Sir, —
I read with great interest the article ‘In Defence of Baptism’ by The Very Reverend Stephen Farrell in the February 2026 edition of the Gazette. I was baptised on 1st April 1945. As I was only six months old, I have no personal recollection of the event, but to this day I am still experiencing the positive effects of it.
My parents had no church connection but thought the right thing to do was to have their baby christened. The nearest church to where we were then living was St John’s Methodist Church, Potters Bar. I am deeply grateful to The Reverend Hector Stafford, the then minister, for his willingness to baptise the baby of parents who had no connection with his congregation and whom he must certainly have known he would never see again. But through the gift of that sacrament, I was brought into the covenant of God’s love and given the gift of the Holy Spirit. I was equipped to respond in faith when I heard the Gospel preached. On the day I was born, I was given a little Book of Common Prayer and a King James Bible by my grandmother who inscribed each of them with the words ‘with Nan’s blessing’. I have treasured those volumes all my life. Nan, to whom I was very close, wasn’t a churchgoer, but a woman of deep faith and love of the Lord. As a child, I used to love to be with Nan when she was saying her prayers.
By the time I was two years old we had moved to Sunninghill, a village near Windsor where my father had acquired a draper’s shop. Just before my fifth birthday in 1949, my parents sent me to primary school. Because of its reputation, my parents chose the local [Roman] Catholic school, in those days entirely run by nuns, the Marist Sisters. Most of the teaching nuns were young Irish women who had just qualified as primary school teachers. There were only two lay teachers, Miss Blount and Miss Ryan. I didn’t like Miss Blount, but I liked Miss Ryan and I adored the nuns. The nuns made God and God’s love very real to me.
The [Roman] Catholic children had catechism classes but we Protestants, who were the majority, had Bible lessons, given by the nuns. Both as individuals and as a community the nuns communicated a deep personal love of the Lord Jesus and inspired me to desire a personal relationship with Jesus. The Holy Spirit given to me in baptism was being fanned into a flame by my hearing the Gospel preached and seeing it witnessed.
Between my father’s shop and the Marist Convent was Broom Lodge, the home of the local Anglican curate. When I was about six, a new Anglican curate was appointed — The Reverend Guy Lodge, with his wife Dorothy, and their two teenage sons Ian and Hilary. I made friends with the Lodge family. I spent hours talking to Mrs Lodge in her kitchen whilst she was preparing meals for the family. I greatly admired Mr Lodge and knew that I wanted to be a clergyman when I grew up.
So the grace of my baptism was fanned into a flame of personal faith through the Christian witness of both the Roman Catholic nuns and the Anglican clergy family, which is why no doubt all my life I’ve felt myself to belong to more than one denomination. I remained friends with the nuns and the Lodges all my life until, one by one they died. I was ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church but was allowed to invite an Anglican priest friend to join in the laying on of hands.
Since coming to Northern Ireland in 1989, I have also enjoyed deep fellowship with the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches. I would see myself baptised into the Body of Christ and feel at home wherever the Body of Christ is made manifest in a faith community. So, far from seeing baptism as a restriction on my human rights, I see baptism as the greatest gift in my life, indeed the door to all that has meant most to me in my life. I have a framed photocopy of my baptismal entry in the records of St John’s Methodist Church, Potters Bar, on my living room wall. A few years ago, accompanied by one of my closest friends, I went back to Potters Bar to worship with the Methodist congregation and complete my baptism by receiving the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
When in parish ministry, I never refused baptism, even though in most cases I knew I would never see the family again. Thanks be to God for the sacrament of baptism, as we never know the fullness of life to which it may lead!
Yours, etc., —
The Reverend Paul Symonds
(Belfast)
