Upon reading To Baptize or Not to Baptize: A Practical Guide for Clergy, more than one person has told me, “This is an excellent work of casuistry.” Not exactly the words to warm the heart of a Lutheran theologian. But they meant it as the sincerest of compliments.

And they’re right—in a sense. “Casuistry” is mostly a dirty word inside religious circles and out. It connotes the very worst of all legal and bureaucratic systems: reductionistic, narrow-minded, and inhuman. It binds the innocent in twisty cords of corruption and lets the wicked off the hook on a technicality.

But in fact “casuistry” shares a common Latin etymological root with “case,” as in “case study,” a time-honored strategy for moral discernment. At its best, casuistry is simply case studies, examining the wide and intriguing array of situations that we human beings get ourselves into, and thinking through the possible responses and options that arise as a result.

In that sense, To Baptize or Not to Baptize is chock full of casuistry, as it narrates forty-nine different baptismal situations calling for pastoral discernment. There may well be more…