5
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0410baptizing10.html
Jewish group tries to stop Mormon baptism practice
Mark Thiessen
Associated Press
Apr. 10, 2004 12:00 AM
SALT LAKE CITY - Researchers say Mormons have continued to posthumously baptize Jewish Holocaust victims into their faith despite a promise to discontinue the practice.
"We are very hopeful that we will be able to convince the church to stop," Ernest Michel, chairman of the New York-based World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, said Friday. If not, Michel said, his group will consider ot
er options, "possibly legal steps."
A spokesman for the Mormon Church did not immediately return a call seeking comment. However, the denomination released documents in which it said it cou
ldn
#39;t guarantee that no J*WS would be posthumously baptized.
The Ch
urch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long collected names from government documents and other records worldwide for posthumous baptisms. Church members stand in to be baptized in the names of the deceased non-Mormons, a ritual the church says is required for them to reach heaven.
The practice is primarily intended to give salvation to the ancestors of Mormons, but many others are included because the church believes that individuals' ability to choose a religion continues beyond the grave. Non-Mormon faiths have objected to the baptisms.
"It's ridiculous for people to pretend they have the key to heaven," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Ange
les. "And even if they say they want to do somebody a favor ... it's not a symbol of love. It's a symbol of arrogance."
In 1995, the Mormon Church acceded to demands by
Jewi
sh l
eaders that
the denomination stop posthumously baptizing J*WS. But Helen Radkey, a Salt Lake City researcher, sa
id Friday that the process still hasn't ended.
She said she has found posthumous baptism records for 268 Dutch J*WS killed in Polish concentration camps, which she described as a "small sampling." All of the death-camp victims, incorrectly listed in the Mormon database as dying in "Auschwitz, Germany," were posthumously baptized well after the 1995 agreement.
Mormon leaders reaffirmed the 1995 pact in December 2002 after Radkey found at least 20,000 J*WS in the church's International Genealogical Index. The church says proxy baptisms have been performed for nearly every one of the 400 million names in the database.
"The J*WS have to either acce
pt what the Mormons are doing or take legal action," Radkey said.
Michel's group asked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to intervene in the matter, and the New York Democr
at met l
ast mont
h with Sen. Orrin H
atch, a Utah Republican and LDS member, though neither side would comment on the session.
The church directed its members after the 199
5 agreement to not include the names of unrelated people, celebrities and non-approved groups, such as Jewish Holocaust victims, for the baptisms, according to documentation the Mormon Church provided Friday to the Associated Press.
The pact, however, "did not guarantee that no future vicarious baptisms for deceased J*WS would occur," according to church documents.
