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More and more people getting 'de-baptized'
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Debaptism Certificate from the National Secular Society website
Unhappy with the fact that you were baptized as a baby? Turns out you aren't alone. Since the National Secular Society (NSS) started offering people a "certificate of debaptism", more than 100,000 people have downloaded one.
Terry Sanderson, the president of the NSS, told Time magazine that the group began the online "debaptism" program five years ago to protest the practice of parents baptizing infants too young to understand what was happening. The website suggests visitors "liberate yourself from the Original Mumbo-Jumbo that liberated you from the Original Sin you never had." They can then print out a certificate allowing you to "reject baptism's creeds and other such superstitions."
Lately, any time the Pope or Catholic Church makes controversial statement or makes a gaffe, traffic to the website spikes. When the Pope announced that condoms would actually increase the number of HIV/AIDs victims in Africa, the number of people getting "debaptism" certificates jumped dramatically.
"Churches have become so reactionary, so politically active that people actually want to make a protest against them now," Sanderson told Time. "They're not just indifferent anymore. They're actively hostile."
As the site increases in popularity, requests for certificates relating to other religions from as far away as Australia, Romania, and Saudi Arabia have been going up. "We've had Jewish people write in asking, 'Can I have a certificate to undo my bar mitzvah?'" says Sanderson. They have also gotten requests to reverse another significant religious ritual: circumcision. For that one, they have no answer.
Read the entire article at Time magazine, click here.
Visit the National Secular Society's page on Debaptism here.
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