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.
I celebrate God made man , not man made god
I see now that you suffer from a disorder that inhibits clear communication, but it is not a psychological one. My snap assumptions on your mental condition (on the basis of your communication skills) were premature.
Bull. Please see my paragraph immediately preceding the excerpt of your post above.
Which paragraph?
You didn't say why or what your concept of supernatural encounter.
What you said was your feeling or opinion but nothing specify!
Just because I don't have the command or skills in language, writing and struggle puting my thoughts on paper you think you can belittle another as not being normal!
I am at a disability behind this screen, not everyone was given the same talents. I may possess talents you don't have does that make you a deviant?
You are judging me through a limited portal!
That was a very difficult thing for me to do. I prayed long and hard to understand God's will. But at least I didn't have to endure the shunning, the mothers pulling their children away, the busy-bodies telling me, my family, and friends that I have fallen away from God's grace, and other such nonsense.
I still see members of my former church, and we speak, and we're friendly, and they haven't butted into what was a deeply emotional and personal process.
Based on what I've heard about the way Mormons treat those who have left, you're not able to say that, and I'm sorry.
My point was that there are MODERN languages, constructed similarly, that seem NOT to have this 'problem'.
Aramaic uses a consonantal script. Syriac uses a consonantal script. Modern Israeli Hebrew uses a consonantal script. As far as I know, Arabic uses a consonantal script. And you thought you were blowing me out of the water by invoking an all consonantal script?
But the Holy Torah is not a newspaper. Context may be safe enough in reading a newspaper article, but not in reading the Word of G-d. Besides, newspapers, etc., are machine-printed. Torah Scrolls must still be written in accordance with the ancient voluminous rules and regulations given to Moses (but not contained in the Written Torah) to insure that each and every kosher Torah Scroll is an exact replica of the one first written by Moses at G-d's letter-by-letter dictation, which was itself an earthly replica of the Great Scroll in Heaven through which the universe was created (the "logos"). Newspapers and books in modern Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, or whatever do not require this absolute certitude. And once again, I was pointing out that the punctuation and vowels that appear in machine-printed Hebrew Bibles are, like the Rabbinic commentary often printed along with the Biblical text, a rendering into writing of part of the Oral Torah. The Written Torah remains vowel-less and without punctuation or cantillation marks.
I would like to make two more points here. First, the Torah was not written under "Divine inspiration." It is much, much higher than Divine inspiration. It was written by G-d Himself and dictated to Moses letter by letter. It is not the mere general ideas message of the text that are important, but every single letter. Even the names, sizes, shapes, and "crowns" of the letters are loaded with meaning. Even the spaces between the letters are loaded with meaning! This is why the strictest rules are necessary to make sure every Torah Scroll is valid (a single mistake invalidates the entire Scroll). Any "Fundamentalist Protestant" who insists that only the general message of the text is "inspired" or important, and not every letter and space itself, is not a true Fundamentalist but a liberal, since liberals maintain that the Bible "contains" the Word of G-d rather than that it is the Word of G-d. I have always wondered why the same people who defend verbal plenary inspiration are the very ones who have historically defended the sufficiency of translations. Translations convey only the general message of the Divine text and not the text itself, and hence "translationism" is much more in harmony with liberalism than with Fundamentalism.
The second point I wish to reiterate is that until five hundred years ago all chr*stians insisted that the Bible needed an authoritative oral interpretive tradition. Since Protestantism is a recent, modern, and inauthentic version of chr*stianity, sincere chr*stians should not be Protestants but should pick one of the authentically ancient churches to affiliate with. If you are trying to bring me back into chr*stianity your attacks on the Oral Law do you no good, because the only versions of chr*stianity I recognize as having a valid claim to authenticity all have "oral laws" of their own. If I were to return to chr*stianity (chas vechalilah!) it would not be to Protestantism but to one of these ancient churches, which would itself have an "oral law." Just how is your attacking the Oral Law going to make a Catholic or Eastern Orthodox out of me, when my whole point is that among all the "oral traditions" only the Jewish dates back to Moses, includes the rules for writing a Torah Scroll, and provides the vowels and punctuation for the Written Torah?
Before you scold Jews for their Oral Law, may I suggest you first convince all those chr*stians with "oral laws" of their own that they are undercutting the chr*stian cause by giving credence to the idea that the Bible needs an official oral interpretation???
I find you statement deficient!
What I mean is I think both sides morn when a member leaves the one that left still wants the companionship of family, love ones and friends.
Some who left are so bitter they it makes it impossible to communicate with them. Some not only rebel against the Church, but also those who are still members.
I can tell you at the FAIR site there are LDS as well as ex LDS there and both are able to express their different, as well as those of other faiths.
The FAIR site does frown upon personal atacks. All FAIR ask is that LDS as well other faiths play nice! Meaning don't go and punch one in the nose at the same time cry foul!
I can tell you at the FAIR site there are LDS as well as ex LDS there and both are able to express their different, as well as those of other faiths.
All of us have clay feet and feelings can only take so much of abuse from those who are bitter which makes it hard to converse without at times return in kind.
That being said when one realized their deportment was not in keeping with the Lord and tries to make amends with no results it is best to be wish them well and move on!
I would also like to add the LDS Church encourages the LDS to treat those who are of other faiths even those who have left with respect for we are all God children.
I vehemently disagree with you that most Christians believe the above. That I am aware, very few Christians endorse evolution (as generally defined), and a small fraction even know what the documentary hypothesis is let alone endorse it. The same goes for the Genesis is a myth crowd.
The "Genesis is a myth crowd" run the ancient authentic churches and the mainline Protestant churches. All you have to do is go to Catholic, Orthodox, Non-Chalcaedonian, Nestorian, and mainline Protestant websites to see this. And the few people in these communions who are willing to stand up for creationism and scriptural inerrancy are accused of "latent Fundamentalist Protestantism" and "19th Century positivism" by the majority of their brethren.
Do you honestly believe that the Pope interprets Genesis literally? Or the Patriarch of Constantinople? Or the Archbishop of Canterbury? Or the vast majority of the members of their communions? Do you have any idea what is taught to seminarians in the seminaries of these churches?
One particular Catholic web site that supports creationism speculates that evolution so readily entered the Catholic Church because of a latent hostility to the Biblical text that had existed since the Reformation.
I've taught the Bible for years in various churches and the topics included creation/evolution, the documentary hypothesis, surveys of Bible books including Genesis and have found those you define as most are a small group, definitely not most. So if you're referring to protestant churches then I definitely disagree.
I was not referring to Protestant churches (which are recent and inauthentic) but to the ancient apostolic churches (and if chr*stianity is true, it must be an ancient authentic form rather than a version only five hundred years old). I find it incredible that you claim that a "small minority" of chr*stians are evolutionists and higher critics in light of the support (or tacit silence) of the vast majority of the chr*stian world to these blasphemies. Why are the churches so silent on the campuses of elite universities where these things are taught as fact?
In fairness, I must state that I am even more scandalized at the silence of Orthodox Jews on university campuses (though many university Orthodox are evolutionists and higher critics themselves). My theory is that many Orthodox Jews are ashamed of the ultra-Fundamentalism of Torah True Judaism and are in no hurry to publicly confront these modern notions. Their silence on these things, compared with their frequent praise of liberal chr*stians who believe these blasphemies (ostensibly because of the "tolerance" of liberal chr*stians) helps create the impression that Orthodox Judaism is itself liberal (G-d forbid). The guilt of Torah Jews for this implicit endorsement of blasphemies of the Scriptures is much greater than that of any chr*stian.
Now I hope I have replied to your specific points. If I have not, may I suggest you simply re-post a clarified version of your original points rather than attempting to shame or embarrass me by scolding me.
I was once a chr*stian at a liberal university, and when I turned to them for support against liberal blasphemies they sided with the university and against me. I know what I'm talking about whether you will admit it or not.
Let's go back one further and look at your post to which I was responding. You said:
I suggest you combat the chr*stians on this site
You mentioned the Christians on this site and that's what set off the alarms for me. You were not talking about what the Pope, the Patriarch of Constantinople or the Archbishop of Canterbury or believers outside this site believe.
In addition to the above, you also said:
Unfortunately, most of the chr*stians of the worldIn my post to you I said: "So if you're referring to protestant churches then I definitely disagree." And with that you went off on some rant for six paragraphs as if you were responding to something I said. Either knowingly or not, you are apparently trying to change the argument from what I originally said, and that's misdirection.
My response to you was a vast majority do not accept your statements as true, and as for the DH, most (probably 99% or more) don't even know what it is.
I was not referring to Protestant churches
You didn't say that in your first post to which I responded, as my first post to you documented above says "if you were" talking about protestant churches.
[Protestant churches] are recent and inauthentic
I disagree they're inauthentic but you're entitled to your opinion. I encourage you to start a thread in the religion section on why you think protestant churches are inauthentic. And perhaps there we can discuss some of the points you raised here in regards to the Pope and others. While I've never heard the Pope discuss the DH, I've definitely read and re-read translations of what he's said on the topic of creation/evolution, and your statements here are, IMO, a stretch.
I was once a chr*stian at a liberal university, and when I turned to them for support against liberal blasphemies they sided with the university and against me.
I'm sorry to hear that, especially from what I understand how many of the universities started out. In this situation, it may depend on how deep your anchor is or was, as some folks would walk away while others would dig deeper. Still that doesn't mean a vast majority of Christians on this site or in protestant churches believe your statements are true, and that was my argument.
As I said, I once walked away from Christianity myself but years later God got my full attention and my life of service. I'll pray He does the same for you.
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