Mormon Church's Baptism Of Dead Jews Could Raise Concerns For Florida Voters.

[Firebrand Gary]

SOURCE: HUFFINGTON POST

Mormon Church's Baptism Of Dead Jews Could Raise Concerns For Florida Voters.

Mitt Romney's problem with evangelical Christian voters has been well documented.

But as the Republican presidential nomination fight heats up in Florida, a Mormon rite that leaves many Jews seething could prove awkward for the candidate in a state that's home to more Jewish people than any other besides New York and California.

The religious rite is proxy baptism for the dead. According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon Church, these posthumous "blessings" are intended to "save" ancestors and others who weren't baptized in life or were baptized "without proper authority."

Any Mormon may baptize any person posthumously. Church members have performed the ritual on Buddha, Catholic popes, 9/11 hijackers, William Shakespeare, Joan of Arc, Elvis Presley, President Obama's mother and even reportedly Jesus Christ. In 2002, the managing director of the Mormon's family and church history department told The New Yorker magazine that as many as 200 million dead people had been baptized as Mormons.

Read the whole story
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/mormon-church-mitt-romney_n_1229322.html

[TheWraith]

1. You might want to edit this down.

Four paragraph rule for quotations, remember?

[Honeycombe8]

3. ditto. nt

[Firebrand Gary]

5. Edited down.

Thanks for the reminder.

[rhett o rick]

10. What would we do w/o your constant........help, yeah that's the word, help. nm

[izquierdista]

2. I have baptized all readers of this thread with the sauce of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

May you be anointed with marinara from His Noodly Appendage.

[neverforget]

11. Mmmmm marinara

[guitar man]

28. Needs more garlic

And the oregano seems a little heavy handed

[jberryhill]

4. "I haven't recently"

Oh good grief.

The baptisms for the dead thing is weird, but I can't for the life of me figure out why it would bother anyone.

"Jews are understandably angered when another religious faith denies the legitimacy of Judaism by attempting conversion — and that is precisely what these retroactive baptisms do."

Oh horseshit. First off, a good many religions are engaged in mutual denial of the legitimacy of every other religion. Second off, to be concerned that your dead relative is going to be "converted" to some other religion posthumously is simply inane. Clearly Judaism "denies the legitimacy" of Mormonism, so it's no harm, no foul. And on the off chance the Mormons are correct, then it's doing them a favor.

In my religion, every time I clap my hands, every person who has ever died feels a tickle on their ass in the afterlife. Deal with it.

[Tikki]

7. You don't need to understand why it would bother me..the reasons I refuse to...

be baptized are as personal to me as they are to a person who wants to be baptized.


My family is dedicated to making sure that the name the mormons baptize after my death
will not be my actual name.


Tikki

[jberryhill]

9. Well it's too late

I just symbolically baptized you in my kitchen sink.

Your scheme is now ruined.

[Tikki]

13. You did not...

You don't know my name.


Tikki

[jberryhill]

15. Yes I do

In my religion, we have special powers which spiritually transform user names into the actual name of the person intended when we perform the ritual.

When I spoke your username, my counterpart in the spirit world spoke your real name.

That is what my religion teaches, and thus you have been baptized in my sink in a completely spiritually effective way in accordance with my religious beliefs.

[Tikki]

18. That is not how the mormons do it...they baptize to a name..

they find in official records.

Your make believe religion speaks just a bit.

Tikki

[jberryhill]

20. They ran out of names a long time ago

The vaunted geneological prowess of the LDS is not everything it is cracked up to be, nor is their record keeping.

But the bottom line is that it doesn't make a damn bit of difference if I anoint collected high school yearbooks, telephone directories, or guest registrations from every Marriott hotel and related Marriott brand. What fooking difference does it make?

[madmom]

25. But what if their wrong and on the off chance there is a god they send this person to hell?

[jberryhill]

26. I hereby declare all dead persons to be Pastafarians

There, boom, heaven is empty.

I mean, really.

[madmom]

27. But what of the people who are gluten intolerant?

[mike_c]

6. nothing like a little religous insanity to keep an election grounded in what matters....

Sheesh.

[hunter]

8. A couple of heavenly planets were destroyed when my dead ancestors were baptized.

A few of my heavenly ancestors are berserkers, total savages who've got zero tolerance for anyone who tries to get between between them and their gods. I know so, because my mom is like that...

I think that's why the LDS missionaries never visit my house. Or maybe it's because one of my ancestors was a runaway mail order bride who wasn't too happy with the polygamy thing. Yep, they paid her passage from Europe, but she left that polygamous marriage and found a man she could have all to herself. And that's not the only entanglement my ancestors have with that church...

[rhett o rick]

12. Baptizing the dead is a bunch of hocus-pocus bullshit.

But worrying about it is just as sad.

I say, go ahead and try to baptize my deceased father. I am sure he will give you what you f'n deserve.

[mysuzuki2]

14. Nobody better fucking baptize me after I'm dead!

I have no belief in any religion and I think baptizing the dead is so silly as to be beyond words. But, even if Mormonism was correct. I think I'd rather go to hell on my own merits than go to heaven due to someone elses actions.

[mucifer]

16. That shit really pisses us off.

It might be a problem for him in Florida.

[riderinthestorm]

17. Believers take their afterlife VERRRYYY seriously! Don't fuck with their version of Paradise.

Mitt has a problem. Seriously.

Fucking around with a person's version of how the afterlife "works" is guaranteed to piss people off. The Mormon church's shittiness in disregarding sacred beliefs could become a major sticking point. I'm actually surprised how little traction this has - probably because it's not yet gotten major media scrutiny but Mitt would be seriously on the hook if a moderator/reporter wanted to press him on how Jesus has now been posthumously "converted" into a Mormon... (just one example)

[Firebrand Gary]

19. I could give a shit about the Mormon church.

After what they did in Hawaii and California on LGBT rights, their Church will receive ZERO respect from me or my family. Setting that aside, I think it is creepy as all hell that they baptize people of OTHER faiths after their death.

Honestly, I consider my self a very open minded person. But for me, this is too far. It conjures an image of some voo doo radical stealing the souls of the dead. Frankly, it freaks me out.

[mucifer]

21. It's antisemitic.

[jberryhill]

22. How is it any more anti-Semitic...

...than saying "anyone who doesn't believe in Christ as savior is going to Hell"?

They believe their religion is right, and everyone else's is wrong. That's not some kind of exception.

The ONLY people it could possibly piss off - whether they be Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, or whatever - are people who believe THEIR religion is right and everyone else's is wrong.

But if you believe Mormonism is wrong, then you also believe that what they are doing has no efficacy whatsoever.

Now, let's say that you pray to your God for world peace. Well, that really pisses me off! Because my God doesn't like people praying to false Gods, so it is YOUR prayer that is pissing off my God and actually preventing world peace.

This always boggles my mind whenever someone trots out an evangelical and gets him to say Jews are going to Hell. Well, good golly, their Bible says that with a minor exception of a limited number of Jews, anybody who doesn't believe in Jesus as savior is going to Hell. That's not "anti-Semitic" it is the simple assertion that they believe in their own religion. Jews are no different to these Christians than are Hindus, pagans, atheists, Muslims, and so on. The lot of them are going to Hell because the only ones who aren't are their kind of Christian.

That doesn't make it "anti-Semitic".

[mucifer]

23. We get a little sensitive about people wanting to convert us Jews out of existence.

I'm sure not all Jews feel this way. But, believe me, a lot of us do.

[jberryhill]

24. Who doesn't?

But how is it any more different than a Christian praying that everyone comes to know Jesus as their savior?

If the problem is with people "wanting to convert" Jews, then you have a much broader problem than the thoroughly weird stuff that Mormons pretend to do on behalf of dead people.

I seriously don't get it.

Evangelical Christians assert one must believe in Jesus as savior to avoid hell. So, aren't evangelicals consigning most Jews (with a minor exception in the Revelation) to hell in the afterlife?