Converting someone is a difficult task when they don’t want to be converted. But it becomes a whole lot easier once they’re dead. Apparently, baptizing dead people is actually encouraged by the Mormon Church. Technically, Mormons are only encouraged to baptize dead non-Mormon relatives….but many aren’t that particular. Thousands of Holocaust victims, and famous Jews such as Albert Einstein, Menachim Begin, Marc Chagall, and Hank Greenberg.
Also among those baptized posthumously by the church: Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Buddha.
***
I can hear the joke now:
Buddha, Joan of Arc and baseball player Hank Greenberg arrive at the pearly
gates…
***
How to Win Friends, Influence People, and Convert Dead Souls
What do Genghis Khan
Buddha
Marc Chagall
and Joan of Arc
have in common?
They’ve all been baptized
into the Mormon church.
Albert Einstein
Adolf Hitler
Hank Greenberg
and thousands of Holocaust survivors
have also received the dubious honor.
None of them asked for it.
Converting someone
is a difficult task
when they’re alive.
They can resist.
Just ask King David.
Saul made him convert
100 Philistine warriors.
He too waited until they were dead.
David even helped
the process along a bit,
by killing them,
and no one’s accused the Mormons of that,
but still a lot of people are upset.
Baptism by proxy
may be a lot less messy
than adult circumcision,
which was David’s task,
but it’s just as undesirable.
Update 02/04: The above was written in anger after reading news articles that didn’t go into enough detail about the Mormon custom. Mormons do feel that the conversion is still a voluntary process in that the soul of the one being baptized gets to freely choose. On the other hand, they still are only supposed to do the proxy-baptizing for family members. There appear to be a few over zealous members of the community. In short, I am not a hateful person, but I do react strongly to stories of forced conversions.
Love this website; e-mailing my four young adult children scattered along the east coast to prove I ‘ain’t’ dead yet…plenty of ‘fire’ still left in this 62 year old Conservative jewish momma; I just married a 38 year old circumsized phillistine…my four ‘dolinks?’ THEY ‘divorced’ ME, that’s the thanks I get for sacraficing my life for them all…no respect/appreciation, just ‘unsolicited’ advice. Oi veys mere, God give me strength!
LETS STOP THE MORMON BASHING! YOU WILL SEE IN THE END AND AT JUDGEMNET DAY WHAT IT WAS ALL FOR! SILLY RABBIT JEALOUSY IS FOR KIDS!
I do not hate Mormons. I only ‘bash’ those Mormons who are attempting to convert the souls of people against their will.
From what I have read, Mormon teaching is actually only to use proxy baptising on family members. So therefore, all those Mormons I have bashed in the above poem have **violated their own teachings**. So, if you are Mormon, and have submitted a proxy baptism in the name of a non-family member…perhaps YOU will see on Judgment day that you have erred.
As you may not know, Mormons DO practice baptisms for the dead. But, they are also under the belief that when you baptize someone, they are in spirit right there with you. They believe that people live in an afterlife after death. And they also believe that there they can accept the church by their own free will. Even if we baptize them by proxy, they still can reject it if they want. So calm down. And stop hating so much. You are Jewish, you of all people should feel compassion.
Yes..I wrote the poem in anger. But it doesn’t alter the fact that the actions of those Mormons were wrong even according to their own religion — in that it is supposed to be only done for family members. (At least, that is what I read in subsequent news articles. That too could be wrong, as so much in the press turns out to be on later inspection.)
Being Jewish, I have been taught not to be overly compassionate towards the idea of forced conversions. We have a little bit of history with that, and it hasn’t been kind. The original news articles may not have been too clear on the Mormon custom, which may have caused me to write stuff in the poem a little unjustifiably. But I am not one to delete an entry and try to pretend I didn’t write it.
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