Our living waters are struggling to breathe
River baptisms are becoming a casualty of polluted waters.
I step cautiously off the vein of roots as I feel the sensation of sinking an inch into the silt of the Eno River. I pull my foot free and the mud stirs, the clear water mushrooming with billows of dirt and sand. I’m scrutinizing this spot for baptisms, testing the ease of entry and the depth of water.
This particular medium for baptisms—a river—is recommended to the church in the Didache. This early Christian treatise offers a blunt and detailed description of how to do church things properly—and the community that produced the text seems to have been quite scrupulous. They preferred cold baptism water to warm and called for fasting, if possible, before the ritual. They also desired water moving by way of a stream or river. Flowing water reminds those being baptized of Jesus’ pronouncement to a Samaritan woman at a well that he had “living water” in his possession.
The Didache writers provide scant reasoning for their choices. But the Bible is brimming with reasons to put our bodies in the river for baptism. “You make springs gush forth in the valleys,” writes the psalmist. “They flow between the hills,
