> Mormons trace their family trees to find the names of ancestors who died without learning about the restored Mormon Gospel so that these relatives from past generations can be baptized by proxy in the temple. For Latter-day Saints, genealogy is a way to save more souls and strengthen the eternal family unit.
I die bravely in glorious battle and am chosen by the Valkyries for Valhalla. One evening as we feast after that day's fighting, quaffing giant tankards of mead and boasting of our deeds, there comes a knock at the door.
Two young men in suits enter, and go to speak to Odin.
Odin then call for me to come over. He tells me that the young men are Mormons, and that some distant relative born long after I died (great-grandkid of a second cousin or something like that) has joined the Mormon church and has been busy baptizing the whole damn family tree.
Odin tells me I'm Mormon now, and cannot stay in Valhalla. I must move to the Mormon afterlife.
(Actually, the Mormon afterlife doesn't seem all that bad compared to that of most Christian or Christian-adjacent religions, in the sense that if you reject their teachings but still live a decent life you get a decent afterlife).
But then again, while in Mormon theology the spirits are immediately sorted into paradise and "spirit prison" upon death, they can apparently communicate across the boundary between the two; and those in paradise can thus evangelize to those in prison, until they convert. So by the time they get their proxy baptism, they would presumably be convinced of its necessity.
(Although I never understood why that would even be necessary, given that by that time they already know, and thus don't have to believe...)
And yeah, Mormon theology is not what you'd expect from a religion that's so rigidly socially conservative. Between near-universal salvation and extreme Arminianism, it's really one of the most liberal among Christian denominations.
So even the Mormons admit that having Mormons constantly trying to convert you for the rest of eternity is what hell is like... :D
And while many Mormons take the necessity of baptism (even if after death) very literally, it is important to understand that they also believe that anyone who missed the chance to accept a posthumous baptism, will get that chance during the millennium of Christ's reign on earth, pre-judgement day.
All of that is to say, Mormons aren't frantically searching their genealogy to baptise everyone for fear their ancestors will burn in hell. There is a belief that seeking out and understanding your geneology and then setting aside time to go to the temple is beneficial to ones spirituality and well being.
If you want eternal life, you want to go to Fólkvangr.
At least, I recall my religion teacher (a catholic priest, we have such a class in public schools in Italy tho they vary in content and quality) telling us that some decades ago.
You do not go to heaven if you're an atheist tho, as _denying_ there is something divine puts you in the bad list, sorry.
"ὁ πιστεύσας καὶ βαπτισθεὶς σωθήσεται, ὁ δὲ ἀπιστήσας κατακριθήσεται."
That's the closest we can get, although Jesus would have assumedly spoken these words in Aramaic, not Greek.
> The Church of Latter-Day Saints believes that you can't get into the Promised Land unless it's baptized you – but it can do so if it knows your name and parentage, even after you're dead. Its genealogical databases are among the most impressive artifacts of historical research ever prepared. And it likes to make converts.
> The remaining faithful of the Latter-Day Saints are correlating the phase-space of their genome and the records of their descent in an attempt to resurrect their ancestors.
> ...the panopticon-logged Net ghosts of people who lived recently enough to imprint their identities on the information age, and the ambitious theological engineering schemes of the Reformed Tiplerite Church of Latter-day Saints (who want to emulate all possible human beings in real time, so that they can have the opportunity to be saved).
That results in a a fun version of the simulation hypothesis where we're all simulated beings in some Mormon-Tipler Heaven.
There was a Chinese general who supposedly did something like that using a firehose.
But the point of the whole thing is actually to spend time learning and researching your family history. In other words, the literal posthumous baptism is not the point. That's the ritual. It's what to learn and do along the way of accomplishing the ritual that is the point.
Note: in Mormon theology, those that die and receive their baptism by proxy still get to choose to accept or reject that baptism in the afterlife.
This always struck me as one of the most stupid and illogical tenets as it's in opposition to the concept of loving and just God: why create millions of people who have no chance to meet the Gospel, and then automatically condemn them to suffer forever, just like that, for nothing? It really makes no any sense! And yet, the modern world lives on remnants of these ideas.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/us/jews-take-issue-with-p...
Baptizing the dead seems silly and quaint, but Christians used to ask, how is it fair to send the unbaptized to hell that never had a chance to be saved? Mormons should get some credit for acknowledging the unfairness and coming up with a "solution".
I think it's a sad commentary on human nature that the Christian sects that don't believe anyone goes to hell at all are even more fringe and taken less seriously than Mormons.
Mormons were hardly the first Christian or Christian-adjacent group to come up with a solution to that, though perhaps one of the earlier groups to adopt a single solution as a firm doctrine rather than leaving the question doctrinally open with multiple possible solutions proposed and not condemned by authority.
One reason they might not be taken seriously is that in the Bible Jesus directly talks about people being in Hell.
Jesus talked about people being in Gehenna (burning trash dump outside Jerusalem), Hades (Limbo or Paradise, Sheol in Hebrew) and I think Tartarus (deep pit). Tartarus may be OT only, I can't recall ATM.
All those terms, each with it's own intent and meaning, were later rolled into Hell (which received a new meaning, one different from any of the original terms). This was eventually codified during one of the Ecumenical councils (1st council of Nicea?)
> Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.
Diction mattered a great deal to Christ. Gehanna (Hebrew: Valley of Hinnom; גיא בן הינום) was a location in Christ's time, that was likely associated with burning, destruction and loss - things that one might be expected to feel in the absence of the Creator.
Hades was where all dead went and remained until the day of judgment. Christ's reference to it as Paradise implies it isn't a place of suffering. Catholicism's Limbo implies it is a place of waiting.
The modern notion of Hell as a location dedicated to the eternal suffering of man, is quite different from either of those places.
Did God create this place?
One view[1][2] is that Hell isn't really a place, but rather a state of being, and the primary suffering of Hell is the separation from God[3]. God didn't create it, rather we ourselves created it by separating ourselves from God through sin.
[1] https://www.stbensduluth.org/blog/fr-joel-hastings/who-creat...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_Hell#State
[3] https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p12...
What about Matthew 25:46?
> Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.
That article seems to assert that Jesus taught the soul cannot live apart from the body. There are various other quotes from Jesus contradicting that. John 14:1-3:
> Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
John 18:36:
> Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place."
Luke 23:43:
> Jesus answered him, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise."
Nevermind that the gospels themselves are copies of copies of texts that were written long after this man lives.
Having been brought up evangelical Christian I just find the whole thing kind of baffling and a little enraging now. What I was taught was in scriptures isn't, really. If you read them again without the template of the interpretation given by the church there's dozens of different ways to interpret that look nothing like Christian (protestant or catholic) theology.
If I weren't an atheist now I'd at least be some kind of heterodox non-Nicean blasphemer, because it's absolutely confusing to me that anybody can take the council of Nicea and related councils seriously.
Taking parables literally obviously we shouldn't do. But interpreting them and building a theology around them seems to be exactly what Jesus wanted. Jesus even interpreted some of them for his apostles (Mark 4:3-20).
Jesus never said we should take scripture as our sole source of truth and ignore other sources. Jesus gave the power to guide the Church to his apostles, and specifically Peter (Matthew 16:18). We can even see the apostles using this power in Acts 15 to establish doctrine. A good explanation of this is in this video[1]. They can continue to use this power at the council of Nicea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_Baptist_Universalist
...who are described as taking Calvinism to its logical conclusion.
It says "Bill Leonard estimated in 2011 that there were 1,000 or fewer PBU adherents in total, concentrated in 20 counties in Appalachia"
Genealogy is a side effect of this, I have the vague impression that they need to know who you are to baptize you; however, everyone on the planet is a member of the same "family".
If it turns out that there were two people with the same name born in the same town on the same day... well, the angels will help figure that out later.
If buying your ticket for a party that requires a ticket but you don't have to go to if you don't want to is "incredibly rude and conceited", you would have good reason to condemn all of Christianity similarly for Christ's claim that he paid the mandatory price for your sins, buying you a ticket to heaven that you'll need (Christians claim) but that you can either accept or reject, as you wish.
Mormons offering to extend the deadline for you to decide into the next life is hardly "incredibly rude and conceited" IMO.
after it became the official religion of Rome their aristocracy increasingly took up bishoprics, wich were much more powerful then, and acted as great lords do. paul johnson's a history of christianity is a good read if you want to know (lots and lots) more