Again, Jews Fault Mormons Over Posthumous Baptisms

NY Times ^ | December 21, 2003 | IAN URBINA

[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.

[maui_hawaii]

Hey I know you...you're one of the Nazi anti-mormon evangelicals here on FR.

You don't know anything about mormons, or "their Jesus", you just spout off incorrect things and call it "fact".

Its not even worthy of a response.

[maui_hawaii]

I have never heard that taught.

[TontoKowalski]

We will not flinch from the claim that the religions of the world have fallen into apostasy which required that the true gospel of Jesus Christ be restored.

Practice polygamy! No, don't do that! No blacks in my Church! No, nix that! No blacks as Bishops! Wait, I guess that's OK...

I guess your Gospel is printed in pencil, so it's easier to revise whenever Jesus changes his mind.

I will not flinch from my claim that your religion is based on a madman/conman's fantasy.

[Elsie]

they will have to answer to the one Christians and Jews beleive in.

 

UHhhh..

 

Not quite:

---

 

Luke 11:31-32
 31.  The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here.
 32.  The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.

 

 

John 3:18
   Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

 

 

John 12:48
   There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.

 

 

Romans 8:1-2
 1.  Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, HALLEHLUJAH!!!
 2.  because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.

[maui_hawaii]

You heard someone else's account of what JS said and wrote.

JS actually attended, and wanted to be a Methodist at one point. He even says so. He thought Methodists were the closest to the truth so far as he could discern at the time.

Thats a far cry from calling all others wicked and evil.

He was wondering which church among all of them was correct. That was the question he was asking.

The answer came back that none had the true gospel.

True, that can be interpreted many ways.

You are just choosing to believe (falsely) that JS hated every other church.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Thanks for the back-up, Alouette.

BTW, isn't it strange that this mormon ritual (which affects no one), conducted by mormons in SALT LAKE CITY stirs up so much heat when the mormons were permitted by the Israeli government to desecrate a Jewish holy site in Jerusalem by building one of their institutions on it? Where were these people then? Or is that not as important?

The whole thing smells like another "we don't want Bible-thumpers like you supporting our historically free-thinking, naughty, rebellious people" campaign. Are these same people making any effort to convert Gore Vidal or Ramsey Clark to Zionism? I'm sure they'd much rather be supported by people like them.

[restornu]

Sorry to hear about your friend may she rest in peace!

[maui_hawaii]

Thats your interpretation. Not mine.

No one here will ever solve that question of who is right and wrong until we both die.

We disagree. Neither point can be proven either way. Next topic.

[Spiff]

http://www.lightplanet.com/response/answers/kingjames.htm

Of the approximately 264 thousand words in the Book of Mormon, about 17 thousand are close parallels to the King James translation of the Bible. Most parallel verses occurred when Nephi quoted the Isaiah of the Old Testament using records on brass plates brought from Jerusalem. Other parallels occurred when the resurrected Savior repeated his Sermon on the Mount to the Nephites and then quoted Malachi at length. In both cases, we are told in the text that these are quotations of scriptures that had been recorded elsewhere.

Joseph Smith left no record of how he translated the plates beyond saying that it was done by the power of God. LDS scholars generally agree that in instances where the Book of Mormon parallels the Bible, Joseph Smith must have noted the parallels and used the King James Bible to guide him in his choice of words. If the Book of Mormon agreed with the Biblical text in meaning, he apparently utilized the Biblical text, italicized words and all. However, when the plates differed from the Biblical text, he followed the text on the plates.

For example, of 433 verses of Isaiah quoted in the Book of Mormon, 46 percent are identical to those in the Bible, while 54 percent are modified to some extent. These different verses have been of great use to LDS scholars. Several Hebrew literary structures are found only in a degraded form in the King James Bible, while those literary structures are complete and intact in the Book of Mormon. This shows that the brass plates version found in the Book of Mormon was a different, older Isaiah text.

A slightly more difficult problem is posed by Book of Mormon similarities with Biblical scriptures which were not in existence when Lehi left Jerusalem. For instance, Moroni 7:45, 46 parallels 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (Paul's discussion on charity) so closely that some explanation is called for.

Mormon, Moroni's father, lived after Christ and knew Christ's teachings. Since the ultimate source of Paul's teachings was also Christ, it should not be surprising to find both Mormon and Paul teaching the same thing. The fact that both wrote on charity indicates the importance of this gospel concept.

If Mormon delivered a sermon on charity, it could logically contain much of the same material as Paul's teachings on the same subject. However, one would not expect identical, word-for-word renderings of the two writings, and indeed they are not totally identical. Two significant clauses found in I Corinthians are absent from Mormon's sermon, and Mormon's definition of charity is absent from Paul's writings. Nonetheless, several phrases are identical. These identical phrases are understood the same way as the Isaiah passages by Latter-day Saints: Joseph Smith recognized Mormon's teachings as similar to Paul's and likely used the biblical text where it agreed in meaning with the plates. Where the meanings differed, he followed the plates.

Since the ultimate source of the teachings of the Book of Mormon is Christ, and since the ultimate source of the teachings of the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) is also Christ, it should surprise no one that there are many parallels between Book of Mormon and Bible passages. While one cannot conclusively prove that Joseph Smith used a King James Bible as an aid in translating the parallel passages, that explanation is reasonable.

[Elsie]

Being a former atheist,

And who among us WASN'T?

[Poohbah]

The Mormons did agree to knock it off. Then they reneged on the agreement.

If one's word isn't one's bond, there's all manner of bad things that fall out from that.

[TontoKowalski]

But your neighbor has the right to rip up his rose bush and the Mormons have the right to perform a ritual for your deceased grandfather and tell people that they've done it.

If that's true, then I want to go on record right now and say that I completely, utterly, and without reservation reject the LDS version of Christianity, and would consider it a most unwelcome desecration of my memory to ever have this sham post-mortem baptism performed in my name.

Please put that in the database. And while we're at it, please stop those idiots from riding their bicycles up and knocking on my door.

[panaxanax]

I have followed this thread since first posted and it is clear to see that all the Christian organizations are violently divided on who has chosen the right path of worship. Enough is enough! We all worship the same God and we will be celebrating CHRISTmas in a few days. Dear God, give us a break. Stop bashing the Mormons.

This thread has become the biggest nanny-nanny-boo-boo discussion I’ve seen to date. All of you grow up and concentrate your efforts on making this Christmas the best one yet for your families.

There are good Mormons and there are bad Mormons, there are good Catholics and bad Catholics etc. Just get over it and go do something good for someone in need. Go decorate your Christmas tree, light you Menorah candles, read a Bible story to your kids. Donate some canned goods to the needy. This argument will never be won by either side, religious issues never are.

If the Mormons think they are doing someone some good, then let them. We are all facing a much bigger crisis right now, in that, we are under heightened alert for terrorist attacks on our home ground.

Jeez………………..

[Elsie]

...we will not be identified as Mother, Father, Sister, we will be related in sprit...

It's clear to me that you probably 'interpret' this verse differently than the LDS organization....

---

Matthew 22:30
   At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.

---

but, if the men of the previous two verses were all good Temple Recommended LDS members, how does the LDS organization answer the question posed in verse 28?

 

Matthew 22:28-30
 28.  Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?"
 29.  Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.
 30.  At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.

[Wrigley]

Cool, I see you've posted anti-Christian sites.

[missyme]

That is very true;)

[Wrigley]

Really, I know nothing about mormons? Hmmm.

And, you have the description all wrong. I am a pro-Christ Christian on FR who finds what the mormons try to teach on FR to be an abomination.

[TontoKowalski]

We all worship the same God and we will be celebrating CHRISTmas in a few days. Dear God, give us a break.

Welcome to the party, Pollyanna.

[Elsie]

I of course reject mormonism (and chr*stianity as a whole),

What do you think about Jesus, and His claim?

---

I John 14
6. Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

[ladyinred]

Hold the phone. If the Jews don't believe in Jesus then why do they give a hoot what goes on in the Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter Day Saints? I don't get this.

I think that is why they are upset Saundra, because they do not believe that Jesus was Messiah. Therefore they do not want to be baptized by proxy in His name. This is offensive to them, and you would most likely have to be Jewish to understand that.