Mormon Baptismal Font: plenty of room for everybody.
Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: We have to admire the sheer chutzpah of the Mormons. Whereas we struggle with faulty humankind, inquisiting people, torturing them, trying to shove them toward the true faith, the Mormons have worked out a way to avoid so much heavy lifting. They take care of things after death. Dead people, y’see, are so agreeable. No backtalk. If you tell a dead guy he’s now a by-god upstanding member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you won’t get any argument.
Of course, such a bold approach to gathering souls is bound to involve a lot of blowback from the older religions. Especially the Jews—you know how they are. For decades now Jewish leaders have been trying to get the Mormons to stop baptizing their dead relatives, especially the victims of the Holocaust. As Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, points out in The New York Times, “They suffered enough.”
(more…)
November 12th, 2008 | Comments (5)