Mitt Romney's issues with evangelical Christians are well documented, but the practice of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS or the more commonly known term, Mormon Church) of baptizing by proxy dead Jews could become a hot issue in Florida.

Florida is home to more Jews than any other states, excepting California and New York.

The Mormon faith has practiced since its beginning baptizing by proxy dead people into the Mormon faith, since they believe that no one can enter Heaven without being baptized.  Romney has admitted practicing this particular anomaly.

Many Jews have been left seething by the LDS church's practice of baptizing by proxy Jews who died in the holocaust.

According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon Church, these posthumous "blessings " are intended to "save" ancestors and others who weren't baptized in life or were baptized "without proper authority ."

Jews are not the only ones, however, that the Mormon church has baptized by proxy.  Any Mormon may baptize any person posthumously. Church members have performed the ritual on Buddha, Catholic popes , 9/11 hijackers, William Shakespeare, Joan of Arc, Elvis Presley, President Obama's mother and even reportedly Jesus Christ .

In 2002, the managing director of the Mormon's family and church history department told The New Yorker magazine that as many as 200 million dead people had been baptized as Mormons.

The church, which has the most complete geneological archives in the world, supposedly gets its names from its own extensive library.

In 1994, an Israeli genealogist researching her family in the Mormons' computerized International Genealogical Index made a startling discovery. Her grandfather, a religiously observant Jew killed in the Holocaust, had been posthumously baptized as a Mormon.

Distraught, she alerted other Jewish genealogists who soon learned that some 380,000 Holocaust victims, including Anne Frank , had been baptized. Plus, Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, and scientist Albert Einstein had received this treatment.

In 1995 the Jews entered into discussions with the LDS heirarchy, and supposedly they agreed to cease the practice,.

  According to an article in the Huffington Post, the church insists the deceased have "the right to choose" whether to accept Jesus Christ as their savior.  That, however, hardly settled an outraged Jewish community.

"Baptizing is a very dirty word to many Jews," said Gary Mokotoff, a prominent Jewish genealogist who contacted church elders soon after the Israeli genealogist's discovery. "It reminds us of the persecution Jews had in the past where churches told Jews they had a choice: either convert to Christianity or be murdered."

"They tried to do something very difficult for Mormons to do, which was to stop the whole process of conversion," said Abraham Foxman, who lost 14 relatives in the Holocaust. As national director of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, Foxman took part in the negotiations.

Still, Mokotoff told The Huffington Post, "overzealous Mormons" continued baptizing dead Jewish martyrs.

Renewed public outrage, according to the Huffpost article,  prompted more talks with Mormon leaders, who in 2010 agreed to a new, supposedly more ironclad pact that included changes to prevent inappropriate submissions of baptisms to the computer database records of Holocaust victims -- although not of all Jews. But Helen Radkey, an ex-Mormon whose research uncovered the continuation of Jewish baptisms that led to the second agreement, recently told Salt Lake City Weekly that violations of the pact continue .

Posthumous baptisms are among the practices that have made some voters squeamish about the prospect of a Mormon president.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/mormon-church-mitt-romney_n_1229322.html

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