The Exponent - columns


12-08-2003	Previous edition: 12-05-2003

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Mormons offer post-mortem baptism

Did you know Adolph Hitler and Anne Frank are both Mormons?

Hard to believe, considering obvious ideological differences, and yet both are listed in the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ International Genealogical Index. The controversial index lists all people baptized by the church, many of whom aren’t even Mormon.

The trouble comes from a process called proxy baptism. Proxy baptism entails gathering names of the dead and baptizing them as Mormons. Since there is often no access to these non-Mormon dead, stand-ins are baptized in their place. The dead are also not consulted on whether they’d like the baptism or not.

Officially, the practice is designed to give salvation to ancestors of Mormons, but the list is much larger, containing some 600 million names and including even several Roman Catholic popes and saints.

Last December, this practice came under attack by prominent Jewish organizations who produced a list of more than 20,000 Jews listed in the index. Because of the outrage, the church agreed to remove those names and to no longer accept proxy baptism submissions of Jews.

But, just in time for the holidays, more problems have arisen. More investigations have also uncovered that Jews "removed" from the list are still on it with alternate spellings of their names. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has also been preserving lists of dead Russian Orthodox Church members. Though officially they’re preserving these lists for historical purposes, the Russian Orthodox Church fears proxy baptisms are occurring.

While religions have differing belief systems to distinguish between each other, there are certain unofficial rules agreed upon between those religions in order to keep the game fair. One of those rules would seem to be: No stealing dead parishioners.

It sounds like theft or a sort of rape by religion — where a set of beliefs is forced upon someone against their will and after their deaths. But, in fact, Mormons believe these souls of the deceased get to pick whether they want to accept the blessing or not.

Now, consider: Mormons see this as a service to humanity, since only Mormons go to Heaven in their belief system; they’re letting more people go to Heaven. Everyone else sees this as an outrage for obvious reasons, but my consideration is this: Why care?

If your faith is the only right faith, the Mormons weren’t getting in anyway, so why care what they’re doing to a list? I imagine God’s list, like Santa Claus’, is much more comprehensive, and his omnipotence wouldn’t be confused by a database somewhere in Salt Lake City.

If one was a faithful member of the Russian Orthodox Church who led a full and rich life with an unwavering belief in his church and his God, what harm becomes him of showing up on a list somewhere being incorrectly listed as a Mormon? How are the lives of these people tainted now, somehow, when they are already dead? Their lives are what speak for them, not a label.

The moral question here is — if no one is harmed, and some see a service to humanity being performed, does that make it morally wrong?

The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t think so — it doesn’t acknowledge Mormon baptisms. The re-baptisms aren’t wrong, just impossible. According to The Associated Press, a spokesman for the patriarchal parish of the Russian Orthodox Church in the United States said of proxy baptism: "Obviously we can’t approve the practice. It takes away the most essential gift God has given people, their freedom. It turns religion into magic."

But hasn’t it made people more free? If Heaven really is an ultra-exclusive nightclub where only those who voted for the right God and never deviated from a life of righteousness are allowed past the velvet cordon, isn’t it possible that showing up with two religions increases your odds of getting in?

Maybe it is just a game of magic and that game is finally being deconstructed.

The contest between faiths isn’t fun anymore if you get in to heaven no matter what you do. If your choices in life don’t allow you special backstage passes to an afterlife of love, what good were the choices where you sacrificed for others? If everyone receives the benefits, what good is the cost of, say, a life of celibacy? Which is why it’s much more appealing for the simple-minded to have a God with very strict entrance requirements. God forbid we sacrifice out of compassion or an urge to do the right thing. No, we must sacrifice only with assurances that there will be payoffs in the long run.

It’s hard for me to see a malicious angle to this ritual since they baptized Hitler in their religion, after his death. Probably the most universally loathed human being of the modern era and they let him play, too. What at first sounds ridiculous may be a fairly moving gesture of love for all humanity, even our monsters.

Everyone else makes such lonely Heavens.

Though this process seems to circumvent all reason and laws of physics, that’s what we demand from religion. Maybe religion should be magic just so it can work on such an improbably large scale.

Tom McHenry is a graduate student. He can be reached at opinions@purdueexponent.org.

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