Baptizing Dead Quakers

Zenobia Faraday Harris [1] was born in 1707 in Offton, Suffolk. A Quaker, she immigrated to Pennsylvania alone in 1735. She married another Quaker in 1739. She had three children and died in 1790.

She's my several times great-grandmother, and that's all we know about her. We don't know where she lived or was buried or who her parents were. My mother's family has about four hundred years of these records because Quakers in England and English possessions had to maintain their records before the various Toleration Acts. Until the 1753 Marriage Act, England did not recognize Quaker marriages. To be legally married, Quakers had to go to their local Church of England official. Many did not, nor were their children recorded in the parish records. This would be equivalent today to requiring a Methodist to be legally married in a Catholic church, by a Catholic priest, and for a child of two Methodists to have to be baptized by the local Catholic parish to have a birth/baptismal record.

Consider the recent kerfluffle in the US over birth certificates -- the issue wasn't much different then. Early Quakers who refused to conform faced serious practical consequences -- Quakers were legally illegitimate in a time when legitimacy defined one's ability to hold public office, inherit, receive emergency charity, or occupy land; a Quaker woman was legally unmarried and could be whipped and/or fined for unlawful cohabitation. That such laws were irregularly enforced during Zenobia's life did not mean that it couldn't, didn't or wouldn't happen. Religious freedom was a privilege, not a right. This may have been one reason Zenobia immigrated.

Fast-forward to 2011. Our records have never been compiled, published, nor to my knowledge, been outside the family, save for those which became part of the public record. We're neither important nor wealthy. I find these records interesting, especially the 17th and 18th century records, but I'm a history/research geek. Neither genealogy nor colonial American history are my interests, so I haven't been involved in the family archives.

Several weeks ago, my sister Lou got a photocopy of the Quaker family documents from the staunchly Quaker family archivist and called me to ask about OCR software to scan the records. My sister is not history-minded. Further, she's busy with two sons and a master's degree in progress. Genealogy is not a hobby that can be done in five minute chunks.

It took me a minute to realize why she cared. Lou is a Mormon convert. Her conversion about seven years ago didn't surprise me much, nor did it cause much family stir. We're a pretty tolerant bunch, as families go. Mormons have a strong interest in genealogy because they believe that souls cannot fully access the afterlife unless they have fulfilled certain obligations on Earth, or someone has fulfilled them on their behalf. These obligations include Mormon, and only Mormon, baptism. Mormons believe that one of the conditions for the Second Coming is ensuring that every soul who ever lived is baptized. They do this through a ceremony of proxy baptism in which living Mormons are baptized in the name of those who died without benefit of Mormon baptism. Mormons also believe that their own exaltation depends in part on ensuring that their ancestors are baptized.

The nature of genealogy is an ever-widening progression -- one person has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and so on. Start throwing siblings, children and family-by-marriage into that mix and records can quickly become as tangled as a plate of spaghetti. Determining who is responsible for family records and inheritances is tricky, even in amicable families like mine. Mormon genealogy further complicates this already complex situation because Mormons don't just work up the family trees. They submit for baptism direct ancestors (grandparents and N-great-grandparents), co-linear ancestors (N-great-aunts and uncles) and descendants of co-linear ancestors. There's a big reason hobbyist genealogy only took off since the invention of the personal computer -- genealogy databases are massive.

Quakers do not believe in baptism by water. For Quakers, accepting baptism imperils their immortal souls. That's been a major Quaker doctrine since the 17th century. The Quaker branch of my mother's family is rather rare in that it has been consistently Quaker since the 17th century. Most contemporary USians with colonial ancestry are not still Puritan Anglican, Wesleyan Methodist or Dutch Protestant. But that doesn't mean there aren't living and dead Quakers in Mormon family trees. There are instances like Lou, who converted; that's been happening for the 180 years that the LDS faith has existed. (Several early Mormons were originally Quaker.) Just because one set of great-grandparents converted doesn't mean their siblings did -- and because Mormons consider both trunks and branches to be part of their family trees, people of all faiths become part of the LDS family archives.

Everyone in our Quaker records consciously and willfully refused baptism by water. Historically, some Quakers who refused baptism were tortured, fined and/or exiled from their communities. Some were executed. At the very least, such refusals made their lives more difficult. While none of my ancestors were, to my knowledge, executed for heresy, some three hundred left England for Pennsylvania.

I had to think fast. "Lou, I know you're pressed for time. Why don't you send me the records?"

After the records arrived, I started asking some careful questions of Lou and Charity (our Quaker archivist) both. Lou did not tell Charity why Lou wanted the records, nor has anybody bothered to tell Charity that Lou converted. (Lou and Charity are not close; Charity and I are, but Lou's faith isn't my business.) Lou did know that if she told Charity why she wanted the records, Charity probably would refuse to send them, and Lou admitted to deception by omission to get what she wanted.

I must admit that I'm stalling Lou. I'm not proud of this, but I don't want Lou to have these records if she plans to submit them to the LDS archives. The biggest reason I object is that if Lou does submit them, she will profoundly hurt living people for whom this is a major issue. Submission will also damage our shared history, possibly irreparably, and there are metaphysical implications.

Lou was never meaningfully exposed to our shared Quaker heritage. Before we moved to Arizona when she was five, we were members of young, family-oriented Meetings with First Day Schools for small children. These Meetings were like most Christian Sunday Schools for pre-school kids -- songs, Bible stories and art projects. There aren't many Quakers in Arizona, and the only Meeting my mother found thirty years ago was an elderly community of retirees who met as a house-meeting instead of in a Meetinghouse. Our former communities were programmed, with set speakings, hymns and discussions; our new one was the unprogrammed, traditional Quaker meeting of silent meditation until the Spirit moves someone to speak. At almost nine years old, I could handle an hour of First Day meditation in a little old couple's living room. I liked the meditation, and not just as a contrast to my Saturday afternoon Catholic Youth/Folk Masses.

That Meeting, at that age, made Lou melt down. She's mildly ADD, and even now, in her thirties, meditation drives her bonkers (her term). She prays while running, dancing or doing housework. That works for her, but by the time she was old enough to begin to understand Quaker theology, she was spending a lot of time with her LDS friends, including LDS services. Our Quaker mother would not force religious practice on anyone, so she let Lou go, and did her best to instill Quaker principles. Lou does not emotionally understand Quakers' refusal of baptism by water and lacks emotional connections to the faith, practices and history. Further, Lou is the first person to say that she's not adept at imagining multiple viewpoints. She's a concrete thinker with a strongly materialist view of the world. I'm not surprised that the Mormon faith resonates with Lou -- it's a materialistic[2] faith. In LDS theology, there's no real separation between the material world and the spiritual one.

Lou and I had a rocky relationship as children -- we're almost four years apart, I'm the oldest, we're physically very different and had polar opposite temperaments from the beginning -- but now that we're adults and live a thousand miles apart, we have a pretty good relationship. We both grew up in a predominantly Mormon culture, so Lou knows that when she needs to blow off steam about her Church, she can call me. I understand Garmie Wedgie and Boob Sag[3] and the discomfort of wearing two layers from elbows to knees in the middle of a Midwest summer. We can, and do, riff on Funeral Potatoes and green Jell-o "salads"[4]. Lou has a snarky, sarcastic sense of humor and she spares nothing, but that doesn't mean she doesn't love and believe her chosen faith. More importantly, Lou knows that what she says to me won't end up in the local gossip mill. (Every church, every group, has one.) I know what her spiritual requirements are, and how they affect her life.

I understand the social pressure that Lou is under as a convert. Even if Mormon communities didn't have local pecking orders (which they do -- they're human) a Mormon whose N-great-grandparents crossed the Rockies in the 1850s has an assured lineage. It's pretty likely that somebody in a fifth-gen Mormon's ancestry has already done the genealogy work to fulfill the requirement and that those souls are already vicariously baptized. As a convert, Lou doesn't have that simplicity, and the other side of her family is a dead end. Lou's father's [5] grandparents were orphans. Two were New York City foundlings who were placed in something much closer to indentured servitude than adoption. The other two came from similar circumstances in Chicago and Indianapolis. As foundlings, they had no biological records, and given the circumstances, none of them claimed their "adoptive" families.

It's a point of pride for Mormons to present their genealogies -- and Lou admits, it's mostly a temporal, not spiritual, pride. That doesn't make it any less real. Lou does have records -- another branch of the family is better documented, Methodist (thus, does not object to baptism) and long-since published, meaning those records are already in the LDS archives. (It's a sound assumption that any published genealogy is in LDS archives. LDS genealogists have made a point of doing so for sixty years or more.)

I get that Lou feels that her immortal soul depends on her genealogy and that her place in her community is important to her. But I also know that Lou only needs four generations of records to fulfill her religious obligations. She has this already. In the case of the people still alive at the time of her conversion (her parents and most of her grandparents) she got their verbal permission to add their records and those of our recently-deceased relatives to the LDS Archives. [6] She has what she needs for her soul, and for her sons.

I also know that I have to tread very carefully with Lou and her faith. Lou can voice her frustrations to me, but she also feels that she must remain a member in good standing of her faith. Because the Mormon faith is both a faith of personal revelation and hierarchical authority, Lou is required to voice any doubts to her local leader. If I push too much on the theological inconsistencies (and like all faiths, the LDS faith has some), then I put Lou in the painful position of having to question her faith or not. If she doesn't confess, that will make her feel fraudulent; if she does, then there's a good chance she will be advised to stop speaking to her gentile family -- and that's all of us. We can threaten her belief, and for Mormons, that imperils not only Lou's soul, but the souls of her sons.

Lou believes that we Gentiles (all non-Mormons are gentiles to Mormons) still have free will in the afterlife. She, and all Mormons, believe that we who are virtuous in this world and who either never heard the LDS message or were honestly misled (according to Lou, I fall into the latter category as a "virtuous pagan") will gain a perfectly acceptable Heaven and that baptism only gives our souls the option of moving into the Mormon Celestial Kingdom where we will be forever joined with our families. (As a selling point -- for me, anyway -- this sounds more like a bug than a feature.) She believes that if a soul is baptized vicariously, it makes no difference if the soul doesn't want it to make a difference.

But once I start thinking in terms of a soul and an afterlife, I have to follow that out, and Zenobia is my test-case. I assume that Zenobia's Heaven is attained. Her eternity exists. By Quaker belief, she is in the presence of inward light, spirit and grace. She has found the divine and been led to Truth. She may be floating on a cloud wearing a halo and Birkenstocks, or wandering the Suffolk meadows or deep in the middle of some eternal game or nestled comfortably in a library chatting with Socrates. (Everything but the clunky sandals is in my conception of heaven.) Then some eternal bureaucrat appears, douses her with cold water and says, "We just got a memo. You're now in the wrong Heaven. In the other one, you'll be an eternal servant, the subject of some ascended god you've never heard of, who happens to be your many, many times great-grandson-in-law... Who in life was neither peaceful nor egalitarian nor simple. Will you go peacefully or DENY THE WILL OF GOD?"

Given the range of employment opportunities for 18th century East Anglian women -- servant, servant, farm labor, servant, spinner, servant -- I'm pretty sure Zenobia spent her teens and twenties in service. Returning to service is probably not what she had in mind for the afterlife. She was a Quaker who abjured rank, oaths, debt and war. She would have been plain-dressed, plain-spoken, convinced that women are the spiritual equals of men. She probably opposed slavery and welcomed black Quakers as her spiritual siblings. Her great-grandson-in-law would appall her, being that he's military and invested in his rank; his faith denies spiritual equality to women. For Zenobia, this would be an expulsion from Heaven. If she stays, she is disobedient to the only authority she ever acknowledged as supreme and placing her will above that of God. If she goes, she'll be deprived of her conception of Heaven and deny her own faith. Free will turns pretty Gumby-ish when talking about being in the presence of God. A faithful Quaker could not defy God's will, because that's what they lived by their lights. There's a part of me that wonders if Lou's vicarious baptism doesn't condemn those souls to their version of Hell. I don't know if Lou's Celestial Kingdom is objectively better than Zenobia's Inward Light of the Divine, but they're such entirely different concepts that there's no overlap.

I don't literally believe this -- I'm agnostic -- but I do believe that, if there is an afterlife, my mortal mind is incapable of understanding it because my mortal mind is based in a very physical self. I don't know that I have a soul, so if, after I'm dead, Lou feels the need for her own comfort and spiritual development to have me baptized by proxy, I don't think I'm going to care. However, that's my soul, or lack thereof. My partner is adamant that Lou does not know his vital statistics. He doesn't think he has a soul either, but he considers vicarious baptism to be a vicious, callous, reprehensible denial of his personhood, even once he ceases to be. Lou knows this and my mother, grandmother and my other sister have been asked not to give Lou my partner's information so that she's not tempted to do back-channel recon. I know and my partner knows that Lou or one of my nephews (if they remain Mormon) will be able to get his records from the Social Security Death Index after he's dead, but he wants his wishes respected while he's alive.

We can't ask the people in the Quaker family records what they want. Thus, when it comes to the Quaker family records, I feel responsible to honor their legacy and err on the side of respecting their choices in life. Lou feels a similar responsibility to their legacy, but in a completely different manner. Yes, these people are many years dead, but they felt so strongly about their beliefs that many of them moved to wilderness half-way around the planet so they could practice in peace. When Lou and I talked about my partner's wishes, she argues from a Pascal's Wager perspective, only more encompassing. Quakers don't accept Pascal's Wager; we consider it to be a violation of the Testimony of Integrity -- denying the internal light of truth for momentary, mortal doubt. Lou and I also talked about it from the rationalist perspective -- since my partner and I don't think we have souls, what does it matter to us? Well, it matters for the same reason we have made wills. Our lives and our faiths are our decisions, to be respected and honored while we live and after we die. If we have souls, then we have the right to dispose of them as we will dispose of our fortunes, furniture and forms. A posthumous, vicarious baptism strips our volition from us. In a lot of things, I can be tolerant of my sister's faith, but when her faith steps on other people's volition, it's no longer a case of tolerance.

I have the only record that Zenobia Faraday Harris ever existed. Her life, in the grand scale, meant very little to anyone except Zenobia, her parents and siblings (who are lost), her husband and children, her friends and fellow Quakers. History is full of people like her. She's important because she was Quaker in a time when that was difficult, and she persevered. I don't know who Zenobia was -- whether she liked woolen or worsted, linen or cotton. Was she a tea drinker, or did she prefer coffee? Lark of the morning or night owl? I suspect she picked her daughter's name (Ophelia) but did she or her husband name Zeno and Zebediah? Were their Z names in her honor? Was she dour or whimsical? Her children's names sort of suggest whimsy, but I'll never know. I do know she was brave and strong, because she crossed an ocean alone, in a little wooden ship, to a place that didn't yet have glass manufacturing. I know that she left a wealthy, comfortable county for the pestilential swamp that was 1730s Philadelphia. I know she lived and died in the Society of Friends.

I know that if I give her to Lou, Zenobia will be baptized. Her name will be recorded in the LDS archives as a Mormon. I'm an independent historian. I know how friable human records are. I know how easily we lose documents. I know that they can vanish with a hard drive failure, or a house fire, or under an incendiary bomb. I know that even the early 19th century records that are my prime focus right now are fragmented and ephemeral. This means that I also know that in two centuries, all that may be left of Zenobia is the LDS record, and that will mean that the only non-physical fact of her existence will cease to be. She never denied her conscience. For me, if Lou vicariously baptizes Zenobia, that destroys the greater part of Zenobia's existence -- who she was. But for Lou, denying Zenobia baptism is denying Zenobia choice.

Quakers are not the only group in conflict with Mormons over this -- Jewish groups have had rather terse conversations with the LDS leadership over the vicarious baptism of Holocaust victims, while Catholic and Anglican authorities have denied Mormon researchers access to archives. The Mormon response has been sketchy -- sometimes defensive, sometimes defiant, sometimes conciliatory -- but still the practice goes on.

In terms of my family, I don't know how we'll deal with this. It's becoming a point of conflict because about a third of the family is Quaker. These records aren't going away -- I have this copy and Charity has willed the originals to me. I will probably see them placed in the William Penn University archives. I will be decrypting these documents, but beyond that, I can't say. Part of me hopes that I can punt -- that Lou's other distractions and her other records will satisfy her while buying me time. I hope that she will accept and understand that other people feel as strongly as she does. Talking to her is going to be a long process.

-- czedwards

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[1] Names and some details changed to protect privacy.

[2] Materialistic in the sense that all things are composed of matter, and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. Not in the sense of pursuing wealth and luxury.

[3] Mormons wear sacred clothing next to their skin. The current female iteration resembles a thin, somewhat fitted tee-shirt and boxers/tap pants. Traditionally, Mormon women have worn bras and other foundation garments over these garments. This doesn't work very well and everything tends to shift around.

[4] These are Mormon Culture foods, the equivalent of Mama's cannoli or Granny's schnitzel. They are always present at any group meal, but especially funeral potlucks. Nobody is quite sure where the green Jell-o thing came from, but the combination of cottage cheese or Cool-Whip, canned pineapple, marshmallows, coconut, tapioca or acini de pepe pasta and green Jell-o is considered a vegetable. (As with any unknown cultural artifact, it's of ritual significance.) Funeral potatoes are a little more subject to cultural anthropology. They're a quick-prep, inexpensive, pantry casserole suitable for sustaining hard labor. Shredded potatoes are mixed with sour cream and canned cream soup, topped with shredded cheese and either crushed potato chips or crackers, then baked. A 9"x13" pan can be prepped in ten minutes and feeds eight as a main dish or two teenage boys as a light snack.

[5] Lou's father is my adopted father. My Catholic father died before I was born, and before he and my mother had a chance to marry. Lou's father is not religious. Mom followed my late father's wishes and raised me within both the Quaker and Catholic traditions, but she had no reason to raise Lou Catholic and didn't.

[6] Whether she explained the theological implications of her act is another matter, and one I haven't gotten a clear answer upon. LDS policy is that, when requesting vicarious baptism for anyone who died within the last 95 years, the requestor must have the permission of the closest living relative. This policy is observed in the breech as much as in the practice, as shown by the recent vicarious baptisms of Stanley Anne Durham (President Obama's late mother), 380,000 Jewish Holocaust victims, Mother Teresa, and Ruth (Mrs. Billy) Graham.

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Comments

[Timothy (TRiG)]

I hope it works out for you without tearing a hole in the family. Stalling is certainly the option I'd take. I am an agnostic atheist. And my religious background is JW. The Witnesses wouldn't care much about Mormons vicariously baptising them. Rude, perhaps, but not of theological significance.

I still find myself very uncomfortable with the idea. It really is a very strange belief and practice.

TRiG.

[Literata]

I started to write about five different things, and they're all too personal and emotional for me to go into right now. I honor your respect for your ancestors and their beliefs, and wish you all the best in the ongoing tension.

[Robin Zimmermann]

This post has made me finally understand why people find the LDS practice of baptism for the dead offensive. Thank you.

I would not let her have the records, but I don't know how to stop her.

[Jarred]

I didn't know that Quakers did not believe in and even had a strong stance against water baptism. Where can I learn more about the reasons for this stance?

[Andrea]

This was fascinating. I don't have any other words right now. Thank you.

Aside from that, I know the green jello salad of which you speak - there's not a Mormon in my family history, but my mom's been making that salad since well before I was born. The pineapple, the marshmallows, the cottage cheese - I identify this dish with my mom more strongly than any other food. I've always thought of it as a Midwestern church basement potluck kind of thing.

[Literata]

Well, I'm not a Quaker, but here's a link to the Richmond Declaration of Faith of 1887. Key quote: "We would express our continued conviction that our Lord appointed no outward rite or ceremony for observance in His church."

[Robin Zimmermann]

Actually, as an aside, there was a memorable part of one of the 1632 books (The Ram Rebellion, to be specific), where members of the League of Women Voters in Grantville - a fictional West Virginia town that had been thrown back in time to, well, 1631, actually - write letters about making jello salad with the last of their twentieth-century jello. Although it's canonically established that there was an LDS church in the town, I think the recipe and impetus came from members of another church.

[CZEdwards]

@Jarred: The refusal of baptism by water (and the Quaker Testimonies of Peace, Integrity, Simplicity, Equality) comes from Ephesians 4:1-5

1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

It's part of the belief that one does not make outward displays of faith. The short answer is the unity of all of creation means that the single baptism of Jesus served to baptize all, and that baptism comes through faith and living to the Testimonies of peacefulness, integrity, equality and simplicity.

For me, I took the universalist route -- everything is part of creation. That's not always true, but the Society of Friends is very much a faith of personal revelation.

[Jarred]

@Literata,@CZEdwards: Thanks. Very interesting.

[CZEdwards]

And on the jell-o thing: I know the dish came into being in the 1950s -- it showed one was wealthy enough to have refrigeration, it was a new, sweet convenience food and it's very quick prep. It's also a cold dish that can tolerate time at room temp, so would be popular before the advent of ubiquitous air conditioning, which is probably why it's popular in the US South and the Midwest as well as in the hot, dry Mormon Corridor (Arizona, Utah, Idaho). It's the green bit that still passes my (and Lou's) comprehension. This dish is brilliant with lemon or orange jell-o. Not so much with the reds. But lime? Really? *grin*

[CZEdwards]

Re:1632... Well, they COULD continue to make gelatin salads. It's just that making gelatin was such a frickin' bummer when it started with "boil hooves for six hours." (And citrus and sugar being hard to get in the Thirty Years' War...)

[Andrew Glasgow]

I can't imagine any deity worth worshiping that would care whether a good person was baptized or not as far as getting into heaven was concerned -- but I cannot imagine any coherent theology at all in which someone barely related to you saying a series of magic words on your behalf would influence a deity to change how that person's afterlife reward was dispensed.

Of course, I am at a bit of a disadvantage as I find the concept of an afterlife or deity to be difficult to imagine in any case.

[Randall]

On the one hand, I admire the LDS effort: it's like they're saying, "We will save everyone." It's kind of an arrogant, westernized version of the Boddhisatva oath.

On the other hand, it's arrogant. It says, "We have the only way to salvation." Which is hardly unique to the LDS, of course, but they are, I think, the first to force retroactive salvation on people. If one believes in such things, it is a kind of theft of people's free will. One must, if such things are to matter, have the right to choose to go to hell (should hell in fact exist).

I'm an atheist, so I don't really care what anyone thinks has happened to my soul after I die. But, as you suggest in the article, I wouldn't want future generations to decide, based on the only records available, that I was LDS. It would deny an important part of my identity.

[Deird, who needs chocolate]

Having been baptised as an adult - an event that was extremely significant to me - the idea of being baptised-by-proxy as a Mormon is horrifying to me. It would be like someone was trying to take away this choice I made and strip it of its importance.

[Froborr]

Hmm... I think I need to think long and hard about whether I should even try to address the main thrust of this post, since I need to do a massive privilege check on myself first (I'm an atheist whose few religious relatives come from a religion that doesn't much care what happens after you die).

But I *will* comment on that Jell-O... entity... you describe. I'm pretty sure what you're talking about is not so much a dessert as the spawn of Cthulhu, here to shatter any mind that attempts to even contemplate what such a horror could taste like, and possibly also plunge the Earth into a new age of darkness. I mean, Jell-O is vile enough to begin with, but *lime* Jell-O? With *cheese* and *pineapples* and *marshmallows*!? How did somebody even get the idea to make such a thing? Were they reading some kind of eldritch tome? Was this created to appease the alien tastes of some eldritch creature from beyond the stars?

I must know the culinary history of this dish! What are its cultural forebears? Whence came it, and how can we get it to go back there as quickly and quietly as possible? Can it be harmed by conventional means, or will we need nukes and/or magic to contain it? Has anyone ever actually eaten it, and did they survive? Did they remain fully human afterwards, or become some kind of Jell-Oid hybrid entity?

(And I thought just putting mayonnaise in Jell-O was bad...)

[Froborr]

Dammit, used eldritch too many times. "Eldritch creature from beyond the stars" should be "cyclopean creature from beyond the stars."

[bluefrog]

I feel your pain. My nephew is a Mormon convert, and I'm the family historian. He has asked for the records I have; so far, I have stalled him. There are no Quakers in our ancestry that I know of--it runs to Methodists and Baptists--but the whole idea of posthumous Mormon baptism disturbs me.

If the statistics I have read are correct, as wonderful as LDS records are (the joke is that when good genealogists die, they go to Utah), the error rate is about 20%. Suppose you were baptized by a name you didn't bear in life? Would that screw up your afterlife? Not that I believe that it is going to make the slightest difference if there really is an afterlife, but I would respect your ancestor's wish to avoid baptism if she believed that she should. Please, though, leave the record of her existence in a responsible archive somewhere. She ought to be remembered.

[Literata]

Ok, back in a calmer frame of mind. Let me just say that I have had an argument literally over the dead body of a close family member, and that was only the beginning of how that family member's funeral went very, very wrong. The idea of Mormon baptism-by-proxy is equally horrifying to me. Thinking about it being done to me...well, it would be a flat-out spiritual "attack," in my mind, as bad as imprecatory prayer or cursing.

[cjmr]

Ohio Lutherans make that lime Jello with cheese, pineapples, and marshmallows, too. But I think my grandmother used cream cheese, not cottage cheese. Still, at least that one is better than the lemon Jello with shredded carrots, peppers, and cucumber in it...

[Froborr]

Still, at least that one is better than the lemon Jello with shredded carrots, peppers, and cucumber in it...

What. The. Hell.

Is there some kind of vast American population segment that simply doesn't have tastebuds, and I'm only just now hearing about them? (That would explain McDonald's, come to think of it...) But no, that wouldn't explain why it all seems to center on Jell-O. Did somebody slip a chapter of fake Jell-O recipes (presumably written in blood on human skin) into a widespread cookbook eighty-ish years ago? Are the manufacturers of Jell-O a front for an alien invasion?

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!?

[MaryKaye]

I was baptized Catholic as an infant, and repeated the Renewal of Baptismal Promises every year after I learned how to talk. (I did refuse Confirmation, though, because by that age I was pretty sure I wasn't a faithful believer.)

When I became a Pagan I set this aside, but some years later it was becoming an issue for me: I felt I needed to put my relationship with that God on a more truthful footing. So I went back to the church where I was baptized and made a private but formal renunciation of my baptism and vows, with the best explanation I could muster.

I walked home through the early cherry trees, and got to see something I've never seen before or since, in twenty years in this city: an opossum sitting in my yard in broad daylight, waiting for me. Opossums are a symbolic animal to my coven, though we have never been sure why--the card keeps coming up in animal workings, and we keep poring over its meaning. All we agree on is that it does not mean "playing dead". In this context as well it seemed meaningful and yet completely obscure. (The Gods are like that sometimes.)

This rite was, for me, part of a general intellectual liberation that allows me to read Scripture and actually try to understand what it is saying, rather than having to filter it through an imposed "what it's supposed to say." Not the biggest part, but a significant part.

I would be *furious* if someone baptized me now. It would be spiritual violence, a denial of my free and carefully made choice.

A strange thing: people often accuse Wiccans of casting hexes. I have some hexes in my library but I have never in my life wanted to use one. But I do get hexed from time to time. I get letters that say "Transmit this St. Jude prayer to seven people or you'll have seven years' bad luck" and variants on that theme. From my point of view, the main hex-users in my life are a subset of Christians who don't seem to see anything wrong with it. Really, if you believe the St. Jude letter is truthful, the only ethical thing to do when you receive one is destroy it. Otherwise you are purchasing good luck for yourself by inflicting bad luck on at least 7 (or 10 or 15, depending on the version) as many people, which is how many it will take to kill the chain you start. Not a nice thing to do!

Baptism of unconsenting people is equally a hex. Imagine if Wiccans did this, what a fuss there would be!

I think it matters even if you are an atheist, if the act is made public: it's a statement of religious imperialism, of "My faith trumps your faith or non-faith." That's not conducive to emotional security for people of other or no faith.

Wiccans disagree on the propriety of doing magic on behalf of unwitting or unwilling recipients (it usually comes up with healing magic). I personally won't, though I am a totally crappy healer so the issue seldom arises. I wish I saw more of this kind of restraint in other faith communities.

[textjunkie]

Huh--yeah, as another poster said, this helps make clear what people object to in the LDS practice of baptising the dead. I didn't realize they were entered into the LDS records as actually Mormon; I thought they were flagged as posthumous baptism or something that made it clear they were different. You make a really good argument; the idea that your ancestor's life records and her life decisions would be lost is horrible. (The bit about the baptism actually *meaning* anything vis a vis your ancestor's eternity I have to ignore; I just can't believe that someone's faith can be changed by proxy, without their freewill involved.)

I dunno; I haven't had your experiences with your sister, but I would just explain my feelings on the situation to just the way you did here, and see if she can live without baptizing her Quaker forebears?

[hapax]

I should note that it isn't just baptisms that the LDS performs by proxy. Other "sealings" are also performed as well.

My mother, who went through a particularly bitter divorce, was horrified by the notion that some well-meaning descendant might choose to "seal" her to my father after she was dead. It's not that she thought it would actually affect the status of her soul; but she was utterly repulsed at the thought that she had suffered and triumphed over would somehow be negated, as if it didn't count.

---

Froborr: Is there some kind of vast American population segment that simply doesn't have tastebuds, and I'm only just now hearing about them? ... But no, that wouldn't explain why it all seems to center on Jell-O.

Heh heh. It isn't just the Jell-o that you have to watch out for. It's the Holy Trinity: Jell-O, Kool-Whip, and Campbell's Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup.

Until I grew up and managed to unlearn everything I had ever learnt, that *was* cooking to me. I don't think I ever made a meal that didn't incorporate one of those ingredients somewhere. (In fact, I have any number of recipes that combine two of them. Never seen one that used all three, though).

I still like some of them, I must confess. Orange Jell-o with Kool-Whip (although nowadays I use plain nonfat yoghurt) is nice on a hot day. Pistachio pudding with cream cheese and Kool-Whip (or, better, whipped cream) piled into a coconut crust makes for a non-threatening pie when you can't bear to turn on the oven. And Cream of Mushroom soup... well, you can't make Thanksgiving Green Bean Casserole without it.

Which is, I confess, probably the best idea.

[Bruce]

In terms of my family, I don't know how we'll deal with this.

I must admit that that's probably the most profound understatement I think I've ever read in my life. I can't even imagine a more perfect collision of incompatible religious doctrines. If you find a resolution that doesn't involve some pain to someone involved, I will be truly amazed.

Talking to her is going to be a long process.

Maybe infinitesimally less of an understatement than the one above.

Nobody is quite sure where the green Jell-o thing came from, but the combination of cottage cheese or Cool-Whip, canned pineapple, marshmallows, coconut, tapioca or acini de pepe pasta and green Jell-o is considered a vegetable.

And that made me laugh harder than I have in days. ;)

[Winter]

The idea of posthumous baptism has creeped me out ever since I first heard about it. I think it was in the context of a Jewish group getting angry over the baptism of Holocaust victims. There's just something about the idea of screwing around with the dead in this way that makes my skin crawl.

[Froborr]

@hapax: Actually, one of my "I am lazy and want comfort food" recipes is to stir together one can each of condensed cream of mushroom and condensed cream of celery or broccoli soup, some chopped-up chicken breast, and frozen veggies, top with two boxes of uncooked instant stuffing, bake until chicken is cooked. It's pretty tasty, albeit salty.

I think what horrifies me about the Jell-O thing (besides it containing THREE foods off the honestly very short list of Stuff I Won't Eat (pineapple, lime, Jell-O)) is that I honestly can't imagine what it tastes like. That's *rare*--I'm very much an improviser in the kitchen, and thus can usually make a mental "picture" of a food from an ingredients listl the fact that this defeats me is actually really unsettling.

[Lunch Meat]

Unfortunately, being privileged by being a member of the dominant religion in the way that I am, it's not easy for me to understand the feeling that being baptized posthumously would be a spiritual attack. I can see why it is, of course, but it's difficult to really get that idea through to myself. But now I'm thinking, if someone could unbaptize me after I died? Could recant my faith for me? That's horrifying to me. Thank you for a thought-provoking post and for exposing another of my privileged blind spots for me--this is something I will be thinking about. My faith group does not practice baptism for the dead, but that doesn't mean we aren't just as aggressive in other ways.

Your situation seems really difficult and conflicted, and I wish I could offer some helpful thoughts, but if you end up talking to your sister about it I wish you all the best.

[bitwise operator]

My grandmother has no connection to the LDS, but she also makes a similar recipe: lime Jell-O + cream cheese + Cool Whip. Note that she serves it strictly as a dessert. Personally, I consider the cream cheese to be an infinitely preferable alternative to cottage cheese. My mother put celery, pineapple, and dill in lime Jell-O once and served it as a salad; it was truly an abomination.
A lot of these ersatz Jell-O recipes can be traced to the 1950s. There are old cookbooks of literally nothing but these recipes, back when Jell-O came in flavors like tomato and celery. The horror...

Also nth-ing that posthumous baptism, while the motivations may be pure, is really an undignified way to treat the deceased and their family. To me it would feel like sanding the epitaph off someone's gravestone and replacing it with your own ideas. Ew.

[Froborr]

A little more time to think about this... to me, the entire point of any posthumous ritual is the impact it has on the living. That is, after all, who is involved--nobody attends their own funeral!* And it sounds like SOMEONE is going to be upset no matter what you do--the question is who will be upset more, and whose upset matters more to you. It sounds to me like you're leaning toward not giving Lou the info; I'd go with that, as dragging your heels is likely to only make matters worse.

*Except Mark Twain characters, of course.

[Asha]

Citrus jello is something I really enjoy... but I could never understand why people would ruin it by mixing stuff in. Never could get behind that.

But hash brown casserole? With sharp cheddar and onions and sour cream? How can you not love it?

[Froborr]

@Asha: I'm going to assume you don't mean hash brown casserole in Jell-O, but straight-up hash brown casserole. Now *that* is good stuff, and one of my favorite things at Cracker Barrel. Which my fiancee has *never been too*! Poor, deprived woman.

*is planning a road trip, and therefore craving Cracker Barrel; alas, lacking a car, it is unlikely to feature*

[Lila]

Froborr: Is there some kind of vast American population segment that simply doesn't have tastebuds, and I'm only just now hearing about them?

Yes.

On the main post: for me, this issue has nothing to do with souls, or beliefs, or the afterlife. It has to do with choice. And the idea of systematically overriding people's choices long after they have died is morally repugnant, whether it has any actual effect on the dead or not.

(When my eldest was about 12, I gave "congealed salad" as an example of the sort of food people bring when someone has a death in the family: she listened to my explanation and replied, "Yes, I understand why people bring food, but why would you bring something that makes it WORSE?"

[Lila]

ARRGH I left out a parenthesis!

)

[Nathaniel]

God, this practice makes me spit. As a Jew, it infuriates me what the Mormons are doing with the memories of those Holocaust victims. Those people died as Jews, and not merely as Jews, but because they were Jews. To have some people come in and say "nope nope, they Mormon now, its all cool..."

This makes me so angry I can hardly even form words, which is a rarity for me. The practice feels like nothing less than spiritual grave robbing.

[Caretaker of Cats (for want of a better name)]

It looks like I'm being tempted out of lurkerdom by... Jell-O.

I think I've found documentation for the lemon jello with peppers thing from a 1920s cookbook, courtesy of the Gallery of Regrettable Food:
http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/jello/9.html

I can also testify that the lime Jell-O/cottage cheese/pineapple/topped in Kool-Whip thing is real. There's still the chance of it showing up at a family gathering if no one talks Grandma out of it. Jell-O WTF-cuisine, along with Cream of Stuff Mixed With Other Stuff, is one of the major food groups from a time period where buying a branded product was a better choice than making non-monstrous food from scratch because the ability to buy branded products was a class marker. Today it's a cheap thing to take to a potluck, particularly if you're visiting the Real American branch of the family who wouldn't appreciate the tabbouleh.

As to the baptism thing, I can only shudder. I'm an atheist, so I don't think what they're doing has any metaphysical effect, but I respect the power of narratives. What we have left of a person after they die is their story and baptizing the dead and placing their records in the LDS archives is to try coopt, overwrite and erase someone's story. I'm most familiar with the practice from the incident with the Holocaust victims, which is particularly egregious because they're trying to erase the victims' Jewish identity AGAIN. It is arrogant and makes me want to spit.

[Robin Zimmermann]

On the jello theme, Wikipedia led me to a song: Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise by William Bolcom and Joan Morris.

[Caretaker of Cats (for want of a better name)]

Froborr:
"I think what horrifies me about the Jell-O thing (besides it containing THREE foods off the honestly very short list of Stuff I Won't Eat (pineapple, lime, Jell-O)) is that I honestly can't imagine what it tastes like. That's *rare*--I'm very much an improviser in the kitchen, and thus can usually make a mental "picture" of a food from an ingredients listl the fact that this defeats me is actually really unsettling."

It's a bland sweet lime flavor. IIRC, the cottage cheese and the pineapple don't provide much flavor, but they do provide texture. So in addition to the Jell-O texture, there's lumpy and chewy bits in there as well. On the other hand, I think the whipped cream brings out the cottage cheese more, so there's a mix of lime and dairy... Hmm. Grandma's version looked like a normal square of jello, only cloudy with bits. Usually served in roughly 3 inch squares on a small salad/roll plate next to the main dinner plate. Congealed in a 13x9 pan. I think it may have contained minced celery a few times for crunch.

[Froborr]

See... my grandmother wasn't a good cook, at all (except for sandwiches, she taught me what a *proper* sandwich entails), but she'd never have made anything like... that.

[Meredith]

After the records arrived, I started asking some careful questions of Lou and Charity (our Quaker archivist) both. Lou did not tell Charity why Lou wanted the records, nor has anybody bothered to tell Charity that Lou converted. (Lou and Charity are not close; Charity and I are, but Lou's faith isn't my business.)

If Lou is openly living as a Mormon, then I don't think it's a violation of her privacy or character to casually slip into a conversation with Charity that, oh, by the way, did you know that Lou is a Mormon? Let Charity draw hir own conclusions about the records. You don't have to explicitly say anything. Sie'll get the hint.

[Nev]

Thanks, CZEdwards, for a wonderfully written post on a very fraught subject (involving faiths I don't know much about).

I've heard of baptism for the dead, though, and am astonished that non-LDS people could not think it disrespectful—but then again I come from a Jewish background and we have a bit of a different take on conversion and evangelism…to put it mildly.

Hash brown casserole is the bomb. We always made it with cream of mushroom soup, grated cheese mixed in, and cornflakes on top, and called it just plain "hash browns". Until I moved out, I had no idea people ate hash browns in any other way.

(Didn't know it was an LDS thing. Round here hash brown casserole connotes working class/lower middle class.)

[P J Evans]

It's my understanding that Mormons believe that proxy baptism gives the dead person the option to not convert ... assuming you believe that it has any effect on people who are dead. (I don't think She is that narrow-minded.)

[Robin Zimmermann]

Ooh, clever spammer! at 09:09 PM!
A piece of spam (to which Robin is responding) has been removed by TBAT

[Robin Zimmermann]

Not P J Evans - the comment's been deleted. (Thanks to the mods!)

[P J Evans]

Robin, I knew it wasn't me - I saw it in the sidebar. Seems to be invasion time, again.

[Robin Zimmermann]

The rate of spam in each torrent is actually low compared to some places - I've seen a Wiki hit with twenty or thirty spam links before the admins have a chance to roll back the edits.

[Lonespark]

I'm starting to lose the ability to keep up with the comments...

Gah, the posthumous baptism thing makes me froth at the mouth so hard. I don't think we'll face an issue quite so contentious in my family, thank all the gods. But when my paternal grandfather died, his RTC-ish daughter resented the way we kept religion out of the services in accordance with his wishes. And now my grandmother on that side has days to go, so the issue will probably come back up.

[Amaryllis]

I'm too fed up with life in general to comment much on people who think they can muck around with other people's lives, after the fact. I hope you and sister can work this out, but it's a pretty fundamental disconnect that you describe here.

one person has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and so on. Start throwing siblings, children and family-by-marriage into that mix and records can quickly become as tangled as a plate of spaghetti. Determining who is responsible for family records and inheritances is tricky
Yeah, there are only so many ancestors to go around. Go back far enough, and anybody could be related to anybody. Doesn't give the living any rights over the dead.

the combination of cottage cheese or Cool-Whip, canned pineapple, marshmallows, coconut, tapioca or acini de pepe pasta and green Jell-o is considered a vegetable.
I think I quoted this once before on Old Slacktivist, but google is unhelpful, so skip it if you've heard this one.

This is a very sad ballad,
Because it's about the way too many people make a salad.
Generally they start with bananas,
And the might just as well use gila monsters or iguanas.
Pineapples are another popular ingredient,
Although there is one school that holds preserved pears or peaches more expedient,
And you occasionally meet your fate
In the form of a prune or a date.
Rarely you may chance to discover a soggy piece of tomato looking very forlorn and Cinderell-ry,
But for the most part you are confronted by apples and celery,
And it's not a bit of use at this point to turn pale or break out into a cold perspiration,
Because all of this only the foundation,
Because if you think the foundation sounds unenticing,
Just wait until we get to the dressing, or rather, the icing.
There are various methods of covering up the body, and to some, marshmallows are the pall supreme,
And others prefer whipped cream.
And then they deck the grave with ground-up peanuts and maraschinos
And you get the effect of a funeral like Valentino's,
And about the only thing that in this kind of salad is never seen
Is any kind of green,*
And oil and vinegar and salt and pepper are at a minimum,
But there is a maximum of sugar and syrup and nutmeg and ginger and cinnamum,
And my thoughts about this kind of salad are just as unutterable
As parsnips are unbutterable,
And indeed I am surprised that the perpetrators haven't got around to putting buttered parsnips in these salmagundis,
And the salad course nowadays seems to be a month of sundaes.
-Ogden Nash

*Ed. note: lime jello doesn't count!

[Jenny Islander]

Jell-O, IIRC, first became a nationwide Thing in the Great Depression, because it was cheap. If you could afford to make dessert at all, you could buy a box of Jell-O and turn out something pretty and sweet. Jell-O published recipes for constructed desserts pretty early on, but home cooks took the original ideas and ran with them. Jell-O remained popular through the Second World War and afterward because most Jell-O recipes don't take much prep time and because even the most dazzling, architectonic desserts require not much more than boiling some water, stirring, pouring, and opening cans.

I don't like the texture of gelatin myself, but I would like to try some tomato aspic sometime, maybe layered over some herb-seasoned cream cheese. That sounds like a lovely side dish for cold baked chicken.

[P J Evans]

My mother wasn't into lime jello. Usually it was strawberry jello with fruit cocktail and sliced bananas. (I remember it tended to reliquify after a day in the fridge - there was always enough for at least two meals.)

[storiteller]

I've never had the abomination involving cottage cheese described here, but one Thanksgiving standard in our semi-hippie, mostly natural eating family is cranberry Jello mold. It's a can of cranberry sauce, a package of raspberry jello, walnuts, and pineapple. It's actually really good. This next year, I'm going to have to mess around beforehand with agar agar to get the texture right, because my mom has become a vegetarian and jello isn't vegetarian. She's not very strict, so she just dealt with it last year, but it would be nice for her sake to develop an alternative recipe.

As for the practice of Mormon baptism, I too am deeply bothered by it. However, of all of the things in your essay, this bothered me even more:

Lou is required to voice any doubts to her local leader. If I push too much on the theological inconsistencies...then I put Lou in the painful position of having to question her faith or not... if she does, then there's a good chance she will be advised to stop speaking to her gentile family"

I find it really disturbing that Mormons have to voice all of their doubts to their leadership. Even when I went to an evangelical church, I felt perfectly fine not voicing my doubts to anyone. That system is perfectly well-oriented for abuse and as you said, cutting ties to those who do not share your worldview.

[Brin (not Meir)]

I remember it tended to reliquify after a day in the fridge

Kind of like cranberry jelly? (It's usually called cranberry "sauce", but it doesn't seem very sauce-like to me.) I try to convince the rest of my family to eat the leftover. I don't like liquified cranberry jelly, plus it starts to lose that lovely can shape.
(We're not into Jell-O. We have canned cranberry jelly on special occasions, and sometimes we buy Jell-O brand pudding mix, but that's as close as we get.)

[CZEdwards]

Addendum: As a family, we are talking about this -- we had our generation of biting our tongues and sitting on our hands a couple back, and that worked real well. /End sarcasm.

In part, that's why I started writing about this -- writing is how I clarify my thoughts, and after spending about 20K words in email with various family members (and burning through my 1000 minutes a month two months in a row -- I thought I was going to have to have my phone surgically removed from my ear), I realized that family negotiations are the same, no matter the topic. Lots of people, lots of egos, lots of history, both written and unwritten. Functional family negotiations are always about talking it out, hearing each other, listening to each other and shifting our perspectives to encompass each other. This matter, for us, was a matter of break-down (Lou, Charity, Mom and I not conveying enough information in all directions) that actually shows better how the system works.

In our case, we're all stalling, and in a lot of ways, this isn't hurting any of us. Everyone is getting the chance to make their cases, and while I don't know what's going to happen, we're all improved by the fact of the dialogue and the lessons in patience, tolerance, forgiveness and communication.

[Skyknight]

And I suddenly find myself wondering if there might be a market for rambutan gelatin.

...

All right, maybe that's not a fruit well enough recognized outside of Malaysia. Lychee gelatin or longan gelatin instead, then? (Rambutan is still my favorite of the three soapberries, though.)

[Brin (not Meir)]

Skyknight: And I suddenly find myself wondering if there might be a market for rambutan gelatin.
...
All right, maybe that's not a fruit well enough recognized outside of Malaysia.

Crawl players will recognise it, but probably think it's fictional.

[Matt McIrvin]

My grandmother favored lime Jello with green beans in it. French-cut green beans, and, as far as I can remember, nothing else.

I think the common theme that was supposed to make them compatible was "green". All in all, I think I prefer the pineapple/cottage-cheese/marshmallow stuff. (It just now occurred to me to wonder how one gets it to jell with pineapple in it. The answer: it's canned pineapple, in which the problematic enzyme has been denatured.)

[Mau de Katt]

Isn't there also an LDS practice of vicariously marrying other people into the Church, as well? Back when I was in my late teens or early 20s (the height of my own Fundagelicalism), I was visiting my aunt & uncle. Aunt Renee was telling me about a coworker (or perhaps a boss?) of hers who was a devout Mormon, and he told her that he was so concerned about her spiritual well-being and after-life salvation that he was going to marry her into the church. I didn't think anything of it, because as an RTC I knew (::cough cough::) that the Only Real Way to get into Heaven was to Accept Jesus Christ As Your Lord And Savior Amen, but my aunt was a devout Roman Catholic, and this just appalled her. She kept saying "George (my uncle) is my husband! George is the man I am married to! I do not want to be married to anyone else!" (even if it was just symbolic and vicarious).

But now, even though I still don't think it would have any effect on her Immortal Soul or the sanctity of her marriage to my uncle, I really do understand the effrontery of it. It doesn't matter what I believe about God and religious matters in regards to someone else's beliefs and relationship to God (if they even believe in a God), it matters what the other person thinks. As the OP said, this is taking away the other person's choice in the matter and disrespecting their will for their own life. And in the case of my aunt and her coworker/boss (I seem to remember he was in some higher rank at work than she, even if he wasn't her direct boss), IMO it's just another form of coercion, the religious equivalent of inappropriate sexual advances or the like.

[Amaryllis]

Sheesh, talk about your inappropriate workplace discussions.

Also, I meant to say earlier, but I have a brain like a sieve, and today was not a good day...
@Caretaker of Cats (for want of a better name): welcome, and what better name could you choose? (from the cats' point of view, anyway)

It looks like I'm being tempted out of lurkerdom by... Jell-O.
Its powers are strong. How else could it survive in the face of such universal horror?

[P J Evans]

I have to admit that the Mormons I know best are not very observant (they drink tea, for one thing). But they've also never tried to convert me or even tried to proselytize. (Let's just say they don't expect to get a 'temple recommend' anytime soon.)

[P J Evans]

Brin, you got it. (We had a dish that was used mostly for cranberry jelly, it being an oval of just the right size.)

[zigforas]

CZEdwards, I don't really know what to say, except thank you for sharing about your family. I'll be mulling over this for a while.

[Mau de Katt]

I like to mix Jello with a couple packets of Knox unflavored gelatin. It's a real pain to dissolve all the gelatin; you have to pretty much keep it at low simmer in a saucepan, stirring constantly until all the grains are gone. (I tried nuking it, which is what a friend of mine would do for this freaky powdered supplements/protein-powder/Jello pudding concoction he made, but the gelatin would always foam over the container and make an unholy mess.) But then when you refrigerate it, it solidifies into a thicker-consistencied, not-quite-rubbery but still fun to bite texture. (The recipe for Jello Wigglers uses only double the gelatin; I like to triple it or more, but not by adding more actual Jello-Jello; that just makes it way too sweet, or bitter-tasting if it's sugar-free.)

[Caretaker of Cats (off to feed the Fuzzy Overlords)]

"Also, I meant to say earlier, but I have a brain like a sieve, and today was not a good day...
@Caretaker of Cats (for want of a better name): welcome, and what better name could you choose? (from the cats' point of view, anyway)"

It'll work then. I promise not to kill anyone with sheep.

[Carrie]

I... Had a surprisingly hard time with this post. I'm ex-Mormon. I was born and raised in the LDS church in Salt Lake City. I payed rapt attention every day in chuch for roughly eighteen years. My family still practices and I love and respect them. I'm sorry, I wanted to read, but I had to skip chunks of this post and huge chunks of the commentary.

I'm sorry it's offensive. I'm sorry it's strange. It's also... What I was raised with. I have such a hard time seeing baptisms for the dead as being odd or unusual, though I know that they're unique. I cannot emphasize enough, however, that it is the concrete belief that a soul gets to choose whether or not it will accept its LDS baptism. There is, of course, an unspoken "but, of course they will accept," because, why wouldn't they once, in the afterlife, LDS theology is proven correct? However, it remains the personal choice of each, indvidual soul. I promise.

Also, to my knowledge, the second coming can totally happen without all of the souls who ever lived being baptized. Having said that, I haven't been to church in years, and I wasn't endowed in the temple, so I'm hardly an expert. I just listened in Sunday school.

The Jell-o is some strange shit, though. Both of my parents were converts, so that's some weird culture I never got much into.

[Steve Morrison]

Amaryllis, that's what's known as "the salad of a bad café"!
<ducks and runs>

[Laiima]

Carrie: because, why wouldn't they once, in the afterlife, LDS theology is proven correct?

If there is an afterlife (I'm ambivalent), I have ZERO interest in joining the Mormon Celestial Kingdom. ZERO. My beloved dead would not be there either, and I don't believe in your gods, and I certainly don't want to hang out with patriarchs for all eternity.

And my mother *forced me* to get Confirmed (as a Catholic), when I knew I wasn't a true believer anymore. I feel such a sense of violation and rage, even 30 years later.

I hated the idea before I read this post of Mormon by-proxy baptisms, but now I'm profoundly squicked.

[Kit Whitfield]

Fascinating article.

In a way, baptising the dead to let them into heaven is kinder than condemning them to hell or limbo ... but only if you're absolutely dead certain that your beliefs are right. In a way, it's quite an effective method of emphasising the 'truth' of the beliefs to your current congregation - which may be a major reason for doing it, in the same way that having to evangelise door to door is more likely to cement current believers than get new ones. A lot of nominally outward-turned belief activities have the biggest effect on the existing flock.

On the subject of sweet salads ... putting jelly in salad is just weird beyond weird. (And I say this as a lover of Marmite.) But sweet things in salad aren't always bad: salad of pears, rocket or baby leaves, nuts and blue cheese is one of my favourites.

[pepperjackcandy]

WRT Jell-O abominations, there's my late mother's orange Jell-O with shredded carrots, and my ex-paternal grandmother-in-law's Lime Jell-O with onions(!).

I'm very sensitive to the textures of food. This is a big part of the problem I had with the orange Jell-O with carrots. Nothing like a nice spoonful of Jell-O with tiny, crunchy, *things* in it.

[Mark Temporis]

I believe there is an equivalent to Lychee jello. Local (HI) stores have something similar of Chinese or Filipino origin which is like fruit-jello only totally stable at room temperature.

Kids sometimes choke on the stuff but otherwise it's great.

Asians have done everything you could think of with Lychee. Best way, though, is having Chinese neighbors with a tree. If you're on speaking terms AT ALL, you'll get a nice brown bag full of lychees every so often, and they taste so good.

[Gotchaye]

As distasteful as it sounds to some, I'm sure that it's possible, if only in a logical sense, that it is inescapably revealed to us upon death not only that the Mormons are factually correct but also that they're morally correct. I don't see a way around granting that, as long as the Mormons are basically right on the facts, then at the least no dead person is harmed.

As an atheist, I'm also looking at this as it affects the living. I don't think I'd have a problem with this if the LDS Church waited until the whole world was Mormon. But if there's a living person who has some attachment to a dead person and who is offended by this practice, then I think the Mormons are wrong to do it. However, I think I only come down so strongly on that side of things because I have very little respect for the content of LDS theology. If I felt that the belief system were more reasonable, I'd probably give it more leeway to justify action. As I am, I feel like "we do this because LDS theology says we should" is trumped by virtually any reason in opposition.

[ako]

I believe there is an equivalent to Lychee jello. Local (HI) stores have something similar of Chinese or Filipino origin which is like fruit-jello only totally stable at room temperature.

When I was in the Philippines, I could buy lychee-flavored gualaman. It was a sort of gelatin-like substance made of seaweed. There's different ways of making it, but I'd always get the powdered packets. It cooks a lot like jello (paper packet in boiling water), and has similar taste and texture, but is vegetarian and comes in lychee flavor, which officially makes it a thousand times more awesome. (I would love it if someone made that stuff rambutan-flavored!)

[Carrie]

Laiima: I'm sorry I seem to have offended you or put you off. I was not describing my attitude. I was describing the attitude that I perceived from my fellows during my membership in the church. I admit and understand that the attitude is potentially distasteful and is certainly problematic. I was just trying to explain it.

I do not have gods at the moment. If I did, I would not think that you, or anyone else, should believe in them, unless it left you happy and satisfied. I'm sorry that you were forced into a religion that you had no interest in and I'm sorry that it scarred you. It was not my intention to cause those memories to resurface or to upset or anger you.

However, on the subject of patriarchs, something about the LDS church that doesn't come up very often is that the notion of God alaways has, inplicit, a female and male part. The reasons why the more commonly-mentioned male God's female spouse is not more often mentioned are shaky BS, to my knowlede, involving His desire to protect Her from blasphemy and so forth. Despite this, however, there is, indeed, a Heavenly Mother in LDS theology who reigns equal to Her spouse. So, there is a matriarch, too.

[ako]

I would be bothered by posthumous LDS baptism for much the same reason I'm bothered that I can no longer formally defect from the Catholic church. Not because I think those ceremonies have any spiritual power or meaning (I'm an atheist), but because they can create an artificial picture of organizational power. Catholic baptism rolls can be used to create artificially large "These are our people" numbers (and in some countries, increased financial support for the church), and LDS posthumous baptism and marriage records can eventually create a distorted picture of history. I don't want to support either of those organizations or give them more power.

Also, there's something viscerally creepy about it, the way imprecatory prayers are creepy. There's a "This is what I want to do to you, and I'm willing to invoke what I believe is the most powerful being in the universe to make this happen to you!" quality to it that makes me wonder what else they might do to get their desires.

[renniejoy]

{{{czedwards}}}
{{{lonespark and family}}}

[Kit Whitfield]

I can no longer formally defect from the Catholic church

How come you can't do that?

[Ruth (formerly alfgifu)]

CZEdwards, best wishes for working this stuff out with your family.

I've recently been having some revelations as a result of introducing or talking about my non-Christian boyfriend with friends of my (Anglican Christian) family. My parents are devout, but care deeply about people as people and don't want to interfere with their choices.* They're happy for me to be with the person I'm happy to be with, and leave it at that. I'm used to that attitude, and I wasn't expecting the first question from many other Christian friends to be "Oh, is he a Christian?" What was also disconcerting was their flummoxed faces when I said no, and their immediate responses of either "not yet, you mean!" or "I'll pray for him". For the first time I realised how intrusive and creepy it can be when someone promises prayer without asking first. You'll pray that my boyfriend is converted whether he likes it or not? No thanks. From the perspective of their beliefs, these people think they're doing us a favour and making me feel better about the unfortunate flaw in my otherwise doubtless charming young man. I haven't found a way to make them understand why their prayers are intrusive, controlling and unnecessary. Trying to explain that I like him the way he is just puzzles them.

---

All this talk of Jell-O (that's the same thing we just call jelly in the UK, isn't it?) made me crave olives for some reason, and I've just finished off a jar.

---

* Unusually for Anglicans, me and my siblings were not baptised as babies - they had thanksgiving services for us, and waited until we were old enough to talk it through ourselves. All four of us did choose to be baptised as teens, about the time that many of our church friends were confirmed. I don't think any of us have been confirmed. The baptism became for each of us a declaration of faith and a ritual welcome to the church, and as a family we've always had more of a focus on personal spiritual journeys than on corporate identity. Because of the significance of those baptisms, the thought of being rebaptised without my knowledge or consent into a different church is slightly sickening to me. I don't think a Mormon baptism would have any power to change my future against my will, whether or not there's a clause that gives my putative heavenly self the right to opt out. I don't even care that much about how I'm remembered, as long as the people who love me know me. But the idea that someone might hope to change something so fundamental about who I am - might make the attempt, even - I don't have to feel threatened by it to be disgusted by it.

[Amaryllis]

I can no longer formally defect from the Catholic church

How come you can't do that?
Well, you can; you can still send a "formal renunciation" letter to your local bishop. What the Church says about that, if I understand correctly, is that it doesn't negate the effect of your baptism. They are, however, supposed to accept and record your decision. From the Vatican's site:

6. In such cases, the competent ecclesiastical authority mentioned above is to provide that this act be noted in the baptismal registry (cfr. can. 535, § 2) with explicit mention of the occurrence of a “defectio ab Ecclesia catholica actu formali”.

7. It remains clear, in any event, that the sacramental bond of belonging to the Body of Christ that is the Church, conferred by the baptismal character, is an ontological and permanent bond which is not lost by reason of any act or fact of defection.

They are supposed to stop including you in current membership statistics. But you do have to send the letter for that. Lapsing in observance or adhering to a conflicting religious doctrine, or no doctrine, are neither of them sufficient in themselves; that's why the Church gets to count all the merely "drifted-away."

I have heard the internet rumor that the bishops are no longer accepting such letters, but I can't find any actual documentation of that. Does anyone have a cite? Because otherwise I can only go by what the official sources say about the process.

@Carrie: I sympathize; I know that many people see Catholic prayers for the dead as at best useless and at wost presumptuous. Where I see a difference, I think, is is tne institutionalized nature of the Mormon practice, the "it goes on your permanent record" aspect.

[MercuryBlue]

Kit: The way I hear it, nobody's allowed to formally defect from Catholicism anymore because too many people were taking advantage of the option.

[Makhno]

I've nothing to add to the general reaction to posthumous baptism - it's already been put far better than I could. I'd just like to remark on one relatively trivial point:

> To be legally married, Quakers had to go to their local Church of England official. Many did not, nor were their children recorded in the parish records. This would be equivalent today to requiring a Methodist to be legally married in a Catholic church, by a Catholic priest, and for a child of two Methodists to have to be baptized by the local Catholic parish to have a birth/baptismal record.

The weirdnesses of having an established national church aren't confined to the distant past. As recently as the 1970s, my aunt and uncle had to have the banns read in the local Church of Scotland church ahead of their (Catholic) wedding, because that was where the law required them to be read.

[Lonespark]

Did someone say rambutans? Whatever the question is, if the answer is rambutans, I'm for it!!!

Ok, well, I don't really like jello. Eew. Fresh rambutans, or diced rambutans, or maybe even juiced...

[Lonespark]

Carrie,

Thanks for sharing your perspective. It's not like LDS folks are the only ones with religious practices that can negatively affect other people.

[Lonespark]

And although I feel really strongly about this issue, and have voiced my feelings to some Mormon acquaintances, I don't feel like it impacts relationships with any friends. My experience has been of wanting to respect their practices, and also seeing that there was a wide range in how faithfully they followed different tenets of the faith. I guess most of the folks I've been friends with IRL and online seem to be willing to question and evaluate their religion a lot. It's like I'm not quite as uncomfortable with the baptism thing when I don't think they completely wholeheartedly believe or support it.

[Lampdevil]

This was a stirring post, illuminating and educational and clear. One thing that stands out to me from it is the abiding love for your sister, even through such an enormous disagreement. I've known too many family issues go from mild upset to bone-deep dislike, I've seen it all the time, I've done it... I am going to strive to be more like you in this regard, CZEdwards. Thank you for this.

@Froborr - Actually, one of my "I am lazy and want comfort food" recipes is to stir together one can each of condensed cream of mushroom and condensed cream of celery or broccoli soup, some chopped-up chicken breast, and frozen veggies, top with two boxes of uncooked instant stuffing, bake until chicken is cooked. It's pretty tasty, albeit salty.

Ah! Easy-lazy chicken pot pie! Yeah, it's pretty tasty stuff, but the stuffing really does up the salt quotient. I need to learn to make proper pastry topping, to go along with the proper chicken pot pie filling that I've learned how to make. Which, when it comes down to it, tastes very much like cream of chicken soup with vegetables floating in it, despite the use of fresh veg, homemade chicken broth, a flour-butter roux... Y'know? I can see why cream of whatever soup became (and remains) popular. You can spend hours making broth, a half-hour chopping veg and thickening the creamy filling, or you can put a few cans of stuff together in the space of several minutes, back them, and get on with your life.

I don't really know what to make of the jello salads. My elementary school cafeteria always offered a dessert of sort of jello with a bit of whipped cream and a particle of cherry on top, and that was awesome! The thought of jiggly-texture and lumpy-texture all combined makes my stomach churn, though.

[Jason]

@Ruth-

For pretty much forever, I've had a hard and fast rule that I would only date other Christians, because my faith is such a huge part of my life that I was afraid it would cause problems and also because I don't think my family would take well to me doing otherwise.

I'm thinking of abandoning that rule. Any advice?

[Izzy]

This is a lovely post, and I cannot think of anything particularly deep or meaningful to say that other people haven't said already. I wouldn't actually worry too much *myself* about posthumous baptism--I'm arrogant enough to be all "aw, you go ahead and convince yourself of that, guys" about it--but if there are people who find it offensive, doing it to them...is offensive. And what ako said about the organization using it to inflate membership rolls.

So: I actually like lime Jell-O. With things in it, too, as long as those things are sweet and fruity. Cottage cheese...maaaaaybe. Vegetables and Jell-O are horrific and wrong.

Didn't grow up in LDS/Midwestern culture. However, my father has mentioned, in vague Lovecraft-survivor ramblings, a dish of his aunt's which apparently involved pink Jello and cabbage? Maybe? Alarming.

[Jason]

@Izzy-

I am a big fan of artificial lime flavor. It tastes absolutely nothing like an actual lime, but I have always loved artificial lime flavor. Most fruits have their artificial counterpart that doesn't taste much like the real thing.

Lime is my favorite with grape coming in at a close second.
I'm not a fan of artificial orange.
Artificial banana is horribly disgusting and I actually like real bananas. Weirdly my dad despises real bananas and loves artifial banana flavor.
Everything else falls somewhere in between that spectrum.

[Lonespark]

My mom makes a thing with green jello and 7-up and...something creamy. It is vile and frightening and she calls it Christmas salad. At least it has no chunks.

[Robin Zimmermann]

I want to thank storiteller yesterday for picking up on a thread I missed:

I find it really disturbing that Mormons have to voice all of their doubts to their leadership. Even when I went to an evangelical church, I felt perfectly fine not voicing my doubts to anyone. That system is perfectly well-oriented for abuse and as you said, cutting ties to those who do not share your worldview.

I remember when I was reading a deconversion story on what was then the Internet Infidels Discussion Board, one of the most intense moments was when the storyteller realized her husband was telling everyone in her family about their troubles, behind her back and without her permission. People deserve the right to depend on their own conscience, and peer pressure and authoritarian pressure specifically designed to restrict that ... it's grotesque.

[Ross]

Hrm. I am trying to imagine how I would feel if I were to arrive at the pearly gates, and a clerical angel said "Turns out the mormons were right. You're welcome to hang out here, but you can't get into the good heaven until someone proxy-baptizes you mormon." Would I spend the rest of eternity regretting the very explicit orders I'd left in my will that I was not to be posthumously baptized?

But.

Two weeks ago, the news media kept asserting that "Yeah, but what if Camping is *right* and the rapture happens saturday?" The correct answer was "Camping is not right. It's not going to happen." (Aside: Why was it that the news kept treating it as bizarre that when they asked Camping "WHat if you're wrong?" he refused to answer the question on the grounds that he was not wrong? Why is that considered silly in a way that refusing to answer "But what if 2+2 really *is* Five?" isn't?). If I'm going to be the kind of person who says "But what if the mormons are right? Do I really want to risk getting stuck in the crap heaven by refusing posthumous baptism?" I might as well accept Pascal's Wager and start worrying about the fact that that hamburger I had for lunch might have been one of my reincarnated ancestors.

----

I can kind of get behind the idea that gelatin is texturally interesting enough that it might be cool to stuff dome of the substance with various meats and cheeses and vegetables. But Jello is fruit-flavored and sweet. And that's just *eew* when you stick things in it that are not dessert foods.

[Froborr]

Hmm... this is a weird issue to think about.

I tried privilege-checking myself by imagining how I'd feel if someone posthumously baptized me. Nothing. After all, the only way it could have any effect on me is if there's an afterlife and, more importantly, magic works, in which case the entire universe is so completely unlike what I thought it was that I'm going to have much more important things to deal with.

Then I tried imagining how I'd feel if someone posthumously baptized my father: RAGE. My father was the only Jewish kid in town for most of his youth, and he suffered for it. He was isolated by mandatory prayers to Jesus in the public schools and beaten when he refused to participate. Churches and Christian ritual were... well, based on what little he said about it, I suspect it was basically a trigger for him. Anyway, until the day he died he refused to set foot in a church, even for purely secular events (I recall my school band had a concert in a church once). The thought of someone co-opting him into a branch of Christianity* sets my teeth on edge.

*Yeah, I know, some people take real exception to this. However, Mormons I have spoken to generally consider themselves a kind of Christian, and as an outside observer with no stake in the matter, I must respect their right to establish their own identity. Also, if you look at religion cladistically, Mormonism is clearly part of the Christianity clade, just as in biology, humans are part of the lobe-finned fish clade.

[hapax]

I need to learn to make proper pastry topping, to go along with the proper chicken pot pie filling that I've learned how to make.

When I feel intensely lazy, I top pot pie with canned biscuits -- separate each biscuit into thirds horizontally (easy if they're the flaky kind), and you can make pretty shingle patterns with the circular tiles.

For all those into the Jell-o discussion, I must recommend one of my favourite cookbooks, Fashionable Foods. It goes decade by decade through USian food fads, all the way from the introduction of spaghetti (boil for twenty minutes, then bake in the oven for an hour!) to the 80's requirement to put raspberry in every single dish.

I admit I love it more for the lulz than for any practical use. Still, some of the recipes are surprisingly tasty, and I still make them (particularly the Depression-era ones, which utilize cheap cuts of meat and fresh vegetables)

[Brin (not Meir)]

Lampdevil: I can see why cream of whatever soup became (and remains) popular. You can spend hours making broth, a half-hour chopping veg and thickening the creamy filling, or you can put a few cans of stuff together in the space of several minutes, back them, and get on with your life.

A couple months ago, I made apple cake* from scratch for a display on medieval cooking. I minced the apples and stirred the batter by hand (well, by knife and rubber spatula, respectively).
My mom made cinnamon swirl cake from a mix for our contribution to the snack table at the fair. She preheated the oven, mixed it, baked it for half an hour, and was done before I was even ready to begin my hour of baking.
I appreciate now the wonders of mixes.

*The original recipe was apple pecan cake, but the fair was being held in a nut-free building.

Jason: Most fruits have their artificial counterpart that doesn't taste much like the real thing.

I hate lollipops because they taste like liquid cold medicine. I was probably supposed to associate it the other way 'round, but that's not how it worked out.

[Chuck]

Carrie, thank you for your perspective--I've been trying to wrap my head around the other side of this and be empathic, though I'll admit that my initial reaction was closer to Nathanial's "how dare they baptize Holocaust victims?!" vehemence.

I think, for me, what it comes down to is that all we know, and all we can know, is how these practices affect people in the here-and-now. Weighing one person's emotional confort against another's is messy, but occasionally necessary business.

(Yeah, I'm from that Jewish culture.)

Jason: I'm thinking of abandoning that rule. Any advice?

I married a Catholic woman, and I've dated a series of women of varying religions and levels of religious practice.

If you date someone who feels as strongly about their religion as you do about yours, you both need to understand that you will never convert for the other person, and you both need to respect that. Use it as an excuse for intellectual curiousity, find common ground, and know that it'll be a cause for "heated discussion". But this is also true if you're the same religion but one of you is much more serious than the other. I don't keep kosher and rarely go to shul; I'd have real trouble in a relationship with an Orthodox woman.

That said, if you're both lapsed or your personal philiosphies are entirely compatible, and cultural/familiar pressure is the only thing that makes you refer to yourself as a member of the religion, then throw caution to the wind. As long as the eventual fight is between you and your parents rather than you and your partner, it's not a real concern, just an everyday hassle of life.

[Lampdevil]

@hapax - When I feel intensely lazy, I top pot pie with canned biscuits -- separate each biscuit into thirds horizontally (easy if they're the flaky kind), and you can make pretty shingle patterns with the circular tiles.

I've tried using bisquick biscuit dough for topping various things, and wasn't terribly satisfied with the results... I ought to pick up canned ones and see if I like that any better. The idea of easy-to-separate flaky ones intrigues me.

And I totally need to check out that Fashionable Foods book. That looks SO great.

@Brin (not Meir) - That apple cake sounds an awful lot like the apple bread that I've been making lately. The worst part really is dicing up all the apple. Stirring by hand makes for a good result, texture-wise and moisture-wise, but OH GEEZ it's a pain. Electric mixers, HOORAY!

Cooking takes TIME. Sometimes the happy glow that I get from making a dish from scratch outweighs the time investment. Sometimes it doesn't, because I'm hungry and everyone else in the house is hungry and waiting an hour or more for a meal isn't gonna fly. Properly-employed convenience food is a great thing.

[Froborr]

@Jason: I've date women of varying religions and degrees of practice, and found that for me, personally, interfaith dating does not work. I can be friends with a religious person, but not lovers, I have to spend too much time biting my tongue.

But that's me. My brother has had a fairly successful marriage with a Christian for something like 15 years now (he's culturally Jewish and devotionally a vaguely non-practising some-sort-of-monotheist-ish*), but that's largely because neither of them are particularly religious. There *was* a bit of trouble early on over how to raise any kids, which they nearly split up over, but ultimately they settled on syncretizing.

*The de facto national religion, near as I can tell.

[Katie]

Exceedingly thoughtful discourse on a very difficult subject. Religion is a complicated thing for so many reasons, whether you believe or not. I wish you and your family a peaceful outcome.

[MaryKaye]

I practice magic but I'm fairly agnostic on whether there is any supernatural validity to it. What I am solidly convinced of is that there's psychological validity: the practice affects peoples' lives.

An ancestor like Zenobia is not only the Mormon's ancestor, she is also the Quaker's ancestor. Magic meant to retroactively change her into a Mormon ancestor is going to have some effect on both of them. (I don't believe the Mormons would practice this long-term if it had no effect on living Mormons; rituals that do nothing tend to get dropped.)

That said...at my mother's deathbed I found myself praying to Ereshkigal for peace in her passing. I couldn't ask her anymore; she never regained consciousness after the final stroke. She was a devout but very unorthodox Catholic; she knew I was a Pagan and was at peace with that, but I'm not really sure how she would have taken those prayers. But my own heart was breaking and those were the words it wanted to shape. I think she would have forgiven me, if indeed she felt there was anything to forgive, but I'm not at all sure I was true to my own ethics.

When we scattered her ashes I was more calm, and able to limit myself to rites where our traditions did not conflict; also at her Catholic funeral, where I was asked to do a reading, and was able to choose one that fit both her beliefs and mine. (Bless the folk of that particular church. She had, among three children and three children-in-law, exactly half Pagans and half Christians, and they cooperated with us in making a service that did no one's views any violence. We have not had such good fortune with later marriage ceremonies, alas.)

[Izzy]

@Jason: See, I like lime, hate banana, hate grape, and like orange. Wackiness.

As far as interfaith dating goes...hm. I'd expand gradually, maybe? The "vaguely-non-practicing-some-sort-of-monotheist-ish" sort Froborr describes or a "I believe in Stuff but I don't know what" agnostic seem like they'd be relatively compatible with liberal Christianity. So might a liberal Muslim or Reform Jewish woman, or a fairly relaxed paganish sort.

It helps, I think, that you've stated you're not looking to have kids: in my third-party experience, that's where a lot of the interfaith problems come up.

I find that I'm Froborr's equal and opposite here: I don't want to date a Serious Atheist after this relationship. (I also probably won't want to date seriously, period, but that's another issue.) Someone who was all "eh, I don't believe, but whatever" would be fine, but as I've gotten more interested in spirituality, it's been...awkward, at best, working around a partner who feels very strongly that there's nothing to it.

[Froborr]

@Izzy: That's it exactly--it's awkward working around something my partner is invested in when I feel very strongly there's nothing to it.

I hate pretty much all artificial fruit flavors. Actually, I don't even like most fruit*--I like nine kinds of fruit out of probably a couple dozen I've tried. I particularly dislike lime, pineapple, and mango.

*Referring to the culinary, not biological, category. The fact that "fruit" has seperate meanings in the two fields (and vegetable has meaning in only one) has led to some pretty absurd arguments along the lines of "Tomatoes are fruit and strawberries aren't!" True in biology, false in food. /soapbox

[Mink]

CZEdwards, thank you for sharing this. It sounds like an extremely uncomfortable situation, and I hope it can be resolved peacefully. I'm not quite sure what to recommend; Carrie's mention that the baptism only 'sticks' if the soul wants it may be a factor, or it might not be if it's a matter of simple respect. I mean... your ancestress suffered for their beliefs. While it would be nice to get them into the 'good heaven,' I think that if I were in that position, I would accept not being in the Celestial Kingdom because that was the choice I made in life. Might get boring, true... but honestly, if I can at least be true to the principles I've had in life, and if that means not getting into the 'good heaven,' I'll deal. Pascal's Wager is a sucker's bet. But that's just me. :(

Carrie: That being said, I am very curious about what you said about the Divine Matriarch. Could you elaborate or point me/us in the direction of finding more information?

[Caravelle]

After reflecting a bit on the Douthattian argument that Hell has to exist, otherwise our choices mean nothing !!! I wonder if any Mormons have the nerve to believe that.