Congress
When Mormon leadership encouraged church members to donate $20 million to the Proposition 8 campaign in California last year — instead of, say, giving the money to feed the hungry or house the homeless — the leaders also invited unwanted scrutiny of the church’s unusual practices and beliefs.
One of the strangest of these is the practice of “saving” dead people through posthumous baptism, which they call “proxy rites.” According to this belief, the dead are not automatically saved. Instead, the rites give them the option to choose salvation in the afterlife.
In a letter to the Salt Lake City CityWeekly last week, researcher Helen Radkey claimed that the list of famous people who have received these rites includes fascists Adolf Hitler, Martin Bormann and Benito Mussolini, Communist dictators Josef Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung; pirates Blackbeard and Jean and Pierre Lafitte; and gangsters Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde and Benjamin “Bugsy” Seigel, who was, of course, Jewish.
Also on the list, according to Radkey, are two infamous serial killers, Vlad the Impaler, whose exploits were fictionalized in the Dracula story, and the only known Mormon serial killer, Ted Bundy.
Bundy raped and killed as many as 100 women on a cross-country crime spree from 1974 to 1978. He became a Mormon around 1974, while he was attending law school at the University of Utah. It’s unclear whether he was excommunicated before or after he was executed in Florida, in 1989, but Radkey says the list of those given posthumous rites includes Theodore Robert Cowell, the name given Bundy when he was born on Nov. 24, 1946, in Burlington, Vt.
The names of those who have received proxy rites are stored in a huge database called the International Genealogical Index (IGI). A search of the online database for Theodore Robert Cowell produced no results, but it’s possible that Bundy’s and the other controversial records are not included in the online database.
It’s also possible, based on their recent behavior, that church officials have scrubbed the records in the week or so since Radkey’s letter was published.
Update: A source close to the investigation says the church apparently scrubbed Bundy’s name from the IGI database after the story was reported in the Salt Lake City media on Feb. 11, 2009. There’s more on the scrubbing here.
Topics: Congress
Mormon Vampires? OMGWTF. Where has reason gone?
A relative who converted to the LDS faith “baptized” my father. Apparently,dad, who was an extremely moral, hard working (two jobs for 30 of his 42 working years), kind, generous, funny, sweet man did not live a life WORTHY of heaven because he was not Mormon.
It’s funny or whacky to think about Vlad the Impaler getting “dead dunked”. But the ritual’s arrogance is truly offensive when it involves someone you loved who faithfully followed the tenets of their beliefs.
Wow. That is some SICK $hit. What in the hell kind of weird fantasy world do these people live in anyway???
I wonder if Jeffrey Dahmar has heard about this offer?
I work in genealogy and I am putting it my will that I renouce any attempts at conversion or baptism after my death by any sect or religion.
Unfortunately, there are a few Mormons in my family who have taken it upon themselves to posthumously baptize other relatives who believed Mormons are crazy. The Mormons have been doing this ever since they built that temple in Salt Lake City.
The fact that mainstream media is just now catching on to these well-documented bizarre practices of the Mormons is another reason for me to continue eschewing mainstream media.
That’s nothing, I know of another crazy cult that believes in bread and water transfiguring into the blood and flesh of their long dead leader, a man who is said to have raised the dead, could walk on water, and make fish spontaneously multiply. Posthumous baptism seems downright cute in comparison.
Most organized religions have elements of dogma that combine mysticism, lore, a leader who is a chosen prophet or THE god and fairy tales. The transubstantiation, the holy books, and both ancient and modern day miracles keep ‘em coming on Saturdays/Sundays. The Mormon faith is not a quaint, cute religion. It has just as many odd beliefs as the five major religions of the world. Find out what they believe- history of the world, history of the US, what makes a person “worthy” and what their heaven is. Then find out how family members who choose to leave the church are generally treated.
[...] March, Radkey reported that Mormons had also baptized serial killer Ted Bundy, who was a Mormon convert. (Bundy’s record [...]
[...] in temples owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). These names include the modern-day dictators and mass murderers — Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong. Other [...]