Huckabee worries EPA could say Baptists use 'too much water' for baptisms
Fox News host Mike Huckabee, who is an ordained Southern Baptist Minister, recently warned that President Barack Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could force his religion to begin using less water to baptize believers.
During a Tuesday evening interview with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, Huckabee worried that if president could mandate that Catholic institutions' health insurance cover birth control for women then what would be next?
"It's becoming increasingly clear to a lot of believers that this administration is not just indifferent to people of faith, it's hostile," the Fox News host explained. "And that's not something I say lightly. I say that with a great burden in my heart to even have uttered the words. But how else can you look at it?"
"If the government can tell the Catholic Church what it must do, how it must practice, what it must do to accommodate the government mandate then the next time the government may say that Baptists can't -- maybe the Baptist won't be able to immerse because the EPA will determine that's using too much water," he added.
The 1689 Baptist Catechism states that "[b]aptism is rightly administered by immersion, or dipping the whole body of the person in water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."
This means that most Baptist churches will include a baptistry pool in the sanctuary area. Large baptistries can hold over 1,000 gallons of water.
Watch this video from the Family Research Council via Right Wing Watch, broadcast June 19, 2012.
