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.

[Elsie]

Does the LDS organization teach that God the Father had actual physical intercourse with Mary?

Any OTHER of you guys (LDS) know anything about this??

[missyme]

No you don't have to like it, but unfortunatly there is proably alot of things you and I alike do not care for.
but some things are not worth getting heartburn for:-)

[Pharmboy]

No, no, no, P, I wasn't talking to YOU, I was speaking to the Mormons or anyone else who wants to take over someone's soul.

[TontoKowalski]

If God the Father boinked Mary, wouldn't that mean that Jesus wasn't a born from a virgin?

[blackie]

Boink ~ Boink ~ Bump! :)

[Elsie]

Me: He made the claim (or said the angel/Personage told him) that NONE were good; not me.

 

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

Oh?

 

JS-H 1: 19

 I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”

From http://scriptures.lds.org/query?words=creed&newsearch=ok&BM=1&DC=1&PGP=1&TX=1&SM=1&search.x=15&search.y=7

 

 

---

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

 

Oh??

I did NOT say that.  Please do not ascribe thoughts to me that I have not typed for you to see

 

 

[Wrigley]

mormon sites=anti-Christian sites.

[Elsie]

Joseph Smith left no record of how he translated the plates beyond saying that it was done by the power of God.

This is DEFINITELY not true!

---

http://scriptures.lds.org/int/trnslttr

Your organizations stuff...........

[Elsie]

We all worship the same God

Sorry.......

Only the LDS organization claims this...........

[Elsie]

I'm going downstairs and read my Book of Mormon,

Well.... that's a good beginning, but continue and ALSO read the Doctrines and Covenents, Pearl of Great Price, The Joseph Smith Translation (of the bible) as well as other historical documents the LDS organization say are scripture: then you'll have a better appreciation of what they believe.

---

Then, if you decide to join them, you may be introduced to the Temple ceremonies: things so holy that if the descrioptions of them are published on FreeRepublic, they WILL be yanked -- either by themselves or the whole thread to wghich they are posted.

[Elsie]

yet respects others religions!

All the while claiming that they are false and will send their adherants to Hell!

---

(Where, some righteous LDS member will be baptised for them and they'll get another chance!! Cool; huh?)

[Elsie]

I'm not a Jew but a former chr*stian

OK.... this is what you are NOT:

What ARE you?

[Elsie]

I am a Noachide.

Sorry, I missed this earlier....

What does this mean?

[restornu]

mormon sites=anti-Christian sites.

To each their own reality!

[Elsie]

Scottie:

I think we just got beamed up!

[Aliska]

I think we just got beamed up!

I think we just got beamed over . . . to the religion forum.

[TontoKowalski]

To each their own reality!

Speaking of reality, are you able to answer Elsie's question (Post #481) on this business that Mary was impregnated through physical intercourse with the Father?

That's a fascinating topic, and I want to know the truth.

[TontoKowalski]

think we just got beamed over . . . to the religion forum.

That's too bad. It took 500 posts for things to get really interesting, and it'll just die out pretty quickly now.

[Aliska]

The Mormon practices are causing some ruffled feathers in Russia, to the Russian Orthodox, so it's not only the Jews who are offended.

Russians fume as Mormons "buy souls"

From the Guardian, November 23, 2003:

"The Russian Orthodox Church has expressed its outrage at what it claims is a Mormon scheme to buy up the names of dead Russians in order to baptise 'dead souls' in their faith. In one archive, in the town of Nizhni Novgorod, east of Moscow, the Church of the Latter Day Saints has paid ten US cents for each page of thousands of names of dead people dating mainly from the late eighteenth century to be put on a microfilm.

"The idea, the last-ditch attempt of a cash-strapped archive to fund urgent preservation work, has caused fury among the predominantly Orthodox nation. The Mormon Church is angry at what it sees as an obstruction to its religious practices.

"Father Igor Pchelintsov, spokesman for the local Orthodox Church, said: 'The teaching of the Mormons about the conversion of the dead contradicts reason and naturally causes concern among the faithful and creates a tense situation.'

"The work in the archive has been temporarily called off while a local government commission studies it.

"Nikolai Cheromin, a local official, said: 'Their work is not prohibited. It is suspended and a group comprising officials and prosecutors from the four traditional Russian religions - Christian Orthodox, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims - are studying it.' He said the Mormons had been present in the town for 100 years, albeit clandestinely during the Soviet era.

"Viktor Kharlanmov, head of the Nizhni Novgorod regional archive, said the project was the result of an agreement between the Mormon-linked Genealogical Society of the state of Utah and the Russian Society of Historians and Archivists in Moscow. He said it was 'vital to save an important part of our archives'. Seventy per cent of the Mormon cash goes to the Moscow society, while 30 went to the local archives.

"Orthodox experts and officials have expressed their severe concern over the offence the project might cause locals. Professor Alexei Dvorkin, head of the Sectology Department of the Moscow St Tikhon Institute, said: 'The Mormon practice of proxy baptism or 'baptising the dead' is a well known ritual described in a lot of books. At the beginning of this practice they were looking for their ancestors with the aim of baptising them, but later they began to baptise everyone - Catholics, Muslims, Jewish, or Orthodox.

"'Any Christian will tell you that these rituals do not harm the soul of the dead. But it hurts the feelings of the believers who see these rituals with the names of the deceased as equal to the desecration of graves by Satanists.'

"But Yevgeny Smirnov, from the Nizhni Novgorod Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and adviser to the Moscow Mormon region, said: 'Our church aims to create a database permitting people to look for their ancestors. Our ceremony is not rebaptism; it only gives the soul of the deceased person the freedom of choice to accept our belief or to reject it."

[restornu]

Even when you are dead no one can take over your soul only the prince of darkness could one be suject to, if they do not accept the vicarious redemption from Jesus Christ!

So it is not only the LDS that believe baptism is vital all Christian religions that practice baptism believe this.

The LDS provides a way for those lingering in the spirit world before judgement day to have an opportunity should they desire!

Its like being locked in a room or in bondage and some one provide a way for an escape!

Now one can choose to stay locked up or in bondage it is one own choice!!!