/ stevenwarran's Library/ Notes/ March 6, 2012, The Examiner, Mormons just don't get what's wrong with posthumous baptisms, by Brandon Schlacht,
March 6, 2012, The Examiner, Mormons just don't get what's wrong with posthumous baptisms, by Brandon Schlacht,
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March 6, 2012, The Examiner, Mormons just don't get what's wrong with posthumous baptisms, by Brandon Schlacht,
This Sunday (Mar. 4), a letter from the leaders of the Mormon Church was read aloud to their congregations reminding them of the rules for baptizing dead people into the Mormon faith and gently chiding those church-members who haven't been following it:
“Our preeminent obligation is to seek out and identify our own ancestors. Those whose names are submitted for proxy temple ordinances should be related to the submitter. Without exception, Church members must not submit for proxy temple ordinances any names from unauthorized groups, such as celebrities and Jewish Holocaust victims.”
The letter came in response to complaints about a recent spate of such unauthorized baptisms by Mormon churches in Utah, Arizona and Idaho. Most of those baptized were Holocaust victims such as Anne Frank, author of The Diary of Anne Frank and the parents of famed Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Also baptized was Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. His parents didn't find out about the baptism until questioned about it by a reporter. Pearl's father has requested that the baptism be nullified.
These proxy ceremonies of Holocaust victims occurred despite a 1995 agreement with Jewish leaders by the Church of Latter Day Saints that banned them. On February 14, the Church issued an apology for them.
From the Los Angeles Times:
"The church keeps its word and is absolutely firm in its commitment to not accept the names of Holocaust victims for proxy baptism," a spokesman said in a statement last month after it was discovered that the parents of Wiesenthal had been baptized.
"It is distressing when an individual willfully violates the church’s policy, and something that should be understood to be an offering based on love and respect becomes a source of contention."
Jews are not, however, the only ones who've received such posthumous baptisms. Adolf Hitler, Pope John Paul II, Christopher Columbus, John Wesley (founder of Methodism), and America's founding fathers and presidents have also received them. In 2009, it was discovered that Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Durham, was posthumously baptized into the Mormon faith during the 2008 presidential campaign.
During the current GOP primary campaign, there's been some publicity over the fact that candidate Mitt Romney, a Mormon had his father-in-law, Edward Davies, baptized 14 months after his death. Davies, despite the fact that he was a freethinker and completely nonreligious, was a legitimate target for posthumous baptism according to Mormon doctrine. According to comedian Bill Maher though, it was also a legitimate target for satire. You can find a video of Bill Maher's take on this Mormon practice in the left column of this page.
As an atheist, I think the practice is a fit subject for satire too. I don't believe the posthumous baptism of Jews or Romney's father-in-law has any more chance of turning them into Mormons than a posthumous circumcision has of turning Genghis Khan into Genghis Cohen.
But...
I also think the practice reveals something disturbing about the Mormon attitude towards civil liberties. They think their vision of what's good for people trumps the individual's right to freedom of conscience... and if the law keeps them from compelling others to submit to their dogma while living, they'll find a loophole and do it when people are in no position to protest. This isn't an act of love for the deceased. It's an act of contempt for their right to think for themselves.
And this contempt for other peoples' choices finds expression elsewhere too; in the attempts to roll back womens' reproductive rights, undermine separation of church and state, and limit who can marry whom. In this regard, the Church of Latter Day Saints is little different from most others. For faiths that regard their truth and their morality as superior to others, the idea of freedom of conscience is an unnatural grafting on an absolutist ideal. It's no wonder that so many of them buck against it.
But...
I also think the practice reveals something disturbing about the Mormon attitude towards civil liberties. They think their vision of what's good for people trumps the individual's right to freedom of conscience... and if the law keeps them from compelling others to submit to their dogma while living, they'll find a loophole and do it when people are in no position to protest. This isn't an act of love for the deceased. It's an act of contempt for their right to think for themselves.
And this contempt for other peoples' choices finds expression elsewhere too; in the attempts to roll back womens' reproductive rights, undermine separation of church and state, and limit who can marry whom. In this regard, the Church of Latter Day Saints is little different from most others. For faiths that regard their truth and their morality as superior to others, the idea of freedom of conscience is an unnatural grafting on an absolutist ideal. It's no wonder that so many of them buck against it.
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