Over My Dead Body
There's been a recent controversy where some members of the Mormon church posthumously baptized non-Mormons. In particular, Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl, who was beheaded by Muslim terrrorists. Obviously these Mormons think they're doing a good deed, but, especially taking into account a history of forced conversions, many Jews find this highly offensive.
The Mormon church apparently doesn't approve of this activity. But on the spectrum of things religious people do to people of other religions, it's pretty mild. It reminds me of people around the world praying for atheist Christopher Hitchens when he got ill. (Praying for others can be offensive, by the way, depending on context). These Mormon baptisms amount to some people with beliefs you don't share saying some words you don't believe some time after you're gone--not quite the same thing as torturing someone to make him change his ways.
I agree that Mormons and others should leave people alone to control their own religious destiny. But Pearl's (and so many others') real problem isn't (and wasn't) overzealous Mormons.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:11 AM
6 Comments:
But this is a completely silly meaningless action to nonbelievers of this belief system. Hard to care-its like checking someone's horoscope.
Of course highlighting this issue amplified Mormon weirdness (to non Mormons) and hurts Romney among the core of the party that seems to actually care about these things
Obviously, everyone is free to pray for whomever they want, and can do so vocally or privately. I don't understand how word of specific posthumous baptisms got out, but I thought it was standard practice for Mormon's to "baptise" everyone who ever lived. It's one reason why Mormonism is so involved in geneology - they at least have had a formal program to find the name of everyone who ever lived so that they can give them a shot at immortality. Fairly generous of them, if you ask me.
Incidentally, don't certain Tibetan Monks pray 24 hours a day (in shifts) to keep the world going?
This does makes the Mormons look weird, and may be politically motivated, but if you look at it objectively what they're doing is no weirder than most religious ceremonies.
In Libya, the people who have taken over are now digging up Christian and Jewish graves. Now that's offensive.
DG, my understanding is that the long-term goal is baptism of everybody, but in the short term they prioritize. The first priority is to baptize all the deceased ancestors of Mormons, and then to baptize all their other deceased relatives. At some point they included famous people from every era.
Not only do they baptize the dead, but they also marry them to each other. Saint Francis, John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, and just about every other famous dead person has been baptized in this way and married (not always to their earthly spouses).
I know people who find this very upsetting and people who couldn't care less. My mom and her third cousin in Cincinnati both work on our family's genealogy; our cousin finds the idea of Mormons baptizing her deceased Catholic father to be very offensive, and my mom just finds it silly.
Either way, I'm glad that the Mormons managed to microfilm the church and civil records in much of Western Europe before this was banned by most of their governments. When I was in Seattle I went through the Mormons' microfilms and managed to trace my ancestors back to my great-to-the-eight grandmother, born in 1648. It was like a game: each generation the number of lines double, but many of them turn out to be untraceable. How far back can you get it? Only one line was traceable back ten generations before me. It took several months and was a lot of fun.
Hmm. Could they marry me to Marilyn Monroe? Is there some sort of posthumous pre-posthumous honeymoon option?
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