To me this is an extremely serious subject due to how I personally have seen it abused. And yes, it has been abused here in the USA.
There is at least one denomination which teaches that in order to be saved one must be baptized by immersion. If a person accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour and truly believes in his heart that God literally raised him from the dead, but he dies prior to getting 'dunked', he is considered as a lost soul bound for hell according to their teaching.
This is a clear violation of Scripture. We are saved because we accept what God has already done for us, not because of what we ourselves have had a chance to do. Ritualism, of which baptism is one of the parts, is not salvation; it is ritualism.
What the layperson usually doesn't realize when they are accepting the teaching that they must be baptized in a certain manner in order to have the possibility (and that word is important) of being saved sometime in the future is that their mindset is being 'programmed'. They permit themselves to be baptized, not out of a desire to show their acceptance of God's salvation, but rather out of a genuine fear of being condemned by a Zeus-like God unless they perform this ritual.
What follows is not the assurance that they are now saved, but instead is a neverending list of further things that they must do, and agendas forwarded by the church heirarchy that they must accept. Their 'church life' is not one of gratitude, love, and desire to do God's will in return for what he has done for them. It is instead an atmosphere of perpetual dread, with the instilled mindset that they must accept and cooperate with all that the church heirarchy tells them. Only through their following this path do they have a chance of winning God's approval, and without it they are doomed.
Do you see the pattern that is developing? In these churches salvation is a perpetual struggle. If they obey their church heirarchy unconditionally they may have a chance of being saved, but it is far from a certainty. To them God is portrayed as a God of wrath, and the only way to appease him is to do as they're told without question or comment. They have become, for all intents and purposes, slaves.