The difficulty with Cooper's hyperbole is it misses two points concerning the LDS practice.
First, criticism of LDS' rebranding of the deceased's souls is analogous to apologists for Tony Blair or Barack Obama criticising David Icke for stealing their humanity by asserting that they are, contrary to all appearances, actually 10-foot intergalactic reptilians. I assume Cooper shares my conviction that LDS are not actually empowered with the supernatural custodianship of all humanity's souls and that baptism by proxy is when all is said and done – and with all respect – objectively speaking complete bunkum. So, what precisely is the concern? That Rabbi Cooper could be wrong and Mormonism right? I doubt it.
The LDS have a host of practices that are just plain weird to all external observers but, let's face it, so do most other faiths. For example, the Santerians have the rite of Bembe in which they 'mount the head' and become possessed of animistic spirits and dance, and Christians eat the very body and blood of a man who died centuries previously. Each of the practices reasonable to their participants often look strange or even objectionable to observers (apart from atheists, of course, who are in the privileged position of viewing us all with incredulity!) The call of Cooper to exclude those of Jewish faith from the LDS baptisms amounts to a call to limit the LDS' offer of salvation to all the peoples of the earth except those of Jewish faith.
That the majority of people do not believe in this LDS God and consider the baptism a waste of good water does not change the fact that such internal theology has the potential to purvey hateful practise. It is only recently that LDS have turned away from their racist theology that denied the priesthood to followers on the basis of race and they have made genuine improvements in this regard; why turn the clock back to a time when salvation is, again, limited by race and creed? We have seen that happen before and I have no desire to see it repeated, however well-intentioned the call may be on Cooper's part.
The case of the Catholic church is instructive here. Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) felt the need to formalise what we all know instinctively, namely the fact that an LDS baptism is not personally valid if one is not a LDS member. With that blindingly obvious conclusion in place the Catholic church has refused to cooperate with the LDS-sponsored genealogical research, with the result that Catholic records are not passed on. What the Catholic church has not done however is to accuse the LDS of denying the Catholicism of those who have been baptised after their death – which is precisely the charge levelled by Cooper.
Article comments
1 - Brad Lee
Yes, you just may be the smartest non-mormon man speaking on this subject. As a Mormon, I will not waste my time to add your name to the list of post mortem baptisms.
All I could say is you are totally right, if Mormons baptise someone of the Jewish faith, the Jewish faith should shrug their shoulders and say, whatever. Unless Jews or anyone else believe a mormon baptism actually works...which they shouldn't. If they do, they should convert to Mormonism and also baptise their ancestors.
2 - Joe
I'm not sure it is as easy as that. If someone was able to find out that their relatives had been baptised, presumably there must be some kind of public register (which makes no logical sense - if there doesn't need to be the body present, why not symbolically use the sea and baptise the whole of humanity - why do you need to baptise individual, named people, and how are you deciding who deserves baptism..? anyway, I digress). And, like it or not, that implies that the personal faith of the dead person is as nothing compared to your religious rite.
And if you are a religious person who really believed in the dead-person's faith, is understandably really offensive.
There is of course a simple solution: the LDS could refuse to comment on who they've decided to baptise then the rest of us could ignore them. Simples.
3 - Tom J
Some people think that "Mormons" ( members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) are not Christian, but the reason we proxy baptize for the dead is Jesus' statement, "Except a man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (John 3:5) and the practice of early Christians to baptize for the dead (1 Corinthians 15:29). Do you realize that we don't know the religious preference of 95% of the people who have died; only 5% left any record of what their religious preference was. The reason I believe that it is not offensive to baptize someone for the dead, even someone who was known to be committed to a particular religion, is that after we die, we will all have much more knowledge of religious truth and some people may want to accept this baptism, whithout which Jesus said they cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Tom J
4 - Dave Nalle
I like Stephen Colbert's proposal that Rabbis start circumcising dead Mormons.
Dave
5 - Casper
@Brad Thanks for the kind thoughts.
@Tom - I have to say that strikes me as a very tenous exegesis of Jn 3 but I'll let that slide. I can see that is is possible that the practice is offensive but, as i said, so what? Religious beliefs often offend that is the price of freedom.
@Joe Actually i think that has pretty much been LDS' position, the news of the baptisms was disseminated by an ex-mormon researcher.