One of the largest, and most diverse group of Christians, Baptists take their name from the practice of adult baptism. Unlike most Christians, who baptize infants or young children into the fellowship of the community of Christians (known as “infant baptism, or pedobaptism”), baptists insist that individual believers freely and publicly commit themselves to their christian faith in a ceremony of adult baptism, often known as “believers baptism or credobaptism”).
Often these baptisms are full immersions, in which the believer is lowered completely beneath the surface of the water, emerging in the eyes of the Church as “born again” in Christ. This is both an outwardly, and inwardly sign of repentance of sin and confession of faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
Baptist churches emerged in the early 17th century within various protestant denominations, and, while today there are still no central Baptist authority, two prominent confederations are the Baptist World Alli