Latter-day Saint Temples/Work for Holocaust victims

Criticism

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has done and continues to carry out proxy baptisms (baptizing for the dead) for Jewish Holocaust victims. These baptisms continue to be performed in spite of continual requests from the Jewish community to end the practice and remove all Jewish Holocaust names from the Church's genealogical records used for posthumous baptisms.

Response

History

In 1995 an agreement was signed between the Church and leading Jewish authorities which officially ended baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims after it was found that that there was a substantial number of Holocaust victims in the Church's temple records as having been baptized.

Controversy over the matter sparked up again in 2002 when it was found that there was still thousands of names of Holocaust victims in the Church's records. The Church responded by re-enforcing it's policy which required members to only perform proxy baptisms for their traceable ancestors, and established a committee with Jewish leaders to investigate why there were still names of Holocaust victims in the database.

Controversy over the subject again came up in 2006 when it was discovered that there were still many Holocaust victims' names in the database.

Mistakes in the database

Despite critics' claims, fingers should not be pointed at the Church in this instance.

Gary Mokotoff [...] who will head the Jewish side of the joint commission, said that individual church members had managed to circumvent the current monitoring process by misspelling names. "There's guaranteed to be a trickle going through the screen," he said, "but it's been very embarrassing for the Mormons." Mike Otterson, director of media relations for the church, told the Post that the church was working on creating a mechanism to prevent "overzealous members" from violating the agreement.^[1]

Counsel of LDS leaders

Church general authorities have asked members to concentrate on completing the work for their own ancestors. Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve taught:

Here, on this side of the veil, there are limitations of available time and temples. This means that choosing to identify and perform ordinances for our own kindred should receive our highest priority. The Spirit of Elijah will inspire individual members of the Church to link their generations, rather than submit lists of people or popular personalities to whom they are unrelated. Now, we are mindful of those not of our faith who are concerned about or even offended by the practice of temple ordinances for the dead. To them we say, our Heavenly Father directed the restoration of keys of priesthood authority and surely intended no offense to any of His children. Quite to the contrary. He intended to bless them. This doctrine and its ordinances are laden with love and are intended to perpetuate the sweetest of all relationships — in families forever.

Nevertheless, the Church is sensitive to these concerns. The First Presidency has asked that, as far as possible, individual rights of privacy be protected. In 1972, they wrote, "Persons submitting names for other than direct ancestors [should] have obtained approval from the closest living relative of the deceased before submitting records of persons born within the last ninety-five years." In addition, reminders of rights of precedence and privacy appear each time our computer programs are used.^[2]

Conclusion

While work toward the complete removal of all Holocaust victims' names from the Church's database continues, controversy and frustration will undoubtedly continue to surface. It is important to remember that progress is in fact being made and that eventually this conflict will slip into non-existence.

Endnotes

1. [note]  Jerusalem Post, "Jews and Mormons tackle 'proxy baptism' controversy" jpost.com (accessed 2 June 2006).
2. [note] Elder Russell M. Nelson, "The Spirit Of Elijah," General Conference, October 1994.

Sources

• SAM SER, "Jews and Mormons tackle 'proxy baptism' controversy. Huge numbers of Holocaust victims are in church's baptism database," Jerusalem Post, Online Edition (26 April 2005)(accessed 1 June 2006).*

Further reading

FAIR wiki articles

• Links to related articles in the wiki

FAIR web site

• Links to articles on the FAIR web site; Topical Guide entries go first

External links

• Daniel C. Peterson and William J. Hamblin, "Reflections on the Holocaust”

Printed material

• Printed resources whose text is not available online