Friday, April 08, 2005

Baptizing Dead Jews

Apparently, the LDS Church hasn't been keeping its promise to stop baptizing Holocaust victims by proxy. A meeting is scheduled between leaders in the American Jewish community and unspecified LDS leaders.

I don't know who's in charge of proxy baptisms; whether the decision to baptize a particular person or not is made by the local ward or at the apostolic level. But a decade ago, the church promised Jewish leaders it would stop including practicing Jews in the ordinance.

It strikes me as purely symbolic, not only because I'm not a Mormon and don't believe in proxy baptism, but because according to the doctrine, it's still the choice of the baptizee in the next life whether or not to accept the baptism. No dead Jew is being baptized against his will. So the Jewish leaders in question are getting exercised about having an option they don't believe is possible offered to people they've never met and who can't give their own opinion, in an afterlife most Jews don't believe in anyway.

It'd be an interesting meeting to sit in on, since each side regards the other as "Gentiles."

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