Mormons Still Baptizing Dead Jews Despite Agreements to End Practice

LDS leaders have apologized for the baptism of the parents of famed Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, but the persistent posthumous baptizing of Holocaust victims has outraged Jewish leaders.

by Allison Yarrow
The Daily Beast
February 15, 2012 4:45 AM EST

Jews and Mormons are once again battling over Mormons’ posthumous baptisms of Holocaust victims, and it’s not the last time the groups will spar.

The Church of Latter-day Saints apologized Tuesday for posthumously baptizing Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal’s parents amidst much Jewish vitriol. But despite more than two decades of negotiations and agreements between the two groups to prevent such baptisms of dead Jews, the practice persists.

These by-proxy ceremonies (where the living dip themselves to represent the dead) are so integral to abiding Mormon life that, as one Brigham Young professor and practicing Mormon put it, “I don’t see any way that we can ever ultimately say we’re not going to do it for people.” But LDS leaders continue to make promises to Jewish leaders that they do not keep. A combination of philosophy and technology may be to blame.

An unwieldy genealogical database operated by the LDS church called Family Search is at once a public registry for ancestry research, calling itself the “largest genealogy organization in the world,” and a receptacle for church members to nominate deceased individuals to receive baptism rights. The lack of policing of its users and content may be partially to blame for some continued posthumous baptisms of Holocaust victims and perhaps for the mistaken request for a baptism of the very-much-alive writer, Elie Wiesel.

(More here.)