A little bit of Background for those that may not know, the Church of Jesus Christ of Ladder Day Saints (LDS Church) or Mormon Church sometimes symbolically (no corpses involved) baptizes people after they have died so that they can go to heave. As the article states this got them into so hot water when they got caught doing it for Holocaust victims. So not they are only supposed to do it for church member’s family member. The thought process goes like this, if I convert to the LDS church and I want my family to have the opportunity to join me in heaven I have them baptized. After someone is baptized they are added to the churches membership logs (that is how they discovered that Mrs. Dunham had been baptized).
My question to the community is, is this a big deal or not? Like a lot of activists for reproductive rights I have had a very angry Christian tell me that he/she is going to pray for my hell bound soul. What bothered me is that this person was trying (not succeeding) exert power over me. They meant it as an act of violation or at least it felt like they did.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: The LDS Church Baptizes President Obama's Mother Posthumously.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/13558
This is less creepy than it sounds, honestly!
Mormons believe that when people are posthumously baptised, the baptised person decided whether or not to accept that baptism. As it was put to me succinctly by a Mormon friend: "It's up to the individual whether it's accepted on the other side or not".
I'm not Mormon, but I do believe that they are attempting to do the best by their religion. They want others to have the chance at eternity, and since they believe in a sentient soul it is not unreasonable to believe that the soul to have free will in the afterlife, just as in life.
It is sad that some people use the afterlife as a scare tactic/power control. Personally, I don't believe in an afterlife, but when an Evangelical friend said that he wanted me to become Christian so that I could be saved from what he believes are the very real torments of hell, I could feel genuine concern for me. This is in itself is a loving act, and something that's often overlooked in criticism of gentle evangelicals. Again though, it's very sad that someone might use it as a scare tactic or threat!
That reminds me of an anecdote from one of Richard Dawkins books. He said that he once got a letter from a woman who said that out of the various traumatic things that happened to her as a child, the worst one, the one that bothered her the most for years, was that her best friend died and went to hell. You see, she was catholic, and her best friend was protestant. She grew up believing that this nice little girl that she had loved was being tortured in hell for all eternity, just because of an accident of birth. That's why I think the entire concept of baptism is bad. If there is a god, I'd have lot more respect for him if he judges people on how they live their lives rather than on arbitrary things like who sprinkled water on their head before they could talk.
This is why Mormons will bapitise the dead - if to give those who didn't have the chance the choice. In fact, if you're a baby you have even less choice, and you can't really be unbaptised! (Though one person I heard of put an 'unbaptism' announcement in the local paper - the only 'official' way of being unbaptised!)
Yeah. So to be fair, they should really baptize ALL the dead. How is it fair for someone to be condemned just because the Mormons don't know their name?
It sounds to me like they are doing it more for publicity than for a genuine concern for people's spiritual well-being.
I don't think so. Its a major part of their religion; they do it all the time, and mostly they don't try to make it public.
I could understand their baptizing family members of people who belong to their congregation. When they're baptizing someone like Obama's mom, they're doing it for the publicity.
But as far as I've heard, they didn't want that info to get out.
What I think is likely is that some people in the LDS church view this sort of thing rather cynically and think about publicity and that kind of thing. But I also think its likely that there are people that sincerely believe that they're doing someone a favor by offering them this chance of posthumous baptism, and they might easily decide to baptize anyone they think of, and think of it as a nice private favor. Like thinking "oh, I hope that celebrity with cancer doesn't die"-- it doesn't actually have any effect on their health, but nice people still think about the well being of anyone they know much about.
I don't know which thing happened here-- it could easily be for publicity-- but I wouldn't assume that it must have been.
Besides, mostly they get bad publicity for this kind of thing.
It's my understanding that some in the church believe this to be some sort of mistake at best, or prank at worst. Either way, baptizing non-church members (as was Dunham) is questionable at best.
There isn't really any "they" there. For the most part, these baptisms are done when individual church members submit the names of their ancestors or relatives. Or, sometimes, the names of other people -- they're not supposed to do that, but there's really no good way of checking whether the name that someone submitted is actually the name of a relative. It doesn't look like there was any sort of top-down decision to baptize her, just one person deciding that it would be a good idea, and nobody recognizing the name as it went through the process.
It makes just as much sense as baptizing an infant, who certainly doesn't choose to have the ceremony done.
Honestly, I think the whole idea of baptism is silly. How can you trust a god who would condemn millions of good people for being born in the wrong country/century? At least the Mormons have come up with a way where you're not totally screwed for being born in the wrong place, but they still don't make it totally fair. What they should do is a giant mass baptism of everyone who ever died or ever will die, and then all their imaginary spirits can choose to accept it or not, and the imaginary world will be fair.
Anyway, I think the idea of baptizing other people's dead relatives is a public relations mistake, but otherwise it has no effect on anyone. If they want to spend their time doing it, whatever. I could announce that I hearby baptize the whole world atheist, and it wouldn't affect anyone's life either.
Sorry for so many comments, but I was thinking about this line:
"I have had a very angry Christian tell me that he/she is going to pray for my hell bound soul. What bothered me is that this person was trying (not succeeding) exert power over me. They meant it as an act of violation or at least it felt like they did. "
If someone tells me they're praying for me to change, it doesn't make me like them. Its pretentious and condescending and annoying in all sorts of ways. But, I'd much rather have someone try to control me through prayer, or voo doo dolls or whatever, than try to control me through methods that might actually have some success, like legislation. If all the people in the world who want to impose their views on others could just stick to doing it through prayer, that would be awesome, and the rest of us could just get on with our lives.
I. Hate. Posthumous baptism. The problem with saying "Their soul has the option to refuse baptism!" is that they don't exactly wait around for said soul to respond before adding the deceased's name to the church rolls. And once you're on there, you're on there forever. Take it from me, whose mom was raised Mormon and left the church at 15 and then 30 years later met a man at a function at the high school who introduced himself by saying, "Hi, I'm your bishop."
Personally, I have clearly informed every single one of my still-Mormon family members that if they try to posthumously baptize me, I will come back from the dead purely to be their own personal poltergeist. I think it's a terribly disrespectful thing to do and completely disregards the deceased's agency during their lifetime to choose a faith as they saw fit. I've chosen my faith, and it ain't yours, so don't try to reappropriate me for your church after the fact when I can't argue the issue anymore.
Hello! Even though the nae is different I am actually the original poster (screen name vs display name). I live in Utah so that is why this was on my radar. I was talking to my (former missionary, married with 2 kids and counting, runs a Boy scout troop, wife stays home with the babies) Mormon officemate today and he actually seemed really embarrassed by the whole thing. I told him that if I die he has my permission to baptize me but that is just because we are pals and I know he worries about my soul.
Ehhh, let 'em. Ultimately these individual souls, whatever becomes of souls, know how they lived and believed, and a rite won't alter the past.