I’m not entirely sure what to think about this story. On the one hand, I want to be respectful of other peoples’ religious beliefs. On the other hand, seeing members of two different religions get into a pissing match over unreality is surreal at best and silly at worst.
The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints has a practice by which the souls of the dead are posthumously baptized. Apparently there’s some sort of centralized list kept on a computer somewhere about who is to be baptized next. Also apparently the posthumous baptism has to be done on an individualized basis and with some degree of understanding about their geneaology — it can’t be done en masse for all dead people generally. But there seems to be a subculture within the LDS community that likes to do this in the name of people who died in Europe in World War II, particularly Holocaust victims, and this has a lot of contemporary Jewish people upset.
From where I sit, there is no such thing as a soul, there is no afterlife, so baptism of the living is an ineffectual ritual. Baptism of the dead is at least as futile, and likely moreso, becaue the dead person is unable to appreciate having participated in the ritual, seeing as the dead person did not actually participate in the ritual at all, much less having been not alive at the time it happened. I could not care less if some Mormon wants to stand in as a proxy for me after I die and claim that I have been vicariously baptized. I’ll be dead, so whatever harmless thing you do that blows your skirt up after I’m gone is okay with me.
Now, I can see and appreciate that other people feel differently, that they think there is such a thing as a soul and that its fate is determinative on any of a number of things. I can see and appreciate that other people want good things for the souls of others and good things for their own souls. Okay. I get that. I think that’s incorrect, but I can see how someone would feel that way.
But it’s still difficult for me to understand why someone who is Jewish would care that a Mormon had performed this ritual for the benefit of their ancestors. And they care intensely, intensely enough that it’s provoked an apology from the LDS hierarchy that it happened at all, and people are looking to put Mitt Romney on the spot for it.
Desecration of a corpse, I totally get. That’s an act of disrespect, aimed pointedly at the individual whose corpse is being desecrated. Survivors of the person could reasonably take that insult as directed at them, on behalf of the memory and love they hold for their lost loved one. If someone descrated the corpse of one of my ancestors, I’d be upset too. So the argument would be, “If desecration of a body is bad, how much worse is the desecration of a soul?” Which gets into the issue of the reality of the Mormon religion.
Either there is some truth to the Mormon religion, or there is not. If there is some truth to it, and the ritual of posthumous baptism has power and effect, then the ritual has benefitted the immortal soul of the dead person. If there is no truth to the religion, then the ritual has no effect. Personally, I believe there is no truth to the religion. And I’d assume that a Jew would concur with me on that. Perhaps I assume wrong — but if one acknowledges that the Mormon ritual has some effect, then isn’t one acknowledging that one ought to be a Mormon oneself? If a vicarious baptism can change one’s dead relative from a Jew to a Mormon, then Mormonism has power, effect, and reality.
The only rational way I could think to be upset about this would be if one believed that Mormonism does have power, effect, and reality, but that it is really demon-worship, an evil religion masquerading as a benevolent one. But that doesn’t seem to be what the survivors of the posthumously-baptized Jews are claiming — they seem to acknowledge that there was a good intention behind the baptism, but they nevertheless don’t like the effect.
On Wikipedia I found a quote from a Jewish man objecting to the posthumous baptism purportedly done to redeem the souls of his parents: “They tell me, that my parents’ Jewishness has not been altered but … 100 years from now, how will they be able to guarantee that my mother and father of blessed memory who lived as Jews and were slaughtered by Hitler for no other reason than they were Jews, will someday not be identified as Mormon victims of the Holocaust?”*
This seems to be the real objection. And of course there can be no such guarantee. But there wouldn’t be, anyway, even if the ritual had never been performed. Nothing at all is beyond the reach of historical revisionism and history itself is an inherently uncertain process becasue a contemporary historian can never be absolutely sure that the source material she uses today is not the result of a revisionist filter applied to the recordation of real events. Even as we live and breathe, there are historical revisionists working as hard as they can to convince future generations that the Holocaust never happened at all. This seems to me to be a far greater insult to history and the memory of the Nazis’ innocent victims than does an ineffectual, banal, and decidedly silly ritual done with beneficient, innocent, and hugely deluded intent.
That man’s parents did live as Jews. They were killed by Hitler for no reason other than their Jewishness. No contemporary ritual can change that reality. Not even the Mormons purport to change that history. They purport to have redeemed the souls of these departed people well after the fact. Either they’re right, or they’re wrong, or they’re lying. Since you’re not accusing them of lying, there is no downside and there is no effect.
Mormons, you can baptize all my dead ancestors you want. Some of them were secular, some of them were Christian, one sixty-fourth of them were American Indians and worshipped according to the customs of those people. It’s possible some of them were Jewish or Muslim or something else and I’m unaware of that. It really doesn’t matter anymore, seeing as they’re dead. This is your ritual, and therefore it’s your concern, and its real purpose is to make you feel better about yourselves. I’m completely indifferent to it. It doesn’t rewrite the past as far as I can tell.
So if you take one of your own living members and dunk them in the water while shouting out my ancestor’s names and later claim that you’ve done something nice for the nonexistent souls of these dead people, or you do that for me after I’m dead, it doesn’t bother me a bit. I’m at a loss to understand why anyone else would feel differently — this is one of those things I just have to accept without understanding.
* Hitler, too, has apparently been posthumously baptized for some reason. But so what? He’s dead.
As a Mormon, I thank you. I of course believe in this practice but am so baffled at why it is offensive to those who don’t believe the Mormon church is true. As you point out, if we aren’t the true church then this practice is a meaningless work done out of love and service. Why be upset about it?
So, I assume you’d feel the same way if some other religious group decided to posthumously induct your ancestors into their religion? It wouldn’t upset you at all, right?
this practice is… done out of love and service.
My ass. Arrogance != love and service.
Yeah, that’s what gets me the most about it. If I wanted it while I was living, I’d have sought it out. If there is a God that has all the amazing powers that folks say she does, then when I’m dead, if she thinks I need another shot at it, I’ll bet she’d be the best one to facilitate it.
It’d be like people sitting outside of a different denomination of church and telling each person as they leave after the service that you’re praying for them, as though what those folks were just doing inside their holy place just wasn’t quite up to snuff. Procedurally even.
“If there is a God that has all the amazing powers that folks say she does, then when I’m dead, if she thinks I need another shot at it, I’ll bet she’d be the best one to facilitate it.”
As a Christian, who fully believes in baptism and Grace and eternal life through Jesus Christ: this. 1000 times this.
Well, the immediate reason for this seems to have been the breaking of a kind of posthumous baptism “cease-fire.” From a reasoned out perspective, I’m with you, Burt — posthumous baptisms have no effect; therefore they can’t be more than annoying or, frankly, worse than well-meant. But they make me cringe anyway, particularly when it comes to Holocaust victims. The latter effect is probably just that this is already a tender spot for Jews, so the sense that there’s just something … inappropriate? rude? arrogant? demeaning? (etc) is that much stronger.
Certain Jews would claim that being killed for being Jewish is a martyrdom — kiddush haShem, if I remember the Hebrew correctly (this morning, I’m less than confident), or sanctifying the Name — that guarantees the soul a (better) place in the World to Come, and so I suppose one, from this perspective, could see it as a claim against the future life of the soul. But (1), you’d expect that the Big Guy would be able to keep such things straight, (2), this gets you into the matter of Jewish eschatology, to which the only appropriate (Jewish) response is, “We’re living THIS life right now, pay attention!”, and (3), those who complained did not do so on these grounds.
Mr. Likko, Sometimes you are entirely too polite.
Mark, If you really love me, after I die, I would appreciate it if you would keep your religion away from my soulless corpse.
Sorry, ain’t gonna happen and I will bet a hamburger you will appreciate it a lot. Everbody gets wet whether in this life or vicariously in the next.
If you don’t believe in life after death, just lie quietly in your grave or urn until somebody comes to get you. There is going to be a party but you can dress casually I hear. 🙂
This is one of those where I think we godless just get to sail blissfully onward.
Sail on blissfully with the aid of nice Mormon elders. If there is no after life it won’t matter, will it? How will you know? You can squawk now but what difference will it make when whomever you tell you don’t want the ordinance is dead too?
Was that a squawk? Yikes!
You’re a lawyer and you call this an argument? Your “essay” is so rife with logical fallacies that I’m getting exhausted just thinking about the task of picking this apart. Here’s one: you make the assumption (deadly) that everyone agrees with you that neither the soul nor the after life exist (how do you know you are correct – do you have some sort of preternatural powers and knowledge that have eluded the rest of humanity?). Jews do believe in a soul – and it does not matter if you agree with Jews on this point. In their belief system the soul exists and therefore baptizing posthumously is not something they want, or ask for, whether or not you think Mormonism has, or does not have, effect – and it does not matter if you agree with Jews on this point. It is, however, odd that you find desecrating a corpse disturbing in your weltanschuuang, I mean it’s just a decaying piece of meat, that’s dead – or maybe, just maybe, it’s who and what the corpse represents, the symbol, the memories, the emotions, over which you feel protective? If you are entitled to feel that way about an inanimate body, then a Jew or any one else is entitled to feel that way about their soul – and it does not matter if you agree with Jews on this point. If a Jew does not want to be baptized while alive then why would you think he/she, believing in the existence of the soul, would allow baptism simply because their soul has passed from the corporeal body? According to you, when you die, you wouldn’t mind if I inducted you into my new religion “Pedophilianism”. You’re dead, you don’t care at all, so you wont mind if I go around telling everyone you know that you were, all along, a “Pedophilian”, that you espoused its tenets, and so on. Think your undead relatives might get in a “pissing” match with me? Just because other people’s beliefs amount to “unreality” to you doesn’t mean a) they are unreal and/or b) unreal to them, so why don’t you quit your pissing, or bitching, or moaning, or whatever it is you have done with this… argument? Ok Mr. Pedophilian? Oh wait, sorry, I’m only allowed to claim you as that when you’re dead.
I’m having a hard time deciding which part of this comment I like best. It’s a toss up between so quickly pulling out the pedophilia reference, or the “(deadly)”.
Seriously. Call me whatever you wish when I’m dead. Won’t change what I was, and it won’t hurt my feelings. Because I’ll be dead.
Belief-wise I am in the same boat as you, Burt. That being said…
I think there is a difficult tension that the devout live with in a pluralistic society, and the way many (not all) of the devout often deal with it (at least in my observation) is the way my kids dealt with dinner when they were little: It was ok to have mac & cheese, carrots and banana slices all be together on the same plate, but it was very important that they *never, ever touch one another on the plate.* It was not a rational thing, but food touching would really freak them out.
I think this is a case where someone has pushed the carrots until they touch the mac & cheese on someone else’s plate.
There are a great many dead Jews, dead for a refusal to eat pork — a classic way for a Christian to test a Jew’s faith.
Jews, and most often the orthodox, see themselves as being tested — that there is a constant stream of temptations, and that to have withstood these is part of what it means to be Jewish.
To take someone’s life, the way they lived it, and to SPIT on it in such a careless manner, by saying “now you’re mormon!” after they’re DEAD, when they lack the ability to object?
Cruel.
I object to the practice. Not because I believe in a soul or not (agnostic) — but because I believe in the life these people lived. I believe that they lived their lives Jewishly, smuggling matzah in the death camps (the catholics said mass too, if you’ll kindly recall).
Those who died in the Holocaust were not martyrs for their faith — there was never anyone trying to convert them.
But it still rankles.
Jewish babies have been stolen because a servant baptized them, their parents unknowing (well, at least one. it’s a rather famous case).
This is pretty much my perspective, particularly in the case of those Jews, such as Holocaust victims, who died because of their faith. Trying to induct them, posthumously, into another religion comes across as a slap in the face, a failure to respect the integrity of their Jewish beliefs.
You know don’t you, that the ordinance does not make anybody anything and that no one is made a Mormon against his will and is not on any membership roster of any sort?
You know that it is only an offering and is unlike baptism that you find in Christian churches where baptism makes you a member? This isn’t like that. You know that, right?
You know that this ordinance does not connect anybody with anything against their will?
I don’t know, Burt, it could be seen as desecrating the memory/belief/life of the person. I’d be offended if some other church decided to “baptise” my mother. It would be an affront to what she believed while alive and kind of an insult to her ever-living soul.
I don’t know that I’d get really upset about it, though. I’d probably just tell the person that he was a d*ck.
I certainly get that, to us of little faith, this practice is merely performance art. To a Jew, and one who died in the Holocaust, I can see being perturbed by the practice and not simply because it seems to try to deny me what I believed during life but that it also seems so presumptuous as to assume that *your* religion is so superior and correct as to have to make this change in the earthly realm. If God is onmipotent, surely he knows in what faith people are baptized and will, if benevolent, give those baptized into the “wrong” religion a chance to pony up and do what is right procedurally.
Or would I be cynical to say that the earthly baptisms have something to do with claiming membership numbers which look good in pamphlets dispersed by proselytizers near and far?
From what I understand, we also shouldn’t draw cartoons of Mohammed.
Not the real one.
The objections here seem to be mostly based on a misunderstanding of one key point. The LDS church does NOT believe that a baptism performed on behalf of a deceased person makes that person a member of the Mormon church, or turns that person into a Mormon or a Christian. The LDS church believes and teaches that in the afterlife the deceased person (existing as a spirit) always retains the choice to accept or not accept that ordinance which has been performed for them, and if he or she chooses not to accept the baptism performed on their behalf, then it has no effect on them at all. Like some other Christian faiths, the Mormon church views baptism as a necessary preliminary requirement for salvation – just like a passport is a necessary first requirement if you want to take a trip outside the United States. To follow that crude analogy, the Mormons are just offering to hand deceased people their “spiritual passport” in case they ever want to use it, but each deceased person can and must still make their own decision about whether they want to accept that passport and actually make the trip. They can just as easily say “no thanks,” and in that case it has no effect at all. Mormons believe that baptism for the dead just gives them the choice.
this seems … somewhat less objectionable… and more creepy.
It is only creepy in this life. But wait until you are dead! If you think there is creepy stuff in this life just wait until you get THERE.
I will bet you a hamburger that you will be looking for one of those creepy Mormon missionaries asking him or her where the nearest baptismal font can be found. I could be wrong but it is worth hedging your bet. 🙂 Can’t hurt.
I smell Pascal’s Wager. You’re going to have to do better than that in these parts, JLF.
I think it’s a beautiful theology, JLF, and the Mormons’ actions hold up beautifully according to your scriptures [unless baptized of water & the Spirit, one cannot enter the kingdom of heaven].
It’s a prayer for “universal reconciliation,” a form of universalism, and BTW isn’t normative but isn’t heretical in Catholic theology either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_reconciliation
The alternative is a smugness that the unbaptized [or unMormon] are going to hell or some dingy nonHeaven. The alternative is not to pray for a “universal reconciliation,” that even the least and worst of God’s children will choose to spend eternity with him and accept his grace and forgiveness.
The funny thing is that the Mormons [or any sect that believes in heaven via faith and/or baptism] is rather screwed by its critics. Try to get everyone into heaven and you’re a theological imperialist, exclude everyone except your co-religionists and you’re a judgmental self-righteous asshole.
I think the Mormon way is very nice, and not as theologically lazy as other forms of universalism—where God is pretty much Barney the Dinosaur, and the existence of Jesus and the Bible, etc. is really moot because everybody goes to heaven anyway. Jesus might as well have skipped Calvary and gone to the ballgame.
[And for the record, I’d find Mormons retroactively baptizing everyone except Jews to be aesthetically unappealing, and would thwart the desire to have every child of God together one day in heaven.]
Pascal was an atheist and there was no way he logically persuade himself otherwise. Great mathmatician and thinker but short on genuine religious expereince. Religion is all about faith and it he can’t be explained scientifically then it does not exist or said Blaise. In order to find religion you have to look for it assuming you would like to know if God exists. If you do not want to know then you probabaly never will.
Pascal’s Wager was either the dumbest or smartest thing he ever wrote. Taken in the positive, it’s the dumbest, but I strongly suspect he meant it in the negative — that we do not know what lies beyond the grave and are therefore obliged to operate in the light we are given. The threat of Hell is not terribly compelling, nor the promise of Heaven a solace to those who suffer in the present.
I dispute the accuracy of calling Pascal an atheist. He was for most of his life a Jansenian Catholic. Like a lot of religious folks, he went through a period of struggles with his faith and doubts, and a period of bitterness, but from what I can tell he never seriously abandoned a belief in God or Jesus and by his death was fully reconciled to the faith dictated by his conscience. Pascal’s Pensées remains, more than three hundred years after authorship, one of the most important works of Christian apologia in circulation.
Then I stand corrected. My cynicism notwithstanding.
I second Burt’s thoughts on this, more-or-less. I consider Posthumous baptisms a sweet gesture, in its own way. Practically, they are generously allowing me to cover my bases inthe unlikely event they are right. Ideally, it is the very essence of pluralism. Bringing “the other” into your home, so to speak.
It’s the recruitment when I am alive that grates.
(Yes, I’d feel the same way if Muslims did it to me and my ancestors.)
You know Trum, that is a good way to look at it. But in this case nothing is being done to anybody. Look at it as more like a prayer. Would you object to that after you are dead? It is much the same thing but with greater implications if we are right.
“100 years from now, how will they be able to guarantee that my mother and father of blessed memory who lived as Jews and were slaughtered by Hitler for no other reason than they were Jews, will someday not be identified as Mormon victims of the Holocaust?”*
This seems to be the real objection. And of course there can be no such guarantee. But there wouldn’t be, anyway, even if the ritual had never been performed. Nothing at all is beyond the reach of historical revisionism and history itself is an inherently uncertain process…
I think you may be passing over this point too quickly. Granted, certainty and finality is never possible, including in the study and presentation of history. Granted, strictly speaking, we cannot guarnatee that revisionism will not take place.
But, from the point of view of people defending a current or mainstream/accepted historical narrative, the best way to reduce the likelihood of revisionism in the future is to fight, vigorously, incipient revisionism here and now. That is a task for we the living here in the present. Whether there will be anyone to champion our view of history or fight revisionism in 100 years is of course an open question. But it is more likely that there will be like-minded people to fight revisionism in 100 years if we fight revisionism now.
So (my guess–not Jewish or a close student of trends in Jewish popular thought), the driving dynamic here may be similar to the dynamic at play a few years ago when the Roman Catholic Church beatified and then canonized Edith Stein. Stein was born Jewish, converted to Catholicism at 30, and died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz in 1942. IIRC, some Jewish groups, like the ADL, objected to Stein’s canonization as a martyr because it appeared that the Catholic Church was trying to co-op her death. That is, even though the SS killed her because she was a Jew, the Church was trying to say that she died as a martyr to Christianity.
The situations are not closely analogous, because the Mormon postumous baptisms do not involve the same level of fanfare and publicity as the Catholics naming someone as a saint, but I suspect that some of the same dynamics are involved on the part of the objections by the descendants of Holocaust victims.
That is quite a reach. How does anybody know anything about the what will happen in the future? We don’t. That is the big unknown about everything.
You seem quite confident in your “knowledge” about the future in this comment.
I suppose confidence is the right word. It comes from having proved it a piece at a time. That is the beauty of it. Speaking in the third person, you don’t have to take it all in at one time. You try it on for fit here a little there a little. It is totally dependant on the person and not some preacher to convince you it is right.
If you want to know whether the thing is right, say personal sacrifice for others, you practice it. You get a good feeling for doing it so you make sacrifice for others a part of your life.
Pretty soon you see the difference you are making and you know it is good so you add something else such as speaking politiely to everyone and respecting what they have to say and responding accordingly. That feeling or sensation is there too and the anxious or hollow feeling you used to get when you creamed somebody is gone. You simply replace a bad thing with a good thing.
This is the foundation. The notion that people can change for the better and will once they decide. Each in his own time and at his own rate – if he wants to. Once a person makes that decison the rest can happen rapidly or it can take a lifetime.
Burt,
Your argument is hard to reconcile with your concession that desecration of a corpse is an offense against the individual whose body is desecrated (in addition to being an offense against the family or descendants of that individual). It seems to me that you do care, prospectively at least, whether your body will be desecrated. Why is it beyond the pale to not like the prospect that you might be prospectively baptized, too?
In part, because a corpse is a tangible thing, whereas a soul (as far as I’m concerned) is a fantasy. Just because I recognize that other people have a different perspective on the supernatural than me does not mean I abandon my own way of looking at it.
Look at it this way — I’ve recently had a profound medical crisis in my family. A lot of people have said “We’re praying for your [relative].” I did not ask for their prayers. Neither did my relative, who is every bit as secular as I am. I chose to ignore the suggestion that intercessory prayer may actually increase the probability of complications in patients with serious medical problems. Instead, we interpreted the prayers in the light with which they were intended — as hopes for a good outcome, and gestures of emotional support and love.
Is a prayer really so different from a vicarious baptism? It’s difficult for me to understand the difference between the two. But it’s difficult to see how desecration of a corpse could be reasonably interpreted as having a benign motive similar to intercessory prayer.
Good point. Should a person be offended if a Cathoic goes to a cathedral and lights a candle for them, or if a Tibetean Buddhist monk hangs a prayer flag for them?
FWIW, I’m religiously observant, and my congregation regularly offers intercessory prayer as part of its weekly worship service. I would never add someone to the prayer list without asking them first.
Does your congregation offer prayers for people like the president, other political leaders, those serving in the military, or the “victims of the earthquake in China”, etc.?
Hmmm. Good question. We do. Somehow it seems less problematic to do so for broad categories of people than it would for specific persons, but I do take your point.
FWIW, as a nonbeliever I am never offended when any of the faithful tell me they have prayed for me or my loved ones. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Ever had a person say no?
(not that I’m that type, and wouldn’t be even if I wasn’t religious…)
But unless you add the clause “I promise I won’t be offended if you say no…”
If i was that person, and I didn’t want your prayer, I’d figure the odds of me insulting you were kinda high.
I actually do add the concluding clause about not being offended. I make the offer rarely, and do not recall anyone declining.
This comment contains a script that spiritually baptizes anyone who reads it.
Crapsicle…
Dammit!
Every comment from you feels like a blessing, JB.
85% of health care costs go to the elderly for treatment of the most expensive, chronic diseases: heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoarthritis.What’s really out of whack is the amount of money given to AIDS compared to both cancer and heart disease.
With more than a half million cancer deaths, the NIH dedicated 2.5 billion to cancer research. Now get a load out of this: With 32,000 deaths caused by AIDS, 1.7 billion(???) went to AIDS research!!! And with 750,000,000 deaths caused by cardiovascular disease, only a paltry amount–851 million, went to heart disease research. WTF?
If my math is correct, this is how it would break down: for every $10 spent on cancer research, $110 is spent on AIDS and only $3 is spent on cardiovascular research. Again, WTF? Maybe the Hollywood Liberals need to diversify the color of the ribbons they wear at their various awards ceremonies.
The ugly truth is that several actors were physically threatened that is they didn’t wear the AIDS ribbons, their careers would be finished not to mention, their dental work.
Why not make death mandatory for everyone over 65 years old? And no, dammit, I’m not talking about Zyklon B. How about a nice, free, Last Supper and then time to die laughing with N2O? All courtesy of Uncle Sam, of course. I’m in!!
(What the hell? I thought I’d banned you from commenting here, precisely because of non sequiturs like this. — BL)
He often finds a way of sneaking through.
Dr. Saunders, I thought time heals all wounds? You know, new year, literally, a new person–already have been bagged and tagged.
I’m ready to turn over a new leaf–why must we continue to be such adversaries with each other? I extend my hand in friendship and hope you will, too. What sayeth you, Doctor? Friends?
I’m actually in dimension 3064 and time has come to a grinding halt. I can actually see the beginning and end of all creation happening again and again. It’s a most lovely sight. Wish you were here! Alles besten und alles Liebe!!
“From where I sit, there is no such thing as a soul, there is no afterlife, so baptism of the living is an ineffectual ritual.” Burt LikkoWell, Burt–looks like you’ll have to make a few changes to your theological cosmology because not only is there an eternal soul and afterlife, there are also an infinite number of svelte, comely, pristine, virgins. If that isn’t enough to make you Muslims with your 72 horribly hairy, obese, unsightly virgins want to convert to Christianity, then nothing will!
Here’s the good news, bad news for the League folks: Good news: I committed suicide 11 days ago. Bad news: I can still contact all of you extraterrestrials at the League!!
And Blaise, while I am certainly heartened and honored that you would go on a hunger strike until the Mastheads restored full commenting and posting privileges to me, you have my permission to end your strike immediately. I owe you a big one dude–thanks for your concern and loyalty!
Chris, I have a million things, serious things, to discuss with you, but must honor your request to never again mention your name in any comments. Can I start referring to you as, Kris Kringle, instead?
(Then you’re posthumously banninated. — BL)
My objection to the practice of posthumous baptism is that it is both incredibly arrogant and clearly in violation of what the deceased would have wanted. Does it cause any tangible harm? I suppose not. But it seems disrespectful and presumptuous, as though the Mormon church knows better than the deceased Jews what their relationship with God should have been. It may do no harm to the dead, but it is insulting to their memory and to their living co-religionists.
re: “clearly in violation of what the deceased would have wanted” . . .
In 99% of the cases, I think it’s hard for anyone today to presume that they definitively know what any deceased person “would have wanted” in any particular circumstances or with respect to any particular choice if they were alive today (e.g., can you assume that a Swedish farmer born in 1640 “would have wanted” to be a Lutheran?). A member of the LDS church would view that as denying that person the abilty to choose. It also assumes that a person cannot or would ever change their views or beliefs about religion (or anything else) after they have died. Mormons believe, for example, that a man could live and die as a Buddhist in 15th century China, then in the afterlife eventually learn about and choose to accept Jesus Christ as his Savior (or vice versa).
Russell, I appreciate your thoughtful points. I do agree that where family members or particular discrete groups (such as groups representing holocaust victims) specifically ask that baptisms for the dead not be performed for certain people with whom they have a special connection, the LDS church should comply with those requests as a matter of respect. And as I understand it, the LDS church does in fact do their best to respect such requests. For example, I believe that most instances of baptisms for the dead of holocaust survivors took place before any objections had been raised by survivor groups, and those that took place later (there were some) were a mistaken result of poor administrative controls and were contrary to the church’s official policy.
I do appreciate that the baptisms are well-intentioned, and I don’t really blame the LDS church for doing them. I just wanted to point out why Jews (or others) would object to them, which doesn’t seem to make much sense to Burt but makes a lot of sense to me.
I’m not willing to make any guesses about what choices anyone might make after they’re dead. Frankly, I think it’s a pretty big ask to speculate about anyone’s ability to do anything after they’re dead. I would counter that the only real evidence we have about what a person would have wanted is what they did when they were alive. The people in question were Jews, and in the case of those who died in the Holocaust, were Jews who died for their religion. It’s not that they “would have wanted” to be Jewish, they were Jewish. If they had wanted to have been baptized into a different religion, they could have when they were alive. It is disrespectful and arrogant to make a religious statement or participate in a ritual on their behalf that is contrary to the lives they lived.
. . . In which case the deceased person can just say “no thanks” (referring back to my first comment above). I agree that the LDS church could do a better job of explaining that it is something offered to others that can be freely accepted or rejected.
I have never understood why a dead person would say “NO”? I would presume that they would have the scoop by then, wouldn’t you? Say, “NO”, continue rotting in hell where you are; but say “YES”, get a free ticket to heaven. Why do they even have to ask them, it’s a no-brainer? The fact that they even deem it necessary to ask the question, I think, portends the craziness of it all. Maybe the reason Mormons say they ‘ask first’, is simply to dispel litigation here and now. If the whole thing simply becomes too controversial, they’ll just abolish it, like they did plural marriages or blacks not being allowed into the church.
Baptism for the dead is not baptism OF the dead. There is big difference. The Mormon ordinance allows, by proxy, for all people to comply with Christ’s injunction to be baptised as the as the only way to live with God the Father.
LDS thoeogy does not allow for someone to be Shanghied. No one is made a member who does not want to be one and no one is carried on the rolls of the Church as a member who did not join while living. The intent of the ordinance is similar to what Catholics do when they pray the dead out of purgatory. The intent is the same although the theology is a lot different.
Russell Saunders makes one cogent point but for the wrong reason as he would suppose. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not an ordinary church as you find among traditional Chritian denominaitions. It was, according to LDS theology, restored by Jesus Christ and God the Father in person because all the other denominatins got it qwrong in some fundamental areas. They messed things up and Christ had to come back and fix things. Ergo, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the only Church on the earth with authority to do thngs all these others have been doing for the last 2000 years.
Mormonism is not a man made religion as are Lutherans, Catholics, Presbyterians and so forth. When this ordiannce was restored it was authorized by Jesus Christ himself. It was not conjurred up by Joseph Smith or anyone else. They were just the tools by which all this was done.
The reason is simple. No one on earth since the time of the last apostle has had the authority to perform baptism- for the dead or the living.
That means every human being who has ever lived on the earth and even those in any other church, has to be re-baptised by an LDS priesthood holder. Everyone. No Catholic priest or Presbyterian, Baptist or anyone else has had authority to perform that ordiance. Maybe that explains why traditional Christians get cranky when it comes to Mormons?
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am wholly convinced.
Russell, you are a smart cat. Shall we make an aoppointment to get you wet? 🙂
In all seriuousness Russell, there is so much more to LDS theology than people have ever been told or understood. It is not far fetched at all to suggest that this is no man-made institution.
Jospeh Smith and all the founding fathers of this Church were not smart enough to do what was done without divine help and even then they messed so much up it still causes the church heart burn.
Whether you belive it or not it is a fascinating and intriguing study and goes beyind the stuff getting tossed around. Just twixt us kids, this is a journey no man takes without learning more about himslef, God and how the universe works than anything else mere mortals have understood before.
For example, the stuff in the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price talks about a pre-mortal existance, a great plan for mankind that God devloped and Christ implimented, counterlss worlds that Christ created under God the Father’s direction. That Christ is not only the saviour of this world but of every living thing that ever lived in the uninverse or ever will.
And teh most astounding thing is that every person can find out for himself whether it is an amazing piece of fantsy or the real thing. You don’t need some preacher or any person to discover for yourself. It only depends on the person doing the asking – no one else.
Jospeh Smith and all the founding fathers of this Church were not smart enough to do what was done without divine help and even then they messed so much up it still causes the church heart burn.
That’s a bit of humility I find completely charming. I presume it’s what allowed the LDS Church to reverse its previous (awful) position on race so quickly and completely.
Mike, my comments are not intended to be charming or witty. It is just the plain fact of the matter. There were no well education, urbane, scholalry leaders in the early church. If you read any of the letters and writings of Joseph Smith Jr. (The Joseph Smith Papers Project) you will see just what I mean. Joseph Smith Jr was functionally illiterate by todays standards. Anything that needed to be cogent and readable had to be written by someone else.
Russell, I have not even scratched the surface. According to this theology, we all lived with God the father in a premortal existance and grew into adulthood in a spirit form.
You could say we are mature spirits in children’s bodies. We came here to learn the things such as sin, and to get a physical body just like Christ and God the Father.
And the gods (small g), as found in Genesis, are others who are co-inheritors (Romans 8:17) of Christ’s full inheritance. God, (small g) is an attained status or condition while God (capital G) is God the Father of which there is no other like him. Interesting, huh?
Must… Resist… Temptation…. To Mock!
Interesting commnet. Why would you mock stuff you don’t understand? I am not saying that I have done i,t but in my old age I try to do it less and less and sometimes it works.
Honestly, no snarkiness intended, I don’t get that hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach when I keep the conversation on a higher level. But that is just me – after a lifetime of mockery and verbally abusing others. For real.
Perhaps it’s a reaction to the fact that I don’t enjoy being preached to here in the online equivalent of my own living room.
Burt, you hung a “Mormons Welcome” sign on your front door. Please knock! Let’s discuss your theology! Oh, I’m so glad you’re here, we’ve been waiting for you all day!
You axed for it, mac.
I understand that. It is uncomfortable to some. It is kind of lie something inside is saying “you are not good enough and this guy is throwing all that back up in your face” kind of thing. You isn’t alone there. Been there done that!
JLF, that isn’t quite the reason I bristle at the approach. When one is preached at, it’s not somethng inside oneself that is saying “You are not good enough,” it’s external, it’s the preacher making that argument. A claim that “my belief system is different and better” is inherently a claim that “your differing belief system is inferior.” You’re playing the role of preacher here, so I bristle at your remarks. When you justify your claim of superiority based on the alleged act of God, an entity that I have affirmatively indicated I lack belief in, that aggravates it.
But TVD makes a good point (as he so often does) above; I did open up into an issue of Mormon theology in the OP and so I’m out of line to evidence irritation when I find Mormon theology discussed in the comments. Perhaps your discussion of theological issues here was not aimed at gaining converts to your faith, but rather was intended to explciate theological issues relevant to the subject from an insider’s perspective.
Now, in my defense, the OP discusses baptism of the dead, not escheatology or genesis. I don’t think it’s necessary to proffer a holistic explanation of Mormon theology to educate a nonbeliever about the ritual of baptism of the dead — and actually, I think you’ve done a nice job of explaining it as an offer, an opening of a gate, and that the dead person must still make an affirmative, voluntary act to go through that gate and adopt the LDS system of belief.
Nevertheless, I can see how baptism of the dead might overlap on issues of conversion, so I’ll modify my ascerbic posture from last evening to a more charitable one and beg your pardon for expressing myself sourly.
But you’ll still have to do better than Pascal’s Wager to convince me that there’s objective substance to the theology you’re expounding. At minimum, you’ve yet to explain why the Mormon version of Pascal’s Wager is better than the substantially identical argument offered by a Muslim, “backed” by the unerring word of Allah spoken to the Prophet and given to us in the Holy Qu’ran.
And the whole discussion about the validity of Mormon theology is still a bit off point from the OP — in which, you may recall, I acquit Mormons of moral wrongdoing, and instead look critically at a few Jewish people (I suspect a small minority of them) who have taken public offense at what seems to me to be a harmless and well-intentioned gesture.
Burt. I know nothing about Islam so I can’t comment. And I only know about Pascal because I looked him up. (I was playing cards in the back of the room during Philosophy 101.) In any reagrd, the Mormonology is not prostelyzing. It is just explaining. Take it or leave it. But it can be danged fascinating.