Mormon Defense League justifies baptism for the dead

[_Darth J]

From the Mormon point of view, withholding baptism would be debilitating to the deceased person.

I'm sure the Mormon Defense League or Mormon Voices or The Persecution Patrol or whatever would have no problem with evangelical Christians taking the names of dead Mormons and holding a special ritual where those dead Mormons are condemned to hell because they chose the wrong church in this life.

[_zeezrom]

I'm of two minds on this.

Since I'm a non-believer I see the idea of baptizing long dead non-Mormons into the Church as pointless as baptizing chickens. What possible difference could it make?

The other side is that it's understandable that religious Jews would take offense at the idea that "Christians" would attempt to convert holocaust victims. After all, it was a group of "Christians" that perpetrated the holocaust in the first place because they hated Jews.

I imagine that Jews do not think that Mormons can pull off that sort of religious magic, anyway. I'm guessing that they are just offended by the attempt.

I think most people in Cambodia are Buddhists. They don't worry too much about what other people believe.

I want everyone (who cares) to know that I'm not trying to make a stand but rather hoping to understand. Thanks for taking time with me.

1. I never thought Jews worried much about what other people believed either - just the same as Buddhists. I agree that Buddhists tend to be more open about beliefs and this would make it easier to accept a post-life Christian baptism.

2. Folks in Europe who happened to be Christian believers killed Jews. Now a Christian sect (Mormons) is trying to make them Christian. Okay, I can see the problem here.

Given #1 and #2, I can be persuaded. But something still tells me there must be a billion other reasons people might get just as offended about other dead people getting dunked. A lot of people really do care about what other people believe and feel strongly about what others might do with their ancestor's names. There might be some other folks who got killed by people who happened to be Christian so they should also be in the same boat.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion. It makes sense. I think I agree with y'all on the holocaust Jews issue now.

[_Sethbag]

I have long believed that the Jews who are up in arms about this should learn to get over it, because it's a really stupid thing to argue about. Mormon baptism for the dead is 100% a thing in Mormon's heads, and means nothing in reality. It's an empty gesture.

However, I've been doing some more thinking about this, and I am a little taken with the idea that people who are non-Mormon might actually think a Mormon proxy baptism has some real effect on someone.

Take, for example, the idea of voodoo. As an atheist, I believe voodoo is pure fantasy. You could make a voodoo doll of someone and stick pins in it and it would have no effect whatsoever, because the forces at work according to voodoo practitioners are imaginary. However, what if a given religious person believes that Satan and his minions are behind voodoo (it is almost certainly true that at least some Christians believe this)? How would a given Christian react if they learned that a voodoo witch doctor had his flock make a doll representing that Christian's grandmother, and poke it with pins and whatever else? If that person believed that such practices invited the attentions of Satan, this might cause them considerable distress.

I don't know enough about Jews to know whether a believing Jew actually imagines a Mormon baptism having any sort of effect on their dead relatives. But I'm no longer 100% certain people should just get over it* - to some folks, Mormon baptism for the dead could come across as an overtly hostile, and meaningful act.

*well, I think they should get over their religious beliefs, certainly, but in a context where that isn't going to happen, opposition to Mormon proxy baptism may seem more understandable

[_aranyborju]

It's my understanding that family members of holocaust victims get upset, because the Jews were victimized during the holocaust partly because of their religious heritage. From my limited understanding of southeast asian history, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge committed genocide, but the victims of their purges were not singled out because of their religious heritage.

Thank you, aranyborju.

I'm feeling really slow today. What is my problem? The answer you gave me is not working. It is not satisfying for some reason. How does the reason for being killed make it more or less offensive?

I don't think you have a problem Zee. I think that, just like anything else, some people find things offensive, and others do not...nothing wrong with that. I personally don't find baptizing Holocaust victims to be offensive, but then again...I'm not Jewish, so maybe I don't have the cultural capacity to properly empathize with them.

[_aranyborju]

I have long believed that the Jews who are up in arms about this should learn to get over it, because it's a really stupid thing to argue about. Mormon baptism for the dead is 100% a thing in Mormon's heads, and means nothing in reality. It's an empty gesture.

However, I've been doing some more thinking about this, and I am a little taken with the idea that people who are non-Mormon might actually think a Mormon proxy baptism has some real effect on someone.

Take, for example, the idea of voodoo. As an atheist, I believe voodoo is pure fantasy. You could make a voodoo doll of someone and stick pins in it and it would have no effect whatsoever, because the forces at work according to voodoo practitioners are imaginary. However, what if a given religious person believes that Satan and his minions are behind voodoo (it is almost certainly true that at least some Christians believe this)? How would a given Christian react if they learned that a voodoo witch doctor had his flock make a doll representing that Christian's grandmother, and poke it with pins and whatever else? If that person believed that such practices invited the attentions of Satan, this might cause them considerable distress.

I don't know enough about Jews to know whether a believing Jew actually imagines a Mormon baptism having any sort of effect on their dead relatives. But I'm no longer 100% certain people should just get over it* - to some folks, Mormon baptism for the dead could come across as an overtly hostile, and meaningful act.

*well, I think they should get over their religious beliefs, certainly, but in a context where that isn't going to happen, opposition to Mormon proxy baptism may seem more understandable

I agree, but for the foreseeable future, the Holocaust is going to be a hot button issue for a lot of people, especially Jews.

[_Darth J]

In response to some who have been offended by this well-meaning act, the Mormon church agreed to implement and enforce rules against proxy baptizing non-relatives.

http://mormonvoices.org/859/proxy-baptisms

vs.

While the term "Mormon Church" has long been publicly applied to the Church as a nickname, it is not an authorized title, and the Church discourages its use.

http://newsroom.LDS.org/style-guide

[_Chap]

I don't know enough about Jews to know whether a believing Jew actually imagines a Mormon baptism having any sort of effect on their dead relatives. But I'm no longer 100% certain people should just get over it* - to some folks, Mormon baptism for the dead could come across as an overtly hostile, and meaningful act.

I am in a position to say something about Jews from personal knowledge, though I am not Jewish myself. No, they probably don't think anything that Mormons do in their proxy baptism can affect their dead relations - partly because they are likely to think that some people in strange clothes doing stuff in a pool of water is pretty unlikely to affect anybody outside the range of splashing, and partly because many Jews believe that once you are dead there is not much more to be said about you as a person.

The reasons are more like this, and I think you will appreciate them without needing to be Jewish.

Your grandmother is dead, and she has no grave. All you have is her photograph and her name. You hear that an Islamist fanatic has made up a website in which her picture and name appear in a list showing her as a member of the 'Al Qaeda posthumous suicide volunteers to bring death to American pigs'. Now wouldn't you be mildly offended and ask the people who did that to desist? Even if you believed that your grandmother was no longer, in any sense 'there', and she was beyond being hurt or insulted because she had ceased to exist? Even if you believed the website was completely nonsensical?

Maybe not. But if you would feel offended, you probably understand something about why Jews don't want their dead relations' identities used for proxy baptism. Sometimes a name is all we have left of someone we loved, and protecting that name can be important to us, because it is all we have left to do.

[_zeezrom]

Chap,

There are lots of deceased persons who don't have a grave besides holocaust Jews. I mentioned the Pol Pot victims as one example.

[_Sethbag]

So Mormon proxy baptism is indeed interpreted as a hostile act, but not hostile to the dead people, but rather hostile to the living Jews of today. And that is because it is not just tantamount, but in fact literally saying that Judaism is false, and that it must be replaced with Mormonism in the grand scheme of things?

Insert any given people or belief system you like. Mormon proxy baptism is an overt statement that whatever it is these people believed in during their lives (and which their descendants or relatives probably still do) is incorrect, and must be replaced by Mormonism in the grand scheme of things.

[_zeezrom]

Egocentric?