Baptism for the dead

Baptism for the dead is a distinctive ordinance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which a living person is baptised by immersion on behalf of a specific deceased individual, standing in as their proxy. The practice rests on the belief that baptism is necessary for salvation, that many have died without the opportunity to receive it, and that a just and merciful God has provided a way for the dead to receive the ordinance vicariously through the living. The deceased, it is taught, retain their agency in the spirit world and may accept or reject the baptism performed on their behalf, so that the rite offers rather than imposes. The practice is the principal reason for the extensive genealogical work for which the church is well known, undertaken to identify the ancestors and others for whom the ordinances may be performed, and it is carried out in the church's temples.

Latter-day Saints ground the practice scripturally in a passage of the Apostle Paul that refers, in passing and without explanation, to people being "baptised for the dead", a verse whose meaning is disputed and which most other Christian traditions do not read as endorsing the practice. Other churches generally reject vicarious baptism as without warrant and contrary to their understanding of the sacrament, and the practice has at times caused friction, notably over the posthumous baptism by proxy of persons from other faiths, including Holocaust victims, which drew objections that led the church to place restrictions on whose names members may submit.

Joseph Smith introduced baptism for the dead in 1840 at Nauvoo, Illinois, citing Paul's otherwise puzzling reference in 1 Corinthians 15:29 to people being baptised on behalf of the dead as evidence that the early church had practised something similar, a single verse that carries the entire scriptural weight of the doctrine and that other Christian traditions read as a passing reference to a practice Paul was not endorsing. The rite was performed in rivers and in temporary fonts before the Nauvoo Temple was completed, and it has been performed only inside dedicated temples since, in fonts set upon twelve sculpted oxen modelled on the description of the basin in Solomon's temple in the biblical book of Kings.

Because a name is required before the ordinance can be performed, the practice made genealogical research a religious duty rather than a hobby, and the church's Family History Library in Salt Lake City, along with its FamilySearch records and microfilming programme that copied archives across the world, grew directly out of the need to supply names. That same requirement produced a recurring controversy: researchers and Jewish organisations discovered repeatedly, from the 1990s onward, that Holocaust victims, including Anne Frank, had been submitted for proxy baptism, sometimes despite a 1995 agreement between the church and Jewish groups intended to prevent it, and the church has responded each time by restricting who may submit a name and by removing improperly submitted records, without abandoning the underlying practice.