Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Oct/87

Contributor - Daniel Meeter

Title - "The Old Baptism Bowl"

Topic - Baptism

Our mother congregation in Manhattan began its worship in a mill-loft. After some time it moved to the Church-in-the-Fort. When New Amsterdam was taken by the English in 1664, the congregation had no choice but to share its building with the established Episcopal Church of England, Dutch services being followed by English Prayerbook services. From that time on, the Dutch congregation was anxious about its status in the English colony. Would it be treated as a dissenting sect? Would they all have to become Anglican? In order to secure the future of the congregation under an alien and not always sympathetic government, the congregation worked hard to secure a charter. It did not come easy, and they had to wait anxiously for thirty-two years.

In 1962, while still waiting, the Dutch built a church for their own use on Garden Street. It was a risky act of faith. They had no guarantee they would be able to keep it. So even though it was a plain building, not overlarge, it must have been a Noah's Ark to them, a symbol of their preservation through the English flood. E.T. Corwin describes the building, and his description makes me think Old Testament thoughts, images of David's Zion, Solomon's Temple, but most of all, the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, where all the people brought their jewelry to be used as decorations. From the fourth edition of Corwin's Manual:

The building erected was of brick, with stone trimmings, and the usual heavy, square Dutch tower projecting from the front. Over the entrance was the usual Consistory room, and a belfry above. It had three windows on either side, long and somewhat narrow, with small panes, in which were burned the Arms of the principal supporters on the church, and there were also escutcheons of the leading families upon the walls. The silver-tone bell of the old church in the fort was transferred to the belfry of the new church, together with the pulpit and other furniture. In 1694 the people brought their silver coins and ornaments as offerings, and these were sent to Amsterdam and hammered into a massive baptismal bowl by the skilled artisans of that city. This bowl, with its quaint inscription, now belongs to the South Church, on the corner of 38th Street and Madison Avenue. (Manual of the Reformed Church, 1902, p. 79)

Now I'll admit that those escutcheons and Arms in the windows remind us much more of modem fund-raising efforts than of the Bible, but who knows what deals Solomon had to strike with donors? Did Hiram of Tyre get a memorial plaque on one of his more visible cedars?

What really interests me is that "massive baptismal bowl". Does anybody know what has happened to that bowl? (South Church has long been closed, after moving from site to site uptown.) Howard Hageman believes it may have gone to a New York Museum. That bowl is a precious piece of God's goodness to us. It is a witness to the gospel, and if it still exists it still testifies to "God's gospel promise" in baptism (Heidelberg Catechism Q & A 66).

Maybe you've never heard of such a thing as a baptismal bowl. We're used to baptismal fonts, free-standing pieces of furniture, rather heavy and substantial, carved wood or stone, with a basin hollowed out on top, or a stainless-steel mixing-bowl hidden inside.

Dutch Reformed churches have used both fonts and bowls for baptism. (What the French, Germans, English, and Hungarians have done I don't know.) I don't know of any Reformed Church in America congregation that uses a bowl today, except, as in the North Church in Newark, where a formerly free-sitting bowl has been permanently incorporated into a later font. I do remember that Oak Hill Presbyterian Church of Grand Rapids used a bowl, placed always at one end of the Lord's Table, which itself was connected right to the pulpit, stretched lengthwise out into the congregation seated around it. Other examples of baptismal bowls can be seen in the book Christ and Architecture by Bruggink and Droppers.

I think that I was baptized from a bowl and not a font. When I was born my parents were members of the Third Christian Reformed Church of Paterson. The congregation's building has just burned down, and the group was meeting for worship at Public School Number Twelve. I was baptized in a Public School by a Christian Reformed pastor, irony of ironies. I used to tell people that I was baptized under a water fountain, but my parents wouldn't back up my story.

Dutch church architecture has used Baptismal bowls in different ways. Sometimes the bowl was attached to the side of the large pulpit, sticking out on an arm. Sometimes the bowl was cantilevered out in similar fashion from the doophek, the "Baptismal-fence", a kind of railing that surrounds the pulpit area. Sometimes the bowl was simply carried in and out as needed, and either held by an elder or placed on a special table.

I wonder about that bowl at Garden Street. Was it carried in and out or cantilevered out? Or was it installed on a floorstand to end up just like a font?

Corwin also gives the text of that "quaint inscription" engraved on the bowl. (I hope it was displayed in such a way that all could read it.) I give the inscription here in full, because I am so taken by it. My translation follows.

Op't blots water stelt geen hoop, 'Twas beter nooyt geboren; Maar ziet iets meerder in de Doop (Zoo gaet men noyt verloren): Hoc Christus met syn dierbaer Bloedt, My reynigt van myn Zonden, En door syn Geest my leven doet, En wast myn Vuyle Wonden.

On the bare water fix no hope, 'T were better never born; But see something greater in Baptism (Thus you're never lost): This Christ with His precious blood, Cleans me of my sins, And by His Spirit makes me live, And washes my foul wounds.

Oh, I know it's not a great poem. The second line flows poorly from the first, the fourth poorly from the third. But it is a very good poem for its purpose, it draws you in to itself and into baptism. Its message is clear and forceful, its images are strong and engaging, and it moves us nicely from the second person observer to the first person confessor, from 66 you" to "I". This last is the same thing the Heidelberg Catechism does. And that's the best thing about this little rhyme, it too is full of the gospel promise of baptism. It so wonderfully and simply expresses the doctrines of Baptism as taught in the Catechism and in the Belgic Confession (especially the latter, check it out, article 34).

I don't know about Baptismal bowls today. We wash with running water in shower stalls, not out of bowls. We drink out of styrofoam cups. The natural cleansing symbol of the bowl is lost on us, and we don't equate pure water with life. Hospital nurses still wash patients out of stainless-steel bowls, but rarely with water, and usually with some creepy red disinfectant that you'd never want to drink or splash in. The image is not "pure, clean, life-giving, or evening drowning," but "sanitized and medicated". That's not the gospel promise.

Whether we use bowls or fonts, we could all do a better job of letting our church furniture testify to the gospel. Bring the kids up to the font for the next children's sermon. Let them splash their fingers in the water. The last time I did this, I couldn't get the kids to pull their hands out, they were so enthralled. When we repeat the Words of Assurance, why not let the people hear the water splashing noisily in the basin, "deep resounding unto deep," so that our people may see beyond the water, and hear what's "greater than bare water" in baptism, Jesus Christ Himself.

(Reprinted with permission)

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