Baptism of fire

Posted by Smokey Stover on January 24, 2009 at 22:29

In Reply to: Baptism of fire posted by Gary Martin on January 24, 2009 at 10:21:

: : Hello!
: : Just discovered this site, and I think it's wonderful.

: : Just a bit of a quibble though. It seems to me that 'Baptism of fire' probably has its origins in the Gospels, doesn't it? Somewhere in John 1, 'He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire...'?

: : Also, I would like to suggest a 'Phrases of Biblical Origin' to complement those of Shakespearian and Nautical category.

: : name:

: You are correct, that phrase does appear in the Bible. I've updated the site's page on that phrase to reflect that.

: The link below goes to our list of:

:The King James translation quoted in the thesaurus uses the preposition "with." So I guess one may say either baptism of fire or baptism by fire.

The U.S. War Department made a propaganda movie to encourage the folks at home called "Baptism by Fire." In my town there was no movie theater, and many people thought that the church elders considered movies sinful. I don't know if that was true or not, but this War Department movie was shown in any case. It was shone in the I.O.O.F. hall, and was something of a shocker. The language of the soldiers, and especially the non-coms, was what the townsfolk surely considered foul. No one said a word, however, neither during nor after the showing. I can't say whether it boosted enlistments or not, since the draft pretty much covered that need. There were gold stars in many windows by the end of the war, and many more blue stars.

There still is no movie house in town, but I imagine that the language of that film, then considered blue, lost its power to shock.
SS