Posted on 12/21/2003 4:41:40 AM PST by Pharmboy
Jewish group says it is considering legal action in an effort to stop the Mormon Church from posthumously baptizing many Jews, especially Holocaust victims.
Under the practice, known by Mormons as vicarious baptism — a significant rite of the church — the dead are baptized by living church members who stand in as proxies.
But in 1995, after evidence emerged that at least 380,000 names of Jewish Holocaust victims were on baptismal lists in the church's extensive archives in Salt Lake City, the church agreed to end vicarious baptism without consent from the descendants of the dead. Church officials also said the church would remove the names of Holocaust victims placed on the lists before 1995.
"For the last seven years, we've had entirely cordial relations with the Mormons," said Ernest Michel, who negotiated the agreement on behalf of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, which is based in New York and claims 180,000 members. "But the agreement is clear and they have not held up their end."
Last year, Helen Radkey, an independent researcher in Salt Lake City, gave Mr. Michel evidence that the Mormon lists still included the names of at least 20,000 Jews, many of them Holocaust victims and prominent figures like the philosopher Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel. Ms. Radkey also provided Mr. Michel with evidence that many of these Jews had been baptized after the 1995 agreement.
But Mormon officials say they remain in full compliance with the 1995 agreement.
"We have actually gone above and beyond," said D. Todd Christofferson, a church official involved with the negotiations. The church removed the names of Holocaust victims listed before 1995 and continues to instruct its members to avoid baptizing Jews who are not directly related to living Mormons or whose immediate family has not given written consent, Mr. Christofferson said.
But he said it was not the church's responsibility to monitor the archives to ensure that no new Jewish names appear. "We never had in mind that we would, on a continual basis, go in and ferret out the Jewish names," Mr. Christofferson said, adding that the labor involved in constantly sifting through an ever-expanding archive, which contains more than 400 million names, would represent an "intolerable burden."
"When the church is made aware of documented concerns, action is taken in compliance with the agreement," he said.
Some Jewish genealogists agree with the Mormon interpretation of the agreement. "I have a copy of the agreement," said Gary Mokotoff, the publisher of Avotaynu, the International Review of Jewish Genealogy. "The wording is vague in some places, but it definitely does not obligate the Mormons to scour their own archives on an ongoing basis."
But Mr. Michel, who said he became involved in the issue after reading about posthumous baptisms in the Jewish newspaper The Forward, contends that the agreement obliges the Mormon Church to monitor the post-1995 lists and remove the names of Jews that appear.
"They put the names in there, they should have to take them out, and the agreement says as much," he said. "Why should we have to do their job for them?" He said the group was considering legal action but would not provide details.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom Mr. Michel contacted, said she planned to take up the matter with Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, a Republican and a Mormon. "Senator Hatch was immensely helpful in brokering the 1995 agreement, so we're hoping he can get involved again now," she said in a telephone interview.
With approximately 11 million members worldwide, the Mormon Church, known formally as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is one of the fastest-growing in the world, partly because of a strong missionary effort. The importance of the family structure is central to church doctrine and is a reason for the extensive archives kept by the International Genealogical Index in Salt Lake City. The archives include detailed biographical information of 400 million people going back centuries. The names of those to be posthumously baptized are drawn from the archives.
According to Mormon theology, all people, living or dead, possess "free agency," and posthumous baptisms provide only an option, not an obligation, to join the religion in the afterlife. Church membership numbers do not include those baptized after death, Mr. Christofferson said.
Originally, the practice was reserved for ancestors of church members, but over the years many other people have been baptized posthumously. "There is no way to prevent overzealous members doing mission work from submitting names that don't belong," Mr. Christofferson said.
Ms. Radkey, an Australian-born Christian, said she began researching the Mormon practice in 1999 after discovering that the teenage diarist Anne Frank had been posthumously baptized.
However, I belong to several geneaological groups whose members have travelled individually and in groups to the genealogy center in Salt Lake City (which I have not personally visited). Some people get very incensed over this whole posthumus conversion thing, even after making extensive use of the archives and the database which the Mormons have worked so hard to provide.
I say to them, get over it, it's not harming your ancestors.
BTW a cousin of mine converted to the LDS church (while still alive) after marrying a member. So I'm pretty sure that all my ancestors have been "baptized."
Now, go ask someone to look up for you the meaning of the term "free agency," which is a gift from God to which is attached rewards, penalties, and consequences.
If you need to approach the topic slowly enough to be able to comprehend this transcendant principle, have the teacher of the junior Sunday School in your local congregation tell you the story of Adam and Eve.
And then, for the frosting on the cake, ask your pastor to direct you to Book of Genesis, wherein you might learn from God Himself how He deals with His sons and daughters who have entered the proving ground that is our earthly sojourn..............
Thanks, and, BTW, it is largely baptized children and new members of the Church who serve as proxies for the vicarious baptismal and confirmation ordinances performed within our temples.
The dead on whose behalf the sacred ordinances are performed do in fact remain undisturbed in their graves after all, contrary to the claims of some....
I wasn't raised to detest anyone of any religion or race. Curiously, when I was a little girl, we used to go on weekend drives as a family. We visited Nauvoo back in the late 40's or early 50's and the only reaction on the part of my parents was my father when I asked him what happened to the gold plates. He smiled and said something like, "Why an angel took them back to heaven." Later as a family we visited Salt Lake City, more as a historical learning experience, than as a spiritual quest.
In my genealogical research, I found out that a great grand uncle fell in with a Giles Cook who had Mormon connections and evidently left Mormonism. When the uncle and Giles Cook went west in the gold rush, they had to give wide berth to Salt Lake because I believe Giles Cook was an apostate and Mormons occasionally used violence against apostates.
I think some of the appeal of Mormonism, apart from their family values and clean living, is that they purport to answer apiritual questions about pre-existence and the hereafter that traditional forms of Christianity are content to leave unanswered.
It seems to me that Mormons add confusion to the mix of already confused Christianity and world religions and in the end, it isn't necessarily a good thing. Other countries are beginning to resent proselytizing by Mormons and other sects because it just exacerbates the confusion. If the other denominations weren't already so splintered, I doubt Mormonism and other sects would have taken hold in America.
Jesus warned that his religion would split families and he was right on.
Thanks, and, BTW, it is largely baptized children and new members of the Church who serve as proxies for the vicarious baptisms performed within our temples.
Contrary to the belief of some, the dead for which the vicarious ordinances are done do in fact remain undisturbed in their graves after all....
Too bad........
After one dies, one will be judged. No question about that. How long it takes for my turn in line, I don't know.
Not so.........
It leaves no room for any other proselizn' to take place.
He made the claim (or said the angel/Personage told him) that NONE were good; not me.
Has the LDS organization EVER published a rebuttal of this claim?
Does the LDS organization teach that God the Father had actual physical intercourse with Mary?
The Book of Mormon didn't seem to think much of "priestcrafts", I guess their own being an exception. I doubt Joseph Smith was ever exposed to Catholic or Orthodox priests in the narrow confines of his existence.
I really wonder how it will all fall out on Judgement Day. I don't know and don't pretend to know, but the bible does say all liars will be excluded from heaven. Now if the person sincerely believes what he spreads as gospel is the truth, I don't know how it will be for them.
I once had a vision of a picture of Joseph Smith turned upsidedown surrounded by some lemons. Now make of that what you will. I was concerned about my Mormon friend who I think committed suicide because of several possible reasons. Her was a Mormon bishop and they had a bad marriage but stuck together seemingly because that was all they knew socially and religiously. After her death, the husband had a brief marriage with a new wife and my son saw them down at court one day for abuse. I don't know where my friend went in the hereafter, but I had a dream about her going up on an escalator somewhere. I don't presume to know what the dream meant and my vision with the lemons could have been a projection of my own disbelief towards the Mormon religion. So we are back to square one.
I am still a little upset about my friend because she wanted her body taken back to Salt Lake City for burial and they buried her here and then all left for Salt Lake. To this day I am sad that they didn't respect her wishes. They had several boys who were all Mormon missionaries. I guess the thing that never ceases to amaze me is how otherwise intelligent people can so stubbornly cling to whatever it is they believe in, myself included. I believe certain basics, but don't presume to know about the rest of it, and know at this point in my life that I am not going to know.
This is the same stuff that gets sent to the media, illustrating how the LDS organization would like (respectfully, of course) these 'people' be described in the print or TV-radio.
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