On LDS Proxy Baptisms and Freedom of Choice

On LDS Proxy Baptisms and Freedom of Choice

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not "posthumously baptize" anyone. Nothing like the phrase appears anywhere in our scriptures or teachings. The term was coined by critics of the Church to create the impression that we are somehow forcing baptism on the dead. We respect the freedom of choice of all, whether living or dead. What we do is offer to the dead a proxy baptism, which they are completely free to accept or to reject. (Article of Faith 11)

This is a free offering and has no meaning if it is not freely accepted, with informed consent. Obviously we do not consider those for whom we do this work to be "converts,” and those for whom we have performed proxy baptisms are not "Mormons." Freedom of choice, which we call “moral agency,” is a fundamental tenet of our religion, and we believe that this freedom continues beyond the grave.

While some religions relegate to damnation those who lived in the past and never had an opportunity to hear their teachings, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only religion that offers the ordinances of salvation to all people who have ever lived on earth. We make an effort commensurate with our beliefs, involving millions of dollars and millions of hours of volunteer effort.

Part of this massive effort involves preserving copies of vital records from throughout recorded history. The Church now has about 2.2 million rolls of microfilm, containing billions of names, preserved in vaults tunneled into solid granite in Little Cottonwood Canyon, near Salt Lake City, Utah. Copies of these microfilms can be borrowed by anyone at nominal cost at thousands of Family History Centers around the world. In the next few years much of this collection will become freely available on the Internet as indexed digital images. Thousands of volunteers have joined in this volunteer effort, known as FamilySearch Indexing, and millions of the indexed images are now online.

The LDS Family History Library has the largest collection of genealogical records anywhere in the world, and it is freely available free to all, with many of its resources now on the Internet atFamilySearch.org. The future scope of LDS family history activities, including details of the digitizing and indexing efforts, is indeed ambitious, and involves cooperation with many who are not of our faith.

Even Jewish genealogists make extensive use of this collection. One example is an offer of a guided tour of the “Candy Store” in Salt Lake City.

Since the physical ordinance of baptism must involve immersion of a living person in water, and because a spirit obviously cannot be “posthumously” immersed, the ordinance must be done by proxy – by a living person for and in behalf of the dead. The Church has 128 temples around the world that are dedicated to this sacred work.

We have no idea whether or not the spirits of the dead will accept or reject the offer, but to discriminate against any individual or group would be to make a judgment that only the individual can make for himself. The only way in which the Church discriminates in this work is that it instructs its members to limit their individual efforts to their own families. Obviously, when we go back far enough in time, all people now living share a limited set of ancestors, so indeed many living descendants of my distant ancestors will not be LDS. To any of my distant cousins who might take offense at my activities, I say, "Don't worry, if great-great-great Grandpa John remains as stubborn in death as legend says he was in life, you have nothing to fear."

Freedom of choice is meaningless unless there is the possibility to carry out a choice. We offer the dead a free choice, but those who oppose our efforts seek to force their own will upon the dead by denying them the opportunity to accept or to reject our offering.

Although the ceremonies are private, the records which are used to identify each individual have considerable genealogical value. Accordingly, we have opened digital excerpts of these records to the world in a data base known as the International Genealogical Index (IGI). In response to objections raised to its efforts, the LDS Church could have simply closed its records to public access. It speaks for the intentions of the Church that it continues to make these records available to the public, thereby enabling our critics to continue to look for our mistakes.

Although it should be plain to any honest observer that Latter-day Saints have neither desire nor power to force conversion on the dead, the Church has made a sincere effort to respect Jewish sensibilities in this matter, to the extent that it has agreed to do its best to deny temple ordinances to identifiable Jewish dead -- as long as they have no living LDS descendants. Jewish genealogist Gary Mokotoff writes, “In 1995 the Mormon Church signed a historical agreement with a number of worldwide Jewish organizations agreeing to never knowingly posthumously baptize a Jew unless the person was a direct ancestor of a Mormon. I consider it historic because it is the only case I know of where a religion modified its practices based on the wishes of non-believers.” (As noted above, I take exception to the term “posthumously baptize.”)

In respect of Jewish wishes, the Church now actually discriminates against its own members who have Jewish ancestors. Members of “gentile” extraction can directly submit ordinances in behalf of any deceased relative who was born more than 95 years ago, whereas members of “Jewish” extraction can submit ordinances only for direct ancestors and must have their submissions pre-approved by Church headquarters.

Mokotoff headed the Jewish delegation to the committee established to find a resolution to Jewish concerns. He has represented the Jewish perspective in an article about what he calls “The Problem that Won't Go Away.” On another occasion he wrote, “Will the problem ever be resolved? The answer is that the Church has found a potential solution. They have always been concerned about the fact that members of the faith have violated Church regulations governing how names should be acquired for the ritual of posthumous baptism--the posthumous baptism of Jews only being a part of the overall problem . . . . This system to monitor submissions for temple ordinances is still in the development stage, but Church officials disclosed enough to make me realize it is going to be an extremely sophisticated system that will go well beyond looking for men named 'Shloime' and women named 'Ruchel.' I was in the computer software industry for 35 years, and the Church is clearly heading in the right direction.”

The primary motivation for the new system is to eliminate the duplication of ordinances that has occured in the past. President Gordon B. Hinckley of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints referred to this effort in October, 2005. The procedure whereby members will submit names for temple work will be part of set of online resources referred to as the "new FamilySearch." In addition to reducing duplication, the new program should also make it much more difficult for irresponsible members to submit inappropriate names, because all submissions can now be traced for relationship to the submitter, whose identity is known.

Although our own ancestors are our first priority, demographics makes it unreasonable to restrict our efforts, as a church, solely to our ancestors. This is because so many people who lived in the past have no living descendants.

Accordingly, if we LDS were to limit our efforts, as a church, exclusively to our own ancestors, we would miss many individuals who have no posterity. Thus it will always be necessary for us to extract records and perform temple ordinances for all names appearing in older vital records. Of necessity, some individuals thus identified will have living descendants who are not LDS. I sincerely hope that any who happen to be descended from these individuals will find it in their hearts to forgive us for offering our best to their ancestors.

Please remember that your ancestors are completely free to accept or to reject our offer. And please do not try to control your ancestors beyond the grave by limiting their freedom of choice!

Tracy Hall Jr
Provo Canyon, Utah, USA
hthalljr'gmail'com

(I assume sole responsibility for my opinions, which do not necessarily reflect any official position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Revised 2008-11-11)