My Turn to Both Tick Off My Mormon Friends, and Give Them Something Positive to Mull Over

Nasty stuff at the top, good stuff at the bottom.

Mormons are in hot water again for the baptism by proxy of dead Jews; in particular Anne Frank.

The official position of the LDS church is that this is a no-no, and it has apologized. Again.

Sorry folks, this isn’t good enough. If it was, this wouldn’t keep happening.

The LDS church is very vertically integrated on decisions that are important to it.

Then there is baptism by proxy. This is mostly handled at the local level: baptism by proxy is an important rite for young men, and an important sacrament for families, that is performed at temples that are local to members with a recommend. When Anne Frank (or someone else) is baptized, it is a local decision.

This is why it was a done deal, again, before it hit the airwaves.

The official position is that this is wrong, and shouldn’t happen.

News Flash: it will happen, is happening, and it did happen. Again.

Let me make a suggestion as to how to get this to go away: excommunication of bishops and stake presidents that allow it to happen on their watch.

This is how the central authority of the church gets the attention of the rank and file. And you know what? It works. All Mormons know this.

And, to non-Mormons out there trying to understand this, lists for baptism by proxy are submitted to local bishops and approved by them. Discipline of local members is handled by local bishops, who occasionally have to kick things up to the stake president level. There is a very clear message between the lines here: bishops and stake presidents are not taking the public position of the LDS church seriously on this issue.

Now for the good part.

The world, and Jews in particular, get that individual Mormons can do a great deal of good in the world. And here’s the details of how one helped Jews when they needed it.

CTR: emulate Senator King.

Technorati Tags: anne,frank,elie,wiesel,baptism,proxy,mormon,lds,excommunication

Comments

[Trabmaster]

Wrong. Lists of proxy baptisms are not submitted to local Bishops. Where did you get that info?

[Dave Tufte]

My apologies if I misstated.

I got that information from ... a bishop. More than one in fact.

"Submitted" is incorrect though. I was careless.

Let me try a different phrase, with no intention to offend, but one that is chosen to get across to gentile readers the low degree of autonomy involved.

Baptism for the dead is a rite with "adult supervision". Everyone there has a temple recommend, at least some of those must hold a priesthood, many of those in attendance have callings (including temple workers who may take advantage of their position to attend many more baptisms than others), and some are even set apart.

Thus, there are always people in attendance who are in a position to say that the name being "submitted" for baptism for the dead is an inappropriate one. Presumably some of those are aware of the church's position that it is not in its best interest to create public relations problems with those of other faiths. At a minimum, this is a teachable moment. And, after the ceremony, yes, there is indeed a submission of the name of the newly baptized.

The church publicly disavows baptisms of figures that might create controversy. But, they maintain plausible deniability by pointing out that this is a personal rite carried out at a local temple.

Given the importance of this rite to the individual, my position is merely that it will ultimately be controlled by a few targeted excommunications of people at levels above the individual member who were in a position to avoid the problem. I think that point is very near.