Why do Mormons baptize the dead?

c. 2012 Religion News Service
(RNS) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has apologized for a
Mormon who baptized the late parents of famed Nazi-hunter Simon
Wiesenthal. But despite calls this week from Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and
others to rethink the controversial rite, the church is unlikely to drop it
entirely.

Latter-day Saints trace posthumous baptism to the Apostle Paul, who wrote
in 1 Corinthians 15:29, "Else what shall they do which are baptized for the
dead, if the dead not rise at all? Why are they then baptized for the
dead?" Mormons believe that Joseph Smith, their faith's founding prophet,
restored the apostolic practice after centuries of neglect by mainstream
Christians.

Proxy baptism was also Smith's answer to a classic Christian conundrum:
What happens to people who, through no fault of their own, did not join the
church during their lifetime? Should they be barred from heaven?
Mormons believe that vicarious baptisms give the deceased, who exist in
the afterlife as conscious spirits, a final chance to join the Mormon fold,
and thus gain access to the Celestial Kingdom. To Mormons, only members of
the LDS priesthood possess the power to baptize.

"It doesn't matter if you're a Baptist or a Buddhist," said Kathleen
Flake, a Vanderbilt University scholar who has studied the church, "it's about
who has the authority to perform the sacrament."

Flake said Mormons are encouraged to baptize at least four generations of
forebears to seal the family together in the afterlife. So the LDS church
has built the world's most extensive genealogical library in Salt Lake City
with 700 employees and more than 2 billion names.

Baptisms need bodies, so young Mormon men and women dressed in white robes
stand in for the departed souls in temple ceremonies worldwide. Mormons
youths consider it an honor to be immersed in baptismal founts while the names
of the deceased are recited.

LDS leaders emphasize that the spirits of the dead must accept the baptism
-- it cannot be involuntarily imposed. And Mormons are instructed to only
baptize family members, particularly after Jewish genealogists discovered in
the 1990s that 380,000 Holocaust survivors had been vicariously baptized.
In response, the church imposed safeguards and spent $500,000 removing
Jewish names from its baptismal registries.

But with 13 million Mormons worldwide, the church insists that it cannot
control "pranksters or careless persons" who submit Jewish names or famous
people such as President Obama's late mother, Stanley Anne Dunham. And the
church considers the ritual too essential to forswear.

"With deepest respect to our Jewish friends, the church cannot abandon
fundamental aspects of its religious doctrine and practice," the church writes
on its website, "and it should not be asked to do so."