In a recent letter to the editorof The Jewish Week addressing Mitt Romney’s candidacy, Rabbi Mordecai Schnaidman posed three questions about LDS beliefs. I have answered two of them in previous posts, and will now address the third. Given that the topic is a sensitive one—posthumous immersions for the dead – it is especially important to remember that honesty and clarity often trump agreement in interfaith dialogue.
Q: [The Jewish Week Editor Gary] Rosenblatt acknowledges that only victims of the Holocaust were exempted from the Mormon doctrine of baptizing the deceased, but that otherwise the practice continues unabated. How does such an approach to persons, although deceased, jibe with the principle of individual autonomy that is the very foundation of modern democratic society?