Baptism for the dead, vicarious baptism or proxy baptism is the religious practice of baptizing a living person on behalf of an individual who is dead; the living person is acting as the deceased person’s proxy.

This sounds like a strange practice, right?

In fact it is completely normal for you if you happen to be a member of the LDS Church (ie: Mormon). What sounds kind of kooky on the surface actually starts to make some sense from the perspective of family ancestry.

The baptismal font in Salt Lake City is used to baptize the dead.

Whether or not someone can stand in for someone else when it comes to accepting Jesus into their life is a good question. I certainly do not know the answer. What I do know, is that one of the reasons the Church is so focused on Temples and baptism for the dead is that they believe that people have a chance to accept Jesus and His salvation, even after they are dead. The belief is that even though they are no longer on Earth, they have the chance to become Christian (or Mormon in this case), provided that someone stands in for them, and is baptized by a member of the Priesthood.

Almost 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, on every continent, Mormons spend a part of their day mass baptizing their ancestors, and the ancestors of others.

This is why family history is so important – the belief is that it is the duty of each living family member to trace and subsequently seal to their family every deceased member of their family.

The LDS Church has an extensive family search center in Salt Lake City and there are extensive resources online that aid in the organization of your family tree.

A 1893 engraving by Edward Stevenson of the Angel Moroni delivering the Golden Plates to Joseph Smith in 1827

Yes, genealogy is a big deal for most Mormons. Why?

It requires an understanding of Mormon doctrine and theology. Although not widely disseminated, the LDS (Latter-Day Saints) base doctrine is that we all are “gods” and have come down from heaven to reside in human form per the “father god’s” instructions and directives. That we have no memory or knowledge of such past lives is irrelevant; that is just the way it is, or so goes it goes. (Interestingly, there are some “prophets” who claim remembrance and knowledge of past existence prior to their sanguine earthly abode.)

How does this tie in with the interest in ancestry? Simply this: we are all part of “father god’s family” and must be brought back into the fold by converting to the LDS faith, i.e. Mormonism. It the early days of founder Joseph Smith and successor Brigham Young, the active teaching was that those who refused conversion could only gain admittance to heaven by the shedding of their own blood (a concept not discussed nowadays). Hence, some zealots did just that and slit the throats of those who refused to “repent.” This is the underlying reason LDS congregations were run out of communities all across the nation, from Hill Gommorah in New England to Mississippi, and eventually across the deserts to Utah. (D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994, pp110-113)

Most modern LDS members believe their families must be “sealed” together forever in the afterlife.  This notion is based on a wide-brush reading of Malachi 4:5-6 in the Bible that reads: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: and He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”

LDS interpretation is that the “curse” referred to is “being without family relationships,” and thus in 1836, Elijah himself appeared to Joseph Smith and “gave him (and thus the church) the power to seal family relationships forever.”

But there is a condition.

In order to be “bound together for all eternity,” LDS teaching is that “those souls must first be baptized into the ‘church’ (meaning LDS) proper”. This is seen as not merely a good deed, but an earthly obligation. Now for the reason behind the interest in genealogy: Those who lived and died long before the inception of LDS and Joseph Smith can still be baptized, but the process must be started by Mormons here on earth.

As ancestors are identified, LDS members in “good standing” can “go to Temple” and undergo various rituals to obtain “ordinances.” There are various ordinances – baptism, confirmation, and eternal sealing of husbands and wives to each other and their children – all done on behalf of the ancestors by dutiful Mormons.

Then it is up to the ancestors in the spirit world to “accept the ordinances.” They don’t have to, but LDS theology is such that they believe most will, as it is necessary to the inheritance and admission into heaven and becoming an integral part of the family of “god the father.”

Interestingly, this practice has outraged some Jewish groups. (“Jewish group wants Mormons to stop proxy baptisms”. Associated Press, Nov. 11, 2008) LDS members have posthumously baptized Holocaust victims, including Anne Frank. After much discussion, this practice officially stopped in 1995, and LDS officials agreed to remove 380,000 names of Jews for whom posthumous baptisms had been conducted from its public database.

Nowadays, no ordinary LDS member can initiate ordinance ceremonies for deceased people who are not their own ancestors. That does not prevent Temple workers and those high enough up the “chain of command” from fulfilling their “heavenly directive.” (President Obama’s mother was also “baptized,” apparently without his knowledge; http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_12301237)

Sunday, April 11, 2010 is when we pause to remember and honor the memory of the millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

In LDS Temples worldwide, that remembrance continues daily.

If you are like me and have no idea where to start in creating your family tree, then you have a lot of work to do! However, there are some great tools out there to help you make a family tree at home. This video will show how easy it really can be to make your own family tree; it really isn’t as hard as you think!

There was a time when tracing back your family roots was a difficult task. With today’s technology, you can trace your family roots easily with Ancestry.com. If you know nothing about your family history, this website will be your best friend.

Ancestry.com really is a collection of records going back generations. Most of the material includes things like service records, census documents, birth/death records, marriage/divorce records and other information of historical value. These items are tagged to the people they relate to, which is useful for tracing back a family’s history. So think of this: could you imagine finding your great grandfather’s papers from his first entry into the U.S.? Something like that would be really important to me!

Ancestry.com really is a one-stop shop for everything pertaining to family history. The site has a fee for its use, but if you’re eager to dive into your past, it’s a place to start!

Deciding you want to start putting together a family tree is a great project, but it can leave you just a bit overwhelmed. Where do you start? How do you go about finding and contacting members of your extended family you haven’t heard from in years? The easiest way to start is by interviewing the members of your family to whom you are closest. Here are some generic questions you can start with.

• 1. When were you born?
• 2. Where did you grow up?
• 3. When and where were you married?
• 4. What were your parents names?
• 5. When did your parents marry and where?
• 6. Where are your parents buried and when did they pass away?
• 7. Are there any other family members buried there or close by?
• 8. Who were your Aunts and Uncles?
• 9. Do you know when/where they were born, married, lived, buried?
• 10. Who is our oldest living relative?

After you have interviewed a good number of your family and organized your data, you should plan to visit the oldest relative you can find. You should be able to gather a treasure trove of interesting information about your family, the health of your relative permitting. Once you have the basis for your family tree laid down, it should become easier to fill in the gaps through searching online and in public records from the locations at which your family members have lived. Good luck!

References

1. www.jelleyjar.com

Who Do You Think You Are? is an American adaption of the British genealogy documentary series. This series, made by Wall to Wall, takes you through a celebrity’s journey to discover his or her roots. Here, you can watch the pilot episode where Sarah Jessica Parker learns more about her past as the show’s experts build her family tree. Sarah was shocked when she was told that her lineage included passengers on the Mayflower, a miner in the California Gold Rush, and an accused witch in the Salem Witch Trials (that’s especially amusing since Sarah herself played a Salem witch in the classic Hocus Pocus).

There are a number of famous actors that are going to be on the show, including Matthew Broderick, who will be on the show March 26th. Stay tuned for more great stories about celebrities discovering who they really are!