptized is the perfect time to die, with a guarantee of going to heaven! Why does the church want to stop people from getting to heaven?
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Jesus let them down, again.
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Guess it was God’s plan for them then!
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It’s OK, they’re with god now.
(unless the baptisms weren’t finished yet when they drowned. Oops.)
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That’s when that old sea god, Neptune, jumps in.
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I feel like some of the attendant risks are highlighted in that in some cases the baptizers themselves have drowned during baptisms, rather than just the baptized.
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“They would also baptize one person at a time, while others are kept at a safe distance…”
This is how I’ve always seen it done. It seems obvious.
Well, the Church of the Drowned God would certainly never let that happen!
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Maybe life savers for those soul savers.
This is almost as good as my annual “Xtian jumps into zoo enclosure to convert the wild predators” news story. I’ll have to keep an eye out for more of these.
Maybe they should have stuck closer to the shore…
I had a river baptism from my daddy. Then The Toadies wrote a song about it. And yes, I am a backslider.
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Their test worked! Those two were obviously witches.
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Uh oh, this comes to mind.
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Who was doing the baptisms? These gals?
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The act of baptism is a symbolic act, you are immersed under the water and raised up again the transition between boundaries an analogue to your commitment to the faith as you leave your old life and sins behind and are born again.
There is no reason to hold a person underwater in fact the pastor and people assisting are supposed to help you up again.
While short on detail, I imagine the issue is they are in a river which can be quite strong, cause you to fall, and start carrying you down river.
