Policy Expertise and Baptism at Age Eight

We baptize children at the age of eight because we consider it “the age of accountability,” when children are capable of simple, basic moral perceptions, of distinguishing in simple ways between good and evil.  They usually know, by eight, that stealing and lying are wrong, that kindness is better than cruelty, and so forth.

We don’t view baptism as the outward symbol of an inward judgment regarding the validity of chiasmus as evidence for the Book of Mormon, or the credibility of the testimony of Oliver Cowdery, or whether Brigham Young bears responsibility for the massacre at Mountain Meadows.

It is, as we see it, symbolic of a decision to try to follow Jesus and to live the life that he lived and advocated.  We believe that, obviously on a child’s level, children can and do try to live such a life.

This is nothing remotely like asking a child’s view of carbon emissions standards or federal tax policy.

And, in practical fact — I’m a veteran of several Church disciplinary councils, and have seen this at first hand — we hold people who have made specific temple covenants (necessarily at a later age and with greater maturity) to a much stricter standard than we do those who were merely baptized at eight.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2019/10/policy-expertise-and-baptism-at-age-eight.html