[ProChristo]

Wow, that is a toughie, DA. I'm a Christian, and I can see why your mom feels the way she does, but that doesn't change the fact that you and your husband are the parents now. I agree with the other posters here that you need to set up some boundaries to protect all of you from hurt feelings.

Regarding baptism, perhaps you could use some of your mother's own ammo? I was thinking in particular of a scripture passage that makes it clear that baptism is not required for admittance into heaven. I have a few well meaning God-fearing family members who hold to that belief, and quite frankly, the Bible itself disproves it. Luke 23:39-40 relates the history of one of the theives crucified with Christ. As the three men are being executed, one thief realizes Christ is who He says He is, the son of God, and repents. Christ answeres "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise." Obviously there was no time for a hurried baptism, yet his salvation was genuine and confirmed by the very lips of God.

BTW, I in no way mean to diminish the importance of baptism in the Christian walk. Christ himself was baptised, it's obviously improtant. In protestant circles where infants are baptised, it is a symbol of the covenant God has with believing families (relatable to circumcision in the old testament) and the confirmation is the time when the child would make a confession of faith on their own and become members in full standing of the church. If your family is Catholic, that's another thing. The Catholic church teaches that baptism is regenerative in its work and is required to remove original sin, and thus required for admittance into heaven.

I don't know if this will be helpful to you or not, but an arguement from Scripture always has more weight in my mind, so I thought the same might be true of your mom. I hope you can all come to a decision you can all be happy with.