-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Posthumous proxy baptism is a religious practice where a living person, acting as proxy, is baptized on behalf on a dead person. It is currently practiced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church), who submit names for the ordinance. The vicarious ordinance for the deceased have included Holocaust victims, prominent Nazis, and well known Jews such as Albert Einstein.
It has been discovered that the name of Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, had been entered into the database but not submitted for baptism. Wiesel said, “I object fervently. It’s an outrage.” Wiesel wants Romney to speak out on the subject of the baptisms. Wiesel claims he’s still alive.
Those who practice this rite view baptism as an indispensable requirement to enter the Kingdom of God and believe that baptizing the dead will satisfy this requirement. The justification for this belief comes from 1 Corinthians 15:29, though Biblical scholars question the verse’s translation and meaning.
The outrage is that anyone would take this practice seriously. Either the practice works and the dead person enters the Kingdom of God, apparently a desirable outcome, or it doesn’t work and nothing happens. Those who object to the rite seem to be fearing the former outcome for there is no reason to object to the latter.
None of this brouhaha is about the dead.
H/T: Howard Friedman, HuffPo, Jesus and Mo.
Then I take it you wouldn’t object if at My Church Of Choice ™, we decided to end services by saying Mormons aren’t going to Their Heaven for living their lives under a different creed than we choose so we’ll just indoctrinate them symbolically into our church so they can get into Our Heaven ™ anyway?
Really, it is a better practice to simply leave others who don’t want your religion out of your religion. That’s what’s wrong with the Mormon practice and what’s wrong with proselytism in general. Baptism is a rite of admission or adoption. If people want your Mormon baptism (which is a considerably different ritual than something like praying)? If they have questions or want to join? Go for it. If they don’t have questions or don’t want to join? Leave. Them. Alone. Anything else is an attempt to impose your will over theirs in a matter that is quite simply none of the LDS’ business. If someone of a different belief system than mine wants to pray for me? I don’t care. Prayers amount to well-wishes. However, if they wanted to symbolically make me a member of their church (which is precisely what baptism does)? I’d be pissed. Why? Because if I wanted to be a fucking Mormon, I’d join myself out of my own free will.
But since you seem to have no problem with that, you won’t mind if we baptize you into the My Church Of Choice ™ this weekend. Just to make sure you get into Our Heaven ™. Because we know what’s best for you.
Schmuck.
Yeah, I gotta agree with Mike. It’s pretty disrespectful.
Another way of looking at this is through a more familiar practice. Catholics believe they can pray someone out of purgatory. Mormons essentially do the same thing only they do it with this ordinance. Catholics will gladly prayer for non-Catholics and do so regulalry as I understand. Is anyone offended by that? Neither should they be offended by the Mormon rite.
The issue here is that responders, commenters and bloggers have little idea what the practice is all about. First, this ordinance does not change any deceased person’s religious status. Their names are not carried on any roll identifying them as Christian or Mormon. It is an offering and does not Shanghai anyone.
Christian theology dictates that for anyone to return to God the Father they must do so through Jesus Christ via baptism. Given this is strictly an earthly ordinance which can only be performed by living people, the dead would seem to be automatically excluded from “heaven” if they had refused or never been offered the opportunity to partake. Essentially the vast majority of all man kind, not being Christian of any sort, would be doomed. So goes traditional Christian thought.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints, (Mormons) contend God restored the original Church with its priesthood authority precisely to fix that problem. Mormons say it was done by God the Father and Jesus Christ in the flesh. (That is why Mormons are not Protestants or Trinitarians. They did not arise out of Catholicism or traditional Christianity)
They say the original first century church doctrines were contravened due to the machinations of men who were charged primarily with designing a third century Christianity that accommodated the politics of the day and that some required doctrines plus priesthood authority were lost.
Mormon theology says only baptisms performed by men with that authority are efficacious and no one born since the death of the last apostle had legitimate authority until it was restored. They say it is their job to baptize, by proxy or directly, every human being who has ever lived on the earth or ever will.
JJ Fuller,
I don’t give a rat’s ass what Mormon Theology is about, or what Mormon’s think their duties are. As a Jew, a people persecuted for two thousand years because we didn’t believe in Jesus, to finally be brutally murdered for our heritage, to be baptised into the LDS shows disrespect and frankly callous stupidity. Believe whatever they will, leave Jews out of it. To be frank Jews pretty much are not interested in an afterlife, but on how humans treat fellow humans. The ritual may be meaningless, but the disrespect it shows is palpable.
No body had anything done to them. You are hollering without being hurt.
AY,pete, & OS:
:=)
aarrgghhh
i only watched csi as a stalkerish sorta thing for jorga fox
Pete, you will have to take an additional 23,647 hours of work to unlearn all the stuff that is wrong. Also, if you watch more than four episodes of CSI or NCIS, then there will be another ten thousand hours of unlearning to do.
AY
i’m trying to get a law degree by watching “law and order” reruns. Gene said i’ll need about 60-80 thousand hours.
i’m guessing that doesn’t include commercials.
No, but it matters when he starts funneling millions of dollars to fund fringe candidates or overturn laws because he “knows better than you”. That’s the same arrogance we’re seeing – no need to look for common ground when you can just force the issue.
pete,
you been watching too many reruns of “harry’s law”…… just sayin….
it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
tommy jefferson
It’s not whether YOU believe there’s anything to it. It’s whether THEY think they’re doing something significant without or even against your will. The anger is not over the meaningless ceremony, it’s at the arrogance of thinking that they have the right to perform the ceremony at all.
It’s a poor analogy but somebody taking pictures at a beach and jerking off to it in the bathroom later doesn’t harm the person who’s picture was taken… but very few people wouldn’t be seriously squeeked out by it if they subsequently learn about it.
It’s a disgusting practice. To those who don’t see the harm…..Do you have any objections to necrophilia?
but if you don’t believe in mormonism how could you think they could steal your spirit?
now if they could do this ritual while juggling poisonous snakes then eating a 2000 y/o dead guy’s flesh and blood. that might be worth watching.
Geez, how about, “Your.” Ugh.
A man made it to heaven and met Saint Peter at the pearly gates. SP took the man on a tour pointing to each door while explaining which religious group was inside. As they approached another door, SP told the man to tip toe and whisper. “Why?” the newly deceased asked. “Because that’s where the Mormons are and they think they’re the only ones up here.”
What it all comes down to is that the process says to the non-Mormon, “You’re beliefs are wrong.” There is no rational reason to be bothered by it. As the original piece pointed out, why should anyone be insulted if they think it has no effect on them? Because the two things that will infuriate people more than anything are to tell them that their parenting is incorrect or that their religion is wrong. They are upset because they don’t want their beliefs challenged, not because it harms them.
This is highly offensive because it’s saying, pretty much literally, that “I know better than you and I don’t need your consent to act.” It doesn’t matter that that person doesn’t agree with you or even that they’re dead and you believe it can have no negative effect – what matters is that it infantizes the other person.
As a somewhat contrived analogy imagine going to bed and waking up to discover that somebody had shaved your beard, cut your hair, whatever. There’s “‘no harm’ since it will just grow back” right? They think you look better and that’s all that matters, right?
What? No Python video?
cogrannnie
read oro lee again.
Seems they want to steal your spirit to make spirit babies of on their own planets. Seems like many believers would feel threatened by that.
Never know, they might have some contract with……
And that’s another reason, the believers say, why they don’t like the religious freedom for others than themselves.