Background: My grandmother was baptized Catholic as a baby and raised in the Lutheran church, which is where she raised her children – my mother and aunts and uncles. One of her sons (my uncle) became a Mormon as an adult. He has been very interested in keeping up the family genealogy (fine by me, and great if he wants to do it, as I understand that’s a big deal in the Mormon church).
So another branch of the family has also been working up a copy of the family history, and I got my copy this weekend. It says of my grandmother:
[Name, birth & marriage dates, etc.]
Her death and burial dates [1991, age 84]
"baptized LDS 17 Jan 1998 in Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, sealed child LDS 11 Jul 2000 in Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints."
How the hell can they baptize someone into a different church AFTER SHE’S DEAD?? I assure you that my grandmother did not declare a change of faith; she was pretty much mentally incompetent for the last 13 years of her life, I don’t see any possibility of her actively renouncing the religion she’d known all her life to become a Mormon. She just wasn’t capable. This was a surprise to my mother (her daughter) as well.
I don’t have any emotional investment in this particular act, as I have basically lapsed into agnosticism. I guess I’m just wondering what authority the Mormons claim when baptizing someone outside their faith after death, without prior knowledge or consent. Did my uncle pull some weird juju or what?
I think that it is one of the parts of their faith that you can baptize your relatives or anyone else for that matter after they die. I am sure and LDS will be along shortly to answer more fully.
Well, they’re claiming the “authority” of their church, of course. Just as when Catholics or whoever pray for someone outside their faith, they’re doing it under the “authority” of their church.
Well, I think there’s a difference between praying for someone and baptizing them in a faith they did not choose.
OK, how about a corollary General Question: Are the Mormons the only ones who do this? It just seems kind of . . . underhanded. Makes one wonder, why don’t ALL religions just go around baptizing people posthumously so they can claim them as members of their faith?
Another far-from-expert-answer, but my understanding is that this is one one of the key reasons why Mormons are an excellent source of geneology info. They have a belief that you can be moved into heaven if someone baptises you after death. So if you’re a believer, you can go way back and save everyone who wasn’t a true believer in real life. However, it’s also my understanding that someone has to do this, not the church itself. So, likely your uncle (or another Mormon in the family) did it.
Have you never prayed for someone? If yes, then that’s how a relative of yours (most likely–albeit a distant relative) who just so happens to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints performed the ordinance of Baptism for the Dead. It is a prayer, pure and simple.
Have you had communication with the beneficiary of this particular prayer before or after its occurrence? Well, neither has the individual who performed the prayer concerned. The belief is that the purported beneficiary of the prayer, whose spirit does have faculties, will make the positive decision to either accept its benefits or reject them.
Finally: Why do people get so bent out of shape over a prayer?
Some of the basic beliefs of the Church are:
God is our Heavenly Father. He loves us and wants us to return to Him.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is our Savior. He redeems us from death by providing the Resurrection. He saves us from sin as we repent.
Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we can return to live with God if we keep His commandments.
The Holy Ghost helps us to recognize truth.
The first principles and ordinances of the gospel are faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, **baptism **, and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost.
The Church of Jesus Christ has been restored to the earth. The priesthood authority of God exists in His Church today, just as it did in the original Church.
The Bible and the Book of Mormon are the word of God.
God reveals His will to prophets today, just as He did anciently.
Our life has a sacred purpose. Families can be together forever (Marriages don’t have to be “till death do you part”).
Through serving others , we can experience joy and draw closer to God.
I bolded and provided explanatory links on the ones that are relevant to your question. Other basic information can be found at www.mormon.org
We believe that everyone that ever lived or will live on the earth ought to have the opportunity to be baptised.
Your uncle probably feels that he has done an act of service for your grandmother (and by extension her family) by taking the time to research and document the family geneaology and having someone perform the ordinances on her behalf. He mostly hopes that after his mothers death, she was taught the gospel of Jesus Christ (in the after death spirit world) as he believes and that his mother would accept the ordinance because he is hoping that other ordinances will be performed (and accepted by her) on her behalf that will seal her to her children and bind the family beyond our mortal lives.
We do not presume to know whether or not your Grandmother accepted that ordinance that was performed on her behalf. She in her antimortal state can/will decide whether to accept or decline the ordinance performed on her behalf.
Your uncle didn’t pull any “weird juju”, he’s doing something he most likely believes deeply will benefit the entire family in the eternal perspective.
Feel free to email me if I haven’t explained clearly or if you have further questions. My email name is the same as it is here at yahoo and aol, and in messaging at aol, msn, and yahoo.
I think some people see it as, I dunno…kind of underhanded…They see it as that whole “My Aunt Tillie was a Lutheran all her life, and now that she’s dead, the Mormons are saying they made her a Mormon.”
We are, of course, not going to have an argument as to whether the practice is “underhanded” – reasonable people may disagree on that, but they are to disagree in Great Debates. Nor are we going to explore the unanswerable question of what makes people upset about things.
So I repeat, does there remain a General Question here?
Finally: Why do people get so bent out of shape over a prayer, said prayer which specifically has built into it the concept that the person being prayed about/for/over can say “I’m not bothering with it.”?
When an indivdual is baptized, (for themselves or by proxy), the person with the proper priesthood authority goes down into the water and raises his right arm to an L postion called the square. He calls the person by the full legal name, (or in the case of your grandmother he called the woman who served as proxy by your granmothers name) and said, “Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen,” and then totally submerges (immerses) the person/proxy in the water. (D&C 20:73).
The prayer is the same for both the living ordinance and the proxy ordinance.
Baptisms by proxy are different than baptisms for the living in only one way. Baptisms for the living are held regularly in a meetinghouse near you and you can attend a baptism and see the same prayer. Though not a baptism by proxy because those take place inside a temple rather than at a meetinghouse. Baptisms in the temple are typically just the prayer. In a meetinghouse there will often be a song, prayer, a speaker, the baptism, more songs, another speaker and a closing prayer.
Well since the deceased relative apparently gets a “choice,” I think the Mormon’s have sidestepped the issue of “respect for their beliefs” quite nicely. It’s like an invitation instead of a forceful conversion and this way the Mormon’s can feel smug about the relative having made the “right choice.”
I can’t think of any examples but I’m sure the Mormons aren’t the first religious group to do something like this.
Yes Manhattan. There is. Of course the post was invisible to me, since we both posted at the same time.
Is there some part of the time stamp that is invisible to you? Or does the system accept posts and updates so fast for mods that it doesn’t occur to you that a two minute delay is a simulpost?
I saw my post alone without yours attached. That said, I accept your explanation (which is what I assumed about Monty’s post, which did appear at the same time as mine).
Carry on. Sorry about that.
Azael, the first part of your post is not for this forum. The second part is an interesting area for further research.
I hope Manny doesn’t kill me for posting an incidental fact, but Jewish groups have gotten really fired up over LDS baptizing Jewish dead. A few ago, the LDS leaders agreed to stop doing it, but apparently not everyone got the news, so it continued. After more pressure from Jewish groups, the LDS church just recently announced (again) that they would stop.
Sorry, Manny. I didn’t mean to say I thought that the practice was underhanded, just that some of the people opposed to the practice are opposed to it because they believe that it is underhanded.
What I actually think about the practice, I’m keeping out of the thread, of course.
OK, I guess I see the factual basis for why the Mormons do this. manhattan, I apologize for interjecting my subjective comments. I guess I was posting in a sort of stream of consciousness while forgetting what forum I was posting in. A GD thread on this topic might be interesting :dubious:, and if no one has started one by tomorrow morning, I might take a stab at it.
But I digress . . . As Azael hinted, I’d be interested to know what other religions, if any, have a similar practice.
Kyla: Some LDS, not the LDS Church, were doing that. I’ve posted a link to the joint proclamation regarding that issue. The two parties to that proc. were the LDS Church and a Jewish group. So, those who get bent out of shape over the LDS still performing proxy baptisms for certain Jews are completely ignoring the offical declaration which was issued by a Jewish group concerning the matter.
The LDS proxy baptism, again, is a prayer. It is how the LDS display their respect to the dead. I will also venture to say that a fair number of people who are upset over this particular practice have, at one time or another, prayed for us Mormon folk on occasion.
