President's Late Mother Improperly, Posthumously, Baptized as a Mormon
 
 
May 05, 2009 6:53 PM
 
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints confirmed Tuesday
afternoon that someone improperly, posthumously baptized the late
mother of President Obama into the Mormon faith.
 
Last June 4 -- the day after then-Sen. Obama secured enough delegates
to win the Democratic presidential nominee -- someone had the
president's mother Stanley Ann Dunham, who died in 1995 of cancer,
baptized.
 
On June 11, she received the endowment.
 
The White House had no comment.
 
The baptism and endowment which appear on FamilySearch.org, the LDS
Church's genealogical site, were first reported by
John Aravosis at the liberal Americablog.
 
Mormon Church spokeswoman Kim Farah said that "the offering of baptism
to our deceased ancestors is a sacred practice to us and it is counter
to Church policy for a Church member to submit names for baptism for
persons to whom they are not related. The Church is looking into the
circumstances of how this happened and does not yet have all the facts.
However, this is a serious matter and we are treating it as such."
 
For almost two centuries, Mormons have performed baptisms on behalf of
deceased relatives, but church members are counseled to request temple
baptism only on behalf of their relatives. To do so for those who are
not relatives is contrary to Church policy, officials of the Mormon
church said.
 
The Provo Daily Herald notes that the LDS Church "has run afoul of Holocaust groups
multiple times," because of efforts by Mormons to posthumously baptize
Jews killed during the Holocaust. "Leaders said in November that they
are making changes to their massive genealogical database to make it
more difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for
posthumous baptism by proxy."
 
http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/commentary/religious-freedom-a
llows-both-mormons-and-jews-to-honor-their-ancestors

Those changes are specific to victims of the Holocaust, however, and would
not have affected the baptism of the late Mrs. Dunham.*

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/05/presidents-late.html
 
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