I have never been to the Temple to perform a baptism for the dead, simply because my time has primarily been occupied with things relating to my education since my twelfth birthday, which is when I first would have been eligible to do so. Unfortunately there’s been an uproar lately about Holocaust victims allegedly continuing to be baptized by proxy, despite The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints making an agreement with Jewish leaders over 13 years ago to try to prevent this from happening. The Church has been doing what it can with what for a long time has been a very inefficient system for tracking Temple ordinances performed by proxy; now there is a new system in place that records the administering of ordinances immediately to prevent duplicate ordinances, and can and is also being applied to “flag” the names of Holocost victims in the Church’s genealogical databases to prevent ordinances being performed for them. The Church Newsroom has released a response to the recent revival of the issue, as well as a statement by Elder D. Todd Christofferson.
The whole ordeal though stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the significance of Church ordinances performed by proxy in the Temple. The actual procedure of the ordinance of baptism for the dead by proxy is very straightforward: it is identical to a regular baptism, but the name read is that of an ancestor of the stand-in, or another name submitted (hopefully with much research into ordinances already performed, or any other situational considerations).
What happens though, is that the person who was baptized by proxy is not added to the Church’s membership records—they are not considered “posthumously Mormon” or anything of the sort. In the spirit world—which is the Church’s equivalent to heaven or hell which many other Christian faiths believe in in a generic form—the soul of that person retains their full agency (ability to choose), and is given the opportunity to accept or reject that ordinance, and the others that are performed for them by proxy in sequence (baptism, confirmation, endowment, and sealing to spouse). We cannot tell here whether or not someone has accepted the ordinances, and they are not considered members of the Church following their baptism by proxy.
Baptism and other ordinances performed for the dead by proxy do not detract from their heritage or that of their living descendents. Ideally, only the names of the ancestors of members of the Church would be submitted for ordinances by proxy, and with the new Family Search genealogical system that is being put into place which focuses on the immediate family tree of the person using it this is much more feasible. The issue was with well-meaning members, hoping to extend the opportunity to receive and accept a baptism by proxy to as many departed souls as possible, submitting large registries of names without first researching the source of the registry and each name on it, and without it having been obtained by personal genealogical studies.
One of the fundamental beliefs of the Church is in the literal gathering of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the direct and adopted descendents of Jacob, prior to Christ’s second coming, and the Church has a very good relationship and the deepest respect for the Jewish community at large and the state of Israel. The person, in this case, who has been repeatedly raising the issue of the presence of the names of Holocaust victims in the Church’s genealogical database and lists of ordinances performed by proxy does not appear to represent the sentiments of the Jewish community as a whole. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League of Phoenix condemned the distribution of an anti-LDS video in 2007, and we return the sentiment of the words from their press release: “Hate directed at any of us is hate directed at all of us.” Any perception that the Church is seeking to diminish the faith and heritage of any living or deceased member of the Jewish or any other faith is misinformed and false.
Responses to other claims I have encountered in researching this post:
- Joseph Smith was illiterate and uneducated in his early life, but as an adult sought higher education, and became particularly well-versed in and fond of the Bible, and the Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith manual repeatedly quotes him as reciting from the Bible. The Book of Mormon itself quotes obscure, difficult (including much of Isaiah), and lost segments of the Bible in such a way that even many scolars of the Bible would not be able to do so, and much of the translation of the Book of Mormon was prior to or concurrent with Joseph Smith’s own Biblical studies. Allegations that the Church rejected the Bible in the beginning, only to accept it later to be recognized by the government as a Christian faith, are false (as are, accordingly, allegations that the Book of Mormon was completely fabricated by Joseph Smith, as this would have been impossible for an illiterate, relatively Bible-unsavvy twentysomething to accomplish). Collectively across all Church Scripture and other doctrinal and other materials, the number of references to each of the Bible (both Old and New Testaments), the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price, is roughly proportional to the size of each text (depending of course on context and topic).
- Alleging accusingly that logically, Christ would have to be baptized by proxy to “become a Mormon,” and that the Church would do so to attempt to gain leverage in its proselytism efforts, is absurd and deeply offensive. Christ himself was baptized under the same authority with which all members of Christ’s church in the New Testament and Book of Mormon were baptized, and with which all members of the Church today are baptized. The Church today is, in its most basic form, a restoration of that sacred authority and the organization that existed in the Church in the days of Christ and the years following until the deaths of the Apostles.
- The God in which members of the Church believe is the same as the God in which all followers of Abrahamic faiths (other forms of Christianity, as well as Islam and Judaeism) believe; Jehovah of the Torah is specifically Christ, and Heavenly Father is known to followers of Islam as Allah, while Christ is referred to separately and specifically in the Quran. (There is a well-written article by James B. Mayfield from the June 1979 issue of the Ensign discussing Islam from both an LDS and a scholarly perspective. To quote from the “Statement of the First Presidency Regarding God’s Love for All Mankind” issued 15 February 1978 as so quoted in the article: “The great religious leaders of the world such as Mohammad, Confucius, and the Reformers, as well as philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and others, received a portion of God’s light. Moral truths were given to them by God to enlighten whole nations and to bring a higher level of understanding to individuals.”)
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LDS “Baptisms for the Dead”
I have never been to the Temple to perform a baptism for the dead, simply because my time has primarily been occupied with things relating to my education since my twelfth birthday, which is when I first would have been eligible to do so. Unfortunately there’s been an uproar lately about Holocaust victims allegedly continuing to be baptized by proxy, despite The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints making an agreement with Jewish leaders over 13 years ago to try to prevent this from happening. The Church has been doing what it can with what for a long time has been a very inefficient system for tracking Temple ordinances performed by proxy; now there is a new system in place that records the administering of ordinances immediately to prevent duplicate ordinances, and can and is also being applied to “flag” the names of Holocost victims in the Church’s genealogical databases to prevent ordinances being performed for them. The Church Newsroom has released a response to the recent revival of the issue, as well as a statement by Elder D. Todd Christofferson.
The whole ordeal though stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the significance of Church ordinances performed by proxy in the Temple. The actual procedure of the ordinance of baptism for the dead by proxy is very straightforward: it is identical to a regular baptism, but the name read is that of an ancestor of the stand-in, or another name submitted (hopefully with much research into ordinances already performed, or any other situational considerations).
What happens though, is that the person who was baptized by proxy is not added to the Church’s membership records—they are not considered “posthumously Mormon” or anything of the sort. In the spirit world—which is the Church’s equivalent to heaven or hell which many other Christian faiths believe in in a generic form—the soul of that person retains their full agency (ability to choose), and is given the opportunity to accept or reject that ordinance, and the others that are performed for them by proxy in sequence (baptism, confirmation, endowment, and sealing to spouse). We cannot tell here whether or not someone has accepted the ordinances, and they are not considered members of the Church following their baptism by proxy.
Baptism and other ordinances performed for the dead by proxy do not detract from their heritage or that of their living descendents. Ideally, only the names of the ancestors of members of the Church would be submitted for ordinances by proxy, and with the new Family Search genealogical system that is being put into place which focuses on the immediate family tree of the person using it this is much more feasible. The issue was with well-meaning members, hoping to extend the opportunity to receive and accept a baptism by proxy to as many departed souls as possible, submitting large registries of names without first researching the source of the registry and each name on it, and without it having been obtained by personal genealogical studies.
One of the fundamental beliefs of the Church is in the literal gathering of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the direct and adopted descendents of Jacob, prior to Christ’s second coming, and the Church has a very good relationship and the deepest respect for the Jewish community at large and the state of Israel. The person, in this case, who has been repeatedly raising the issue of the presence of the names of Holocaust victims in the Church’s genealogical database and lists of ordinances performed by proxy does not appear to represent the sentiments of the Jewish community as a whole. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League of Phoenix condemned the distribution of an anti-LDS video in 2007, and we return the sentiment of the words from their press release: “Hate directed at any of us is hate directed at all of us.” Any perception that the Church is seeking to diminish the faith and heritage of any living or deceased member of the Jewish or any other faith is misinformed and false.
Responses to other claims I have encountered in researching this post: