Quote:
Originally posted by sugar and spice
As I said before, they can get upset about whatever they want. However, nobody's come up with any valid reasons for being upset.
There are plenty of things about Mormons that bother me . . . but this is nothing, really.
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Sometimes, perspective and context make a world of difference.
While as a general proposition, I might agree with you, the context in which this thread arose is proxy baptism of Jews. I imagine (which is all I can do, since I am not Jewish) that the history of forced conversions (which included forced baptisms) or might-as-well-as-have-been-forced conversions that often came along with Anti-Semitism is powerfully at play here -- and as Madeleine Albright can attest, we're not necesarily talking about ancient or medieval history. Given that history, to learn that Jews who died in the Holocaust were being baptised by proxy would, I would think, be quite distressing.
We've looked at the idea of proxy baptism from a Mormon perspective, but for the purpose of this issue, we would also have to look at the Jewish perspective here. It is my understanding that from that Jewish perspective, the way in which the memory of the deceased is honored, both by family and the community at large, is of great importance, and that at least part of the understanding of life after death (which in Judaism is not an issue that receives too much definition) is tied into the way that the deceased's memory lives on. (Someone please correct me if I'm getting this wrong). From this perspective, it could be extremely offensive to the memory of the deceased to learn that he or she had been baptized by proxy.