Black clergy group demands Romney renounce Mormonism
Posted on March 10th, 2012
I’ll be honest: it’s taken me awhile to process the prospect of a Mormon president, and it hasn’t been an easy road. Thus, I think I understand people who haven’t yet come to grips with the idea. But this is ridiculous.
Black Clergy and other concerned Christians ask Governor Mitt Romney to renounce his racist religion
On Monday, March 12, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. Rev. O’Neal Dozier and a group of concerned Clergy and other Christians will hold a News/Press Conference to publicly ask Republican Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney to openly renounce his racist Mormon Religion.
The purpose of this request is to foster and maintain good race relations here in America.
Jim Geraghty at National Review asks,
What about fostering and maintaining good religious relations in America?
The release lists verses in the Book of Mormon they deem racist and the Mormon practice of baptizing the dead of other faiths.
You can find those verses objectionable. Of course, there are plenty of other verses of the Bible, Torah, and Koran that other Americans find objectionable. You can find the practice of baptizing the dead objectionable (I certainly do). But there are plenty of other practices of other faiths that other Americans find objectionable. Declaring “God d*** America” comes to mind.
Has any other presidential candidate been greeted with religious leaders demanding he renounce his faith? In the name of national tolerance and harmony?
You can read the rest here.
I agree with you that it’s ridiculous, but what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Obama was never asked to renounce his faith, but he kowtowed to the pressure to resign his membership in a particular congregation of the United Church of Christ. That too was ridiculous and he shouldn’t have buckled under (regardless of what one may think of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright or the UCC generally). There is no religious test for political office, nor should there be. Didn’t Luther say something to the effect that he’d rather be governed by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian?
I appreciate this post and am glad you are transversing the difficult road of processing the prospect of a Mormon President. I am also sure it is just as difficult to process the Mormon’s practice of baptizing for the dead. I would be interested in hearing from you, your interpretation of this Biblical verse:
1 CORINTHIANS 15:29,
“Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them?”
Hi Mrs Hemingway, good to hear from you.
There’s diverse opinion about that verse in the history of Christian exegesis, largely because there’s no other similar reference in Scripture or early Christian sources. Here’s the text in the original:
Ἐπεὶ τί ποιήσουσιν οἱ βαπτιζόμενοι ὑπὲρ τῶν νεκρῶν; Εἰ ὅλως νεκροὶ οὐκ ἐγείρονται, τί καὶ βαπτίζονται ὑπὲρ τῶν νεκρῶν;
(1) The key phrase is hyper tōn nekrōn. One possibility is that hyper is used locatively here, which would mean “in the place [i.e., location] of the dead.” We know that some early Christians worshipped among the graves (e.g., the catacombs in Rome). Thus, “Why baptize among the dead [for Baptism bespeaks the hope of the resurrection] if there is no hope of resurrection?” When I’m done writing this I’m going to post an interesting passage I found in Luther, who treats the passage this way.
(2) Another option is that it does, in fact, refer to a kind of baptism by proxy. The grammar certainly allows that. (“On behalf of” is one of the meanings of hyper.) This seems to me unlikely simply because a principle purpose of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is to address their worship practices, and such a practice (baptism by proxy) is nowhere else referenced in the NT or known among the early Christians. It’s hard for me to see Paul mentioning something like that in passing and it not being addressed in the many places that do discuss baptism in detail.
(3) There are literally dozens of other theories about the meaning of this verse, among them washings (“baptizō” can also mean simply “to wash”) ritually applied for the dead before burial (still practiced by the Jews today), which also seems a possibility.
My own view is for (1), while recognizing that Paul could have uncharacteristically been referring in passing to an aberrant practice or, possibly, the washing of the dead bodies for burial.
As a Christian I try not to judge others. I love all people, and know there are good Christians everywhere, especially among the Catholics. Being an ancient Church they are closer to original Christianity than many others. Mainstream Christians had temples, practiced Baptisms for the Dead for centuries, and many still do, and Catholics still offer indulgences for the deceased (not sure if they do it for Jews, but LDS do not believe Holocaust victims are suffering in purgatory or anywhere else, kind people do not suffer in the next life, regardless of religious affiliation, and Baptisms do not change ethnicity or religion).
They also stood by us on protecting traditional marriage and so on. I feel we have more in common than not.
And Dozier is a Santorum promoter, and he doesn’t seem to share my non-judging beliefs. Still, I think Obama might. If Obama is like Dozier and does play race cards I think he would have a better hand against Santorum than Mitt. The Catholic Church has called upon Santorum “…to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail.” And, a simple internet search shows that Santorum’s Church does struggle with racial issues today, while research shows the LDS Church has few issues. And, if Obama were to look at the past, the Mormons have a mere mote, compared to a giant beam in Santorum’s eye. The United Nations has determined that the racism of mainstream Christianity led to the enslavement and genocide of maybe a hundred million people.
Even Obama’s mostly white Church had more serious racial issues than Mitt’s Church.
It is the same with anti-Semitism. Dozier has grossly misrepresented LDS teachings on Native Americans and Jewish people. There was some bigotry among Mormons, but the Book of Mormon teaches that Jews and many Native Americans are of the House of Israel, and God still remembers His covenants with them. Whites and other gentiles are chided for their treatment of them, and gentile Mormons seek to be adopted with them.
Most LDS are probably of Native American descent, and there are about half a million Black Mormons. My racially mixed family (Black, Native American, etc) feels more at home in the Church of Jesus Christ of LDS than anywhere else.
Joe,
Thanks for your comment. I’m curious about your statement that Christians “practiced Baptisms for the Dead for centuries.” Can you point me to a source on that?
It was not my intention to start a major discussion in regards to you post. I did post a reply this morning but attached it to your more recent post (yesterday.) Perhaps it would have been more appropriate here, so I refer you to that one. I do not have any idea who “Joe” is, but I will respond to your question to him regarding a source of early Christians baptizing for the dead. Here is an article an article by an LDS scholar, who gives examples of early Christian baptism for the dead as well as going into much more into depth as to why Latter-Day Saints (Christians) follow that practice today.
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=21&chapid=104
That is an interesting article. The author is right to suspect someone like me would dismiss his sources (e.g., the Marcionites) on account of their heretical beliefs. Most of the rest are from apocryphal or deuterocanonical works, except for those dealing with the decensus clause, with which I agree, but do not see connected to the topic of proxy baptism. Of course, I don’t believe in the “great apostasy,” but look to the witnesses down through the ages that remained in the apostolic faith; it is in these that I find no reference to the practice, either positive or negative. They simply do not know of it, from what I can tell.
I suspect it is because they understood the Greek there to be in the locative sense, which fits with the other evidence from early Christian worship practice.
Kind regards,
Pr Esget+