Bertha and Her Baptism

Bertha and Her Baptism is a religious work by Nehemiah Adams (1806-1878), the American Congregationalist minister who served as pastor of the Essex Street Church in Boston for over forty years from 1834 until his death. Adams was a substantial figure in mid-nineteenth century New England Congregationalist religious life and produced numerous books on religious, devotional, and social subjects.

The book addresses the practice and theology of infant baptism in the Congregational and broader Reformed Protestant tradition. The proper subjects and meaning of baptism had been a continuing subject of debate among American Protestants throughout the nineteenth century, with the Baptist denominations rejecting infant baptism in favor of believer’s baptism and the Congregational, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, and Lutheran traditions maintaining the older practice of baptizing infants of believing parents.

Adams’s book defends the Congregational position on infant baptism through the device of presenting it in the context of a particular family’s experience with the baptism of their daughter Bertha.