Again, Jews Fault Mormons Over Posthumous Baptisms

NY Times ^ | December 21, 2003 | IAN URBINA

[thoughtomator]

I'm not offended. I do not think a suit against the practice is a good one, either. I just think it is needlessly provocative, especially at a time when it is crucial for all God-fearing people to stick together.

[Tall_Texan]

If the shoe were on the other foot, you would have no problem?

None. Don't look at this emotionally. Look at it logically. You have your belief in your God and your religion. You presume to be right. So, if you're right, then they're wrong. And if they are wrong, God won't hear their prayers so they are meaningless.

The again, on the odd chance they are right, wouldn't you be glad that you and your loved ones got off from eternal damnation on a technicality?

It's a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned. If the Mormons are wrong, it doesn't affect you because you didn't believe them. If they are right, then they did you a kind favor.

I think you're taking this too personally. This is to be laughed at. Unless, of course, they're right.

[Polybius]

If they do that for their own co-spiritualists, I would consider it no more than a morbid custom. But when they single out Jews for this treatment, that constitutes an aggressive attack on another community.

They don't "single out Jews". The Mormons collect as much geneological data as they possibly can from all over the world.

Considering that everybody who believes in God will need to stick together in the battle against the secularists, what they are doing is just plain stupid.

As I noted before, I do not believe in Mormonism.

However, let's pretend for a moment that what the Mormons believe is true.

In such a world, the Mormons are trying to save as many immortal souls as possible even if they are total strangers to them. If that is what they truly believe, do you think that they would stop trying to save those immortal souls so that they can win a worldly political battle with secularists that will be of no consequence one million years from now?

The Mormons are doing exactly the same thing that Christian missionaries have been doing for centuries: Trying to save souls according to their own belief system.

If you are a devout Christian, you can see Christian missionaries as selfless individuals who are trying to help total strangers.

If you are not a Christian, you can see those same Christian missionaries as idiots who have wasted their lives away on hocus pocus that only gets a large number of natives angry at them.

[P-Marlowe]

Exactly. That's why these Jewish professional victim organizations are so dangerous to Jews. They will alienate themselves from the Christian Community. Where will they seek aliances after that? From the Muslims?

There is a time and a place and an occasion to be offended. This is not it. The jews need to pick their battles and their enemies carefully. They should not go out of their way to offend others simply because at some distant intellectual level they can find a reason to be offended by them if they look long and hard.

Jews really have to go out of their way to be offended by this practice. If they are offended by this, then they need to get professional help. And NOT from an Attorney.

[Wilhelm Tell]

There is a nasty history of some "Christians" forcibly converting Jews. Often Jews had to convert or pretend to convert to Christianity in order to not be discriminated against or even in order to be allowed to live. So I can understand how a lot of Jews might be carrying baggage about this -- the whole issue of conversion might have the implied meaning that the only good Jew is a dead or converted Jew. It does kind of imply that being Jewish is somehow not legitimate, at least.

I think I do understand how a Jew might get a creepy feeling from a Christian proselitizing. The Jewish person might get the feeling that the Christian was seeking to convert him so that he could brag about converting "his Jew." Kind of like the souls of Jewish people are novelty-items that Christians can collect. The unavoidable association with the Holocaust gives this an even more sinister character -- imagine Nazis collecting Jewish bodies and "Christians" collecting Jewish souls -- as if people are playthings to be destroyed on a whim or trophies to be collected. Now, I don't think the Mormon Church is Christian in any traditional sense, but that is my take on things.

I don't imply that you had any bad intentions with your question. I do think that Christians sometimes underestimate the truly poisonous history that will always cast a shadow on things.

[gaspar]

I wasn't aware that there were that many Jews who gave a damn.

[Xenalyte]

Look. You can't convert someone against his or her will. Being converted requires the consent of the convertee. Do you think - do you really think - that they had the converts' permission to do so?

Because if not, the claim itself is a) laughable, and b) demonstration that said clergymen are amazingly underemployed.

Lighten up, Francis.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Good for you.

[Pharmboy]

There is no logic in religious belief. What planet are you from?

[thoughtomator]

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.

Considering an agreement was made, it is not out of their way to raise the issue.

I think that any religion whose earthly representatives themselves claim domain over others who do not share their beliefs has overstepped the bounds of civility, whether they be Mormons or Wahabbis. This is a case where a symbolic activity has eclipsed the purpose of the service of God and taken on a life of its own.

It is not that I fail to understand the ritual. It is that I do understand the ritual, and it is because of that understanding that I know that there is nothing to be gained by performing the ritual for someone who does not believe in it. I know that they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, but this is sinful righteousness and not the true service of God.

[Map Kernow]

I understand the sensitivity because of the past evil of forced baptisms of Jews in Europe in medieval times. However, this kind of, uh, "morbid" sensitivity is not helping intercommunal relations, IMHO. God determines the sacramental effect of a baptism, not the LDS Church.

[ChicagoHebrew]

I don't see what the problem is. If the Mormons are wrong, than post-death baptisms at least make them feel good. If Mormons are right (not likely, but I suppose possible) than it saves the souls of dead Jews. Either way, Jews aren't harmed and Mormons feel better.

Given everything that's happening to my people in the world today, I think we have better things to worry about.

[nmh]

"the dead are baptized by living church members who stand in as proxies. "

Positively ridiculous! Indicates the falseness of their beliefs! Only a LIVING person can be baptized with any meaning. When you're dead, your fate has already been determined by God. Then again, my God is not the same as their god with this kind of practice.

[nmh]

I really think the Mormons should start READING those KJV Bibles they strive to give out since this is NOT Biblical by any stretch of the imagination.

For believers in God, the one in the Bible, this will happen:

2Cor.5:8

[8] We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

[P-Marlowe]

I know that there is nothing to be gained by performing the ritual for someone who does not believe in it.

The Mormons know that too. They suspect that if they baptize these people by proxy that they will be given the opportunity to accept the baptism or reject in in their present spiritual state. They also believe that if they do not do this ritual, that those people who are not baptized will not be entitled to whatever blessings accompany that baptism.

So it seems to me that if the LDS Church agreed to take certain people off the lists of those they intended to baptize, that the LDS would then be discriminating against those Jews who were taken off the list and they would be agreeing to deny those people the blessings that all other peoples are entitled to.

this is sinful righteousness and not the true service of God.

I agree that this ritual has no bliblical support and those people on behalf of whom this ritual is performed will not receive any benefit from it. But then nobody made me the President of the LDS Church, did they?

I don't know what religion you are, but be assured that if you are a Christian and you are not offending people by your Christianity, then your Christianity is not effective. The gospel is an offense to those who perish.

If nobody is offended by what I believe, then I don't believe the gospel.

[thoughtomator]

I'm Jewish. I'm very familiar with the phenomenon of people taking offense to my beliefs. It's the "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" part that they can't seem to get over, mostly.

[Hildy]

I worked for a very religious Mormon once and he was thrilled I was Jewish. I don't remember specifically, but he explained to me that the Mormon religion is tied to Judaism. Does anyone know about this?

[Verginius Rufus]

The Mormon practice of baptism for the dead is based on First Corinthians 15:29 ("Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?"). They claim to have revived a practice which the other churches have forgotten.

I haven't looked at any commentaries to see what the Biblical experts say about this verse, but Paul definitely seems to be speaking of an ongoing practice of people being baptized on behalf of dead persons.

[thoughtomator]

The Book of Mormon claims there was a native American tribe of Hebrews. Sadly for them, the DNA evidence shows otherwise.