I said according to my faith and No I will not add that to your list to lampoon the LDS.
you are not required to believe it so let it be!"
Posted on 07/13/2010 10:43:45 AM PDT by Colofornian
MONTREAL — The “handful” of Mormons who continue to baptize Jews posthumously are violating church policy, says a senior member of the Utah-based religious movement.
Rabbi Schachar Orenstein, centre, spoke at a Mormon temple along with Mormon leader Mark Paredes of Los Angeles, left. At right is George Eric Jarvis, president of the Mormon church’s Mount Royal Stake, or Montreal branch.
Mark Paredes, who sits on the Mormons’ High Council in Santa Monica, Calif., and speaks for the church on Mormon-Jewish relations, was guest speaker along with Rabbi Schachar Orenstein of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue at what is described as the first ever formal dialogue between Quebec Jewish Congress (QJC) and the Mormon church in this province. The June 27 event was held before close to 400 people at the Mormon temple in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
There are about 9,000 Mormons in Quebec.
Paredes said there is “99.99 per cent” compliance today with the 1995 memorandum of understanding that was signed between the Mormons, formally the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Jewish leaders.
A few years earlier, it had come to light that some Mormons – Paredes says it was only eight – had submitted the names of tens of thousands of Jewish Holocaust victims for what Mormons call “proxy immersions” for the dead.
The former U.S. foreign service officer made the comments as part of his lengthy address on Mormons’ strong support for Judaism and Israel, titled “The Common Threads of Judaism and Mormonism, or Mormons and Jews in the Last Days: A Zion Relationship.”
Paredes, who until recently was the executive director of the Zionist Organization of America’s western region, said, “No one thinks that more than a handful of Mormons, out of nearly 14 million [worldwide] continue to defy the church’s policy [on proxy immersions].”
The only instance where the church sanctions such activity is if a Jew was an ancestor of a Mormon, he added. Paredes explained that Mormons are required to research their own ancestors and, if they had not accepted the Mormon faith, perform “temple ordinances” for them that will allow them to do so in the after-life. However, these ordinances do not confer church membership, he said.
They were never permitted to do this for anyone else’s ancestors, he stressed.
However, Paredes continued, it is “highly inaccurate to refer to proxy immersions as ‘posthumous conversions,’ ‘making Mormons of the dead, etc.’”
“Mormons agree with Jews that Holocaust victims should not have temple ordinances performed for them, except in rare cases where a victim is the direct ancestor of a living Mormon,” he said. “Jews who are concerned about this issue are entitled to an explanation and, having visited Auschwitz last fall, I am very much of this opinion, and we do our best to provide one.”
Paredes, who was also the American Jewish Congress’s national director of Hispanic community outreach and a press attaché at the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles, said he doesn’t believe that the strong historic ties between Mormons and Jews has been harmed by this issue.
He also reassured Jews that the Mormons are not seeking to convert Jews. Although proselytizing is a central aspect of the religion and all young men serve as missionaries, they are not targeting Jews, or members of other religions, for conversion, he said. “If our missionaries knock on a Jew’s door, they’ll also knock on the doors of his Catholic neighbour, Baptist friend and atheist cousin.”
Rabbi Orenstein also spoke on the commonality of the two religions, although he admitted his knowledge of Mormonism was not as great as Paredes’ of Judaism.
Paredes distanced Mormonism from Christian anti-Jewish beliefs.
“I am proud to state that our church has no history of anti-Semitism. In fact, we have a history of being pro-Semitic, philo-Semitic, of actively helping, not just tolerating, Jews in our midst.”
Mormons believe they are members of the House of Israel, feel a strong affinity with the Jewish people, and their theology and ritual have parallels with ancient Judaism. “Latter-day Saints are modern-day Israelites who build temples, have the priesthood, and receive revelation from prophets,” he said.
Mormons, like Jews, have known persecution throughout their history, since being founded in the United States in 1830, he went on.
The church is Zionist and has called for the gathering of the Jews in Palestine with their own political state since its founding.
In Los Angeles, Mormon-Jewish relations are especially strong, he said. Paredes recently took five rabbis to Utah and, for the past three years a Mormon has hosted the annual Israel Festival, for example.
Paredes’ employment in the Jewish community or Israeli-based organizations is not that unusual for Mormons in Los Angeles, home to 600,000 Jews. They work or have worked at the Jewish Federation, Magen David Adom, several synagogues and an Orthodox day school, he said.
Rabbi Orenstein touched on Mormons’ and Jews’ shared texts and vocabulary.
“We both speak of prophets and redemption and revelation. The definitions may vary, but it is a frame of reference for engagement,” he said.
Abby Shawn, chair of QJC’s human rights committee, said the meeting was at the initiative of the Mormon community and she welcomed the overture. “It went really, really well. They were receptive, inquisitive and highly sensitized,” she said. The Mormons arranged to have kosher food served afterward.
Shawn and Rabbi Orenstein appreciated Parades’s candour in addressing the baptism and missionizing issues.
“I see this as the first step to building a bridge. I hope there will be a follow-up in the future,” Shawn said.
2) Since baptism of fire is what saves us (the baptism of the Spirit) then indeed those believer who die before they get dunked are saved. If someone is baptizing them “symbolically” then that someone doesn't have a clear understanding of what it takes to be in Christ - a new creature - raised from death to new life in Him, and thinks that dunking is the thing that saves.
Eh ???
My youngest grand is 6 today...
I may not be reading right...
Oh the fun...
She already loves the malls..
I took them all to Atlanta on Wednesday..
4 of them...10 down to the 6...2 sets of cousins..
The zoo, the mall, Macy’s make up and perfume sections..
McDonalds all day..
Days like that are a test to see if Nana still has life in her legs..
:)
AG and ST do you have any insight as to what Paul was talking about in this verse?
1 Corinthians 15:29 (New International Version) 29Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them?
—‘Joseph Smith or the Sword!
I think he would have been called a “dandy”. Today a “nancy boy”.
The word “queer” comes to mind..
Some of his effeminate characteristics and cowardice denote an unmanly weak personality..
Maybe all the girls were to prove to himself he wasnt homosexual ??/
When your ignorance is invincible, that’d be the correct road.
I said according to my faith and No I will not add that to your list to lampoon the LDS.
you are not required to believe it so let it be!"
William Fawcett, an English convert, first saw Joseph on April 12, 1843 at the steamboat landing in Nauvoo. Speaking of the Prophet's appearance and character, he says "His appearance was that of a fine, portly gentlemen, six feet high, weighing about two hundred pounds. He was pleasant and kind" ("Recollections" JI 27 1892, 66.)
1 February 1831 Palmyra Reflector: In his person he is tall and slender—thin favored— having but little expression of countenance, other than that of dullness; his mental powers appear to be extremely limited.
Really interesting video: http://watchorkeep.com/watch/download/video/youtube/YMLSQe4Bnek/11.%2520DNA%2520-%2520Jesus%2520Christ%2520%252F%2520Joseph%2520Smith.htm
Dangling from below the seat...
Are you with your sons down there? You’d not be looking at my eyes...
You claimed it was "made up by the anti's" when you now partially admit that it was as I said, made up by a mormon against the "anti's".
"so you think it was me maybe I don’t know calling Mormons like radical Islam is also a slur...
Your own prophet compared himself and the church to islam, jsut because it's posted here by an anti doesn't qualify as a slur. It's in his (JS's) own writings. Take it up with SLC if it bothers you so much.
Thin skin? I would say that adopting the attempted slur is more of an example of light heartedness. An "in your face" attitude that some find frustrating because they're failing in their attempts to get a visceral reaction out of those they're attempting to smear.
"The Mormons was malign way before the anti!"
Is that supposed to give you and others license to malign and smear posters? Please offer one instance where a mormon (a person, a poster) was maligned by one of the FI's or an anti. Otherwise, you're howling into the wind.
and then there was that series of posts about the Christians being pigs in need of washing..
.-)
Yup. Try THIS for "inside code"! 
You must like me for some reason to find an excuse to continue...
It is what it is and nat in the scheme of things!
Marbren - to understand what Paul is talking about, you must back up and consider the whole scripture passage and see the context. The Greeks had great difficulty in accepting a physical resurrection because of their cultural/pagan upbringing. Paul starts to build on the essential doctrine of the resurrection starting at 15:12.
Beginning at vs 15:29 Paul changes the style of his arguement from a postitive to a negative. Since in the verse Paul refers externally to "they" (or 'those' in the NIV) is a group that the Corinthians would have known about. Baptism for the dead was a custom in at least one of the mystery religions, one based close to Corinth in the neighboring town of Eleusis, the Eleusian mystery religion.
Most likely, IMHO, Paul often used local examples to support his arguements - this is another instance. Within the context of the scripture, as well as the cultural context (Greek difficulty accepting a bodly resurrection), Paul is likely showing that the concept of a resurrection is not outside the Greek culture, but is also recognized by pagans. As such, Paul's reference uses borderline absurdity to make his point if the dead will not rise, why even go as far as to baptise them.
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