It appears that much of what Sager wrote to Heiliger was in response to a Methodist pamphlet Heiliger had sent as a way of explaining and defending her beliefs and practices.[1] It is impossible to know which pamphlet Heiliger had sent, but it certainly taught the same things found in the 1944 edition of Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Church: "We hold that all children, by virtue of the unconditional benefits of the atonement, are members of the Kingdom of God, and therefore graciously entitled to Baptism."[2] The same manual begins its discussion of the administration of the sacrament by saying, "Let every adult person, and the parents of every child to be baptized, to have the choice of sprinkling, pouring, or immersion."[3]
Notes
[1] "Your little pamphlet is good in so far as it goes," wrote Sager, "but your Methodist friends always stay short of baptism." Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945.
[2] Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Church (New York: Methodist Publishing House, 1944), 40. See also Frank S. Mead, Handbook of Denominations in the United States (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951), 131-32.
[3] Ibid., 448.
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