Back in the Southern Baptist Convention's boom years, from the 1960s to 2010, the experts charting baptism statistics divided "children" into three groups - starting with those under age 6.
Behind the scenes, there were discussions about when children reached the age of accountability and could make mature professions of faith in Jesus Christ, leading to believer's baptism by full immersion in water. As with many other doctrinal issues, this was settled by local church leaders. The same was true when adults asked to be rebaptized, for various reasons.
"At the end of the day, when someone says they've decided to give their life to Christ, the local church is going to let them symbolize that by being baptized," noted Scott McConnell, executive director
of Lifeway Research. "That's what Baptists do. That's who we are."
Obviously, Baptists pay close attention to baptism statistics, along with trends on church attendance and membership. In a new report, Lifeway dug into Southern Baptist Convention Annual Church Profile numbers for 2025 and reported that baptisms rose for the fifth consecutive year.
Baptist leaders quickly noted another current trend: adults 30 and older represented 33% of all baptisms. That was higher than the baptism of those 12 to 17 (25%), children before age 12 (22%) and young adults between 18 to 29 (20%). In the past, it was common for the baptism of minors to be two-thirds of the total, noted McConnell, reached by telephone.
The "seismic development" in these numbers is the consistently rising number of conversions among Americans over age 18, noted the Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
"In an increasingly secular age, how do we account for this many adults professing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and then obeying and testifying of Christ in the waters of baptism? … Something big and real and important looms in these numbers," he wrote in a First Things essay.
"Much to the confusion of the statisticians and cynics, adults are hearing the Gospel, responding in faith, going under the waters of baptism, and aiming for Christian maturity and faithfulness. Within the statistics are other important factors, such as the remarkable number of men, especially younger men, who are embracing Christianity - solid high-octane Christianity."
In many ways, the SBC baptism statistics among adults, young and old, resemble headline-grabbing reports about surging numbers of Americans converting to Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, especially young families and, often, single men. For example, researchers with the Catholic prayer app Hallow collected statistics from 140 U.S. dioceses and found, on average, a 38% increase in converts so far in 2026, over the rising numbers seen in 2025.
Meanwhile, realists need to deal with other SBC trends, said Sam Rainer, leader of the Church Answers website. Membership numbers have declined for nearly two decades. The current 12.3 million total is down to levels from the early 1970s. The number of SBC-affiliated congregations declined, again. Church attendance rose, again, but remains below 2009 levels.
"So what are we looking at? Is this a remarkable recovery? Is it a dead cat bounce? Or is it something else?" he wrote in an article on Church Answers. "A dead cat bounce is a temporary rebound after a steep decline. The phrase comes from financial markets. … It is a brief upward move within a larger negative trend."
However, baptism numbers cannot be ignored, especially in a tradition that stresses evangelism. Rainer noted: "Southern Baptists are now baptizing one person for every 47 members. … Thirty-one of the 41 state conventions reported more baptisms in 2025 than in 2024. That is not a one-year statistical blip." But, he added, "I do not think we can call this a recovery. Not yet."
It is interesting to note, said McConnell, that the adult-baptism trend was first seen outside the Bible Belt, in states that researchers would consider more secular and, thus, less likely territory for conversions.
"Right now, it's an important personal decision for young adults to even decide to start going to church, let alone be baptized. … That's a truly personal decision to make," he said. It's also important that "the young people who are getting baptized are in church more often. That's another sign they've have made an important life decision."
Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Southern Baptists seeing more adults seeking baptism | Terry Mattingly
