Writer recounts baptism at Trinity Episcopal Church in Anoka

In a first-person column for Episcopal Minnesota, a writer recounts being baptized at Trinity Episcopal Church in Anoka last Easter after growing up in a household that had nothing to do with organized religion. The essay, published on the Episcopal Church in Minnesota’s site, argues that a return to faith did not overturn the author’s life story but instead revealed a divine presence he says was there all along.

The author writes that his parents carried negative experiences with organized religion from their own youths and deliberately kept him out of church, so he never expected to be any different from them.

November 1, 2026 Service (Trinity Episcopal Church, Anoka) (Father Dave McEachron presiding)

A Non-Religious Upbringing and a Fiancée’s Return

The author describes building a life he considered complete on his own terms. Through family, friends, and travel, he developed what he calls a strong sense of values, a desire for justice, and an appreciation of reason, and he long believed he had synthesized those elements into a satisfactory life story. His fiancée changed the trajectory. She had grown up in a Christian household but had not been active in any church for many years, and one day she expressed a desire to return. The author says he agreed to tag along simply to support her.

The couple tried several local congregations before arriving at Trinity Episcopal Church in Anoka. He writes that he immediately felt something in the atmosphere he had not experienced before, though he initially chalked it up to basic human warmth and welcome. What followed, he says, was deeper: the beauty of the worship, personal connections with Fathers Bob and Dave, and the love of the congregation worked their way into his soul.

From Tag-Along to Baptism

Last Easter, the author writes, he was baptized and eagerly began his new Christian life. Looking back, he sees the experience not as a break with his past but as a reframing of it. In his love for others, his wonder at creation, and his intellectual endeavors, he now believes the Holy Spirit was at work all along. He compares his conversion to a late entry in a long-running series of novels that casts new light on earlier installments: rather than a crisis of identity, he sees divine love and stewardship just beneath the surface of a life he once thought complete.

“I’ll never be able to repay my fiancé for bringing me to Christ, even if it wasn’t her conscious intention. Nobody else could have brought me into those doors, and for that I am forever grateful.”

The column closes on that note of gratitude, crediting his fiancée — not the clergy or the liturgy alone — with opening the door he now says he could not have found on his own. The essay offers no argument against secular life; instead it presents faith as the missing lens that made sense of values he had held for years without a religious framework.