Baptism: Research two different understandings between Christian groups of the ritual of baptism; include each one's justification of their practice. Identify grounds for possibility of each coming to respect the other's practice. (Main differences occur on proper age when the ritual should be performed and what baptism actually accomplishes.)
             For Roman Catholics, who are practitioners of infant baptism, to be baptized into the church is to accept the church's first sacrament, and is the first step for the entry of the believer into the Christian community: "Holy Baptism holds the first place among the sacraments, because it is the door of the spiritual life; for by it we are made members of Christ and incorporated with the Church. And since through the first man death entered into all, unless we be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, we can not enter into the kingdom of Heaven, as Truth Himself has told us," (Fanning 1907). Although it is not the only condition for entry into the kingdom of Christ, baptism is the first condition of entry for Roman Catholics. However, baptism alone is not enough because "infants, not being able to make an act of faith, are not to be reckoned among the faithful after their baptism, and therefore when they come to the age of discretion they are to be re-baptized; or it is better to omit their baptism entirely than to baptize them as believing on the sole faith of the Church, when they themselves can not make a proper act of faith" (Fanning, 1907). In other words, faith must be a conscious act, through the acceptance of other Church sacraments.
             However, modern Baptists and other evangelical Pentecostals deny the doctrine of infant baptism at all, and instead stress the need for adult baptism. Adult baptism symbolizes the believer's conscious decision to enter the Church. "John Smyth, perhaps the first Baptist, viewed that baptism of the Spirit is require...