A few weeks ago I told you about a Baptist preacher in Georgia named Anonymous McBride. He got his name in a strange way. His mother was trying to honor a poet whose work she liked. When Anonymous grew up and became a Baptist preacher, he had a specialty. It had to do with baptism. Because my subject today is baptism, let me tell you the story.

Anonymous was very skillful at making Methodists and Presbyterians uneasy about their baptism. He persuaded lots of them that unless they went altogether underneath the water, they were lost souls. Every Sunday afternoon down at the Chattahoochie River, he re-baptized ten or fifteen folks.

Everything was going well until he met a Methodist lady named Raynelle Roberts. He persuaded her that baptism by sprinkling was deficient. He scheduled her for un…