Mormon Leaders Warn Followers To Stop Controversial Baptisms

Mormons around the world are getting this warning Sunday: Stop posthumous baptisms of "unauthorized groups, such as celebrities and Jewish Holocaust victims."

"Our preeminent obligation is to seek out and identify our own ancestors," says a letter to be read in every Mormon congregation. "Those whose names are submitted for proxy [baptisms] should be related to the submitter."

Mormons who continue to embarrass the faith by submitting the names of celebrities and Holocaust victims for the proxy baptism rite will lose access to the Mormon genealogical records, the letter warns. "Other corrective action may also be taken," it says.

The letter is signed by church President Thomas Monson and his two "counselors" in the Mormon First Presidency, the top leadership of the faith.

The warning follows an avalanche of criticism about the Mormon practice of baptizing deceased souls into the faith. In recent weeks, an excommunicated Mormon who continues to do genealogical research in church baptism records has found the names of prominent Jews and Holocaust victims, including Anne Frank and Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter captured and killed by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002.

"We welcome this as an important step," says Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a Holocaust survivor.

"Church members should understand why proxy baptisms are so offensive to the Jewish people," Foxman adds, citing "near annihilation during the Holocaust simply because they were Jewish" and "forced conversions throughout history."

Jewish leaders first raised concerns about the practice and the inclusion of Holocaust victims in 1992. Several meetings with Mormon leaders in the two decades since have resulted in promises to remove the names of Holocaust victims from Mormon baptism rolls and to screen baptism lists for those who died in concentration camps.

But some Mormons continued to place the names on baptism lists and conduct proxy baptisms in which the name of the deceased is read aloud while a living proxy is immersed in water.

The controversial practice has even touched the presidential campaign of Republican Mitt Romney, a faithful Mormon. Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel called on Romney to denounce inappropriate baptisms after discovering Wiesel family members had been posthumously baptized.

Romney's campaign referred questions about Wiesel's statement to the Mormon Church.

Mormon policy, as the letter restates, is to confine the baptisms to ancestors, but as recently as 2009, one of the highest-ranking leaders of the church indicated otherwise.

Quentin Cook is one of the faith's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the group at the top of church leadership. During a tour of a new Mormon Temple in Draper, Utah, Cook described the posthumous baptism practice and belief.

"We concentrate first of all on our ancestors and then for the people in the world at large," Cook told NPR.

In recent weeks, Mormon officials said they had punished at least two followers who had violated Church policy by baptizing prominent Jews who were not among their ancestors. The members involved lost access to the baptism system and a church spokesman said more serious sanctions are possible.

Proxy baptism is a fundamental tenet of the Mormon faith and followers are encouraged to participate. Millions of Mormons have gathered and placed billions of names into church genealogical records. Volunteers travel to Mormon Temples to conduct the baptism ceremony.

Mormons believe the rite offers deceased souls the opportunity for eternal salvation, but Foxman says the Mormon Church should "reconsider all the implications of continuing the practice of posthumous baptism, as it has re-evaluated other of its traditions."

The quickest way to get the LDS church to back off is to have your lawyer contact them./I>
Kinda like the veiled LAWYER THREAT at the bottom of this Press Relase??

Media Letter

26 June 2008 — Salt Lake City (http://newsroom.lds.org/additional-resource/media-letter)

*The following is a letter from Elder Lance B. Wickman, General Counsel of the Church to publishers of major newspapers, TV stations and magazines. It was sent out on Tuesday, June 24, 2008.

Recent events have focused the media spotlight on a polygamous sect near San Angelo, Texas, calling itself the “Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” As you probably know, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has absolutely no affiliation with this polygamous sect. Decades ago, the founders of that sect rejected the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were excommunicated, and then started their own religion. To the best of our knowledge, no one at the Texas compound has ever been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Unfortunately, however, some of the media coverage of the recent events in Texas has caused members of the public to confuse the doctrines and members of that group and our church. We have received numerous inquiries from confused members of the public who, by listening to less than careful media reports, have come to a grave misunderstanding about our respective doctrines and faith. Based on these media reports many have erroneously concluded that there is some affiliation between the two – or even worse, that they are one and the same.
Over the years, in a careful effort to distinguish itself, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has gone to significant lengths to protect its rights in the name of the church and related matters. Specifically, we have obtained registrations for the name “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” “Mormon,” “Book of Mormon” and related trade and service marks from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and corresponding agencies in a significant number of foreign countries.
We are confident that you are committed to avoiding misleading statements that cause unwarranted confusion and that may disparage or infringe the intellectual property rights discussed above. Accordingly, we respectfully request the following:

As reflected in the AP Style Guide, we ask that you and your organization refrain from referring to members of that polygamous sect as “fundamentalist Mormons” or “fundamentalist” members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
We ask that, when reporting about this Texas-based polygamous sect or any other polygamous group, you avoid either explicitly or implicitly any inference that these groups are affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
On those occasions when it may be necessary in your reporting to refer to the historical practice of plural marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that you make very clear that the Church does not condone the practice of polygamy and that it has been forbidden in the Church for over one hundred years. Moreover, we absolutely condemn arranged or forced “marriages” of underage girls to anyone under any circumstances.

Stated simply, we would like to be known and recognized for whom we are and what we believe, and not be inaccurately associated with beliefs and practices that we condemn in the strongest terms. We would be grateful if you could circulate or copy this letter to your editorial staff and to your legal counsel.
We thank you for your consideration of these important matters.
Sincerely,
Lance B. Wickman

General Counsel

If a hundred years from now, the only records of your existence are grainy video of your decapitation, and 40+ history books written by Mormon “historians” all who claim you were executed for your adherence to the Mormon faith and refusal to renounce Joseph Smith while in the hands of the Taliban,... how are your great grandkids supposed to know of their own family history without the taint of revisionists?

This is NOT just about the religious ceremony, the Mormon Church through the libraries in SLC have extensive revisionist ‘historians’ and ‘genealogists’ pumping out fake family histories, and until May 2011, publishing those histories on the web for free without a firewall/paywall etc, and due to their massive web presence, were and still are coming in on top of web search results... when searching for say, my ancestors surnames.

The are not doing this haphazardly, this is an institutional program supported by the very top of the Church structures to create a revisionist history to create a new persecution myth for the Mormon flock. They are also claiming the historical life work of various non-believers as the divine works of Mormon faithful. This revisionist program based out of the BYU library has been an ongoing enterprise for at least 30 years, across three generations of Mormon leadership, resulting in tens of thousands of wasted hours of the lives of their victims’ living families in attempts to halt the revisionist writings.....

HAve you REALLY missed the point?

No, I don't believe I have. The ONLY arbiter of who has salvation and who does not is our God, whether you accept Him as YAHWEH or as the Triune God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Salvation is between the individual and God. It makes ABSOLUTELY ZERO difference what some third party does, says or writes on the internet if it is false.

If it is all a lie, it will be exposed as a lie and God is not fooled nor mocked.

There is an old saying I read back in the 1970s when I was new in Christ. It says "If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?" Your life of faith should be so outwardly and unmistakably so that no internet historian 100 years from now would have any need to question it. Ask Billy Graham if he's worried some people might think he's a Mormon. I guarantee you he will not because his public life is so clear in what he believed. We should be no different.

They could post anywhere and everywhere that I believe I'll be saved by the Easter Bunny but everyone who knows me well knows that is not true and, more important, God knows it is not true and that is all that matters.

BTW, the Mormons don’t pray over someones soul, they act as them (by proxy), and they take oaths and perform rituals in the name of this person, mostly people they have never met and are not related to.

Mormons really believe they take the place of Christ by saving these people. Been there, done that, performed the same rites.

Thank you for that insight. Part of my family is Mormon (my older sister and her descendents) so I'm completely convinced my name either already is or someday soon will be in their records. But I don't care. I know what I believe and so do all in my family.

As for my grave, my headstone is already purchased. It will have crosses and cites Romans 6:23 - "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." That is sufficient evidence for me.

And God who knows all and sees all will know the truth that I am a sinner saved by the grace of Christ and HE is the ONLY one I truly care has a clear understanding of my faith and I have no doubt that he does despite any hocus pocus from third parties, even family members.

They won’t perform the rituals for you until you are dead. They don’t act as proxy for the living.

My faith is in the cleansing blood of Christ alone, through faith - not of works. Ephesians 2:8-9 is one of my favorite passages.

I have no belief that it does any good, however having done it, I know the primary role it is in Mormonism, that they believe they are acting as saviors to the dead, that the encouragement is used to keep people in that cult and that bothers me.

It also bothers me that the LDS church keep promising not to do this, yet keep doing it any way, when anyone who really knows Mormonism knows that to NOT do it, is in essence denying their Mormon faith and stating it is a false religion - something Mormons fear more than anything.

I also see it the same as desecrating a grave. It is not only an insult to the memory and faith of the dead, it shows the arrogance of Mormonism.

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