LarsDu88 3 days ago

Ancestry owns newspapers.com

A lot of Ancestry.com and AncestryDNA was founded to support the Mormon belief that the LDS church can posthumously baptize ancestors of living individuals into the church under the belief that many deceased individuals were not alive to hear the gospel of Joseph Smith.

Thus the massive data collection effort for historical information like newpaper articles from this century and the last.

  • _DeadFred_ 2 days ago

    If you are in Salt Lake go check out the computers in the big fancy temple temple there, they used to help you research ancestry stuff. Though all that could have been because we were there on some sort of VIP thing and it might not be open to the public. Interesting side, it's missionaries there that help you. Only instead of young men shipped out into the world, it was attractive young women on missionary to the temple from all over the world.

  • myth_drannon 3 days ago

    I think they stopped doing it. Jewish organizations were absolutely livid once they found out they were baptizing Holocaust victims.

    • mulderc 3 days ago

      It is a pretty important aspect of Latter Day Saint theology. They still do it but officially you can only baptize your own family members with the permission of surviving family members. These guidelines are not always followed. Additionally they have said they removed people from their rosters that were improperly baptized but the members I have talked with are skeptical and found it a bit laughable that the church removing a name from a database would somehow undo a sacred ritual.

      • quesera 3 days ago

        On the topic of laughability, I would propose that "invoking a dead stranger's name in a self-significant ritual" is absurd to do, and also absurd to be offended by.

        I hereby grant permission for my name to be invoked in all rituals, sacred and profane, by all current and future living persons. And I'll laugh at you in advance.

      • voganmother42 3 days ago

        When I remove records from databases I follow the sacred ritual of BEGIN TRANSACTION…COMMIT;

      • philistine 3 days ago

        That's one good case where it would be the moral thing to name a kid Robert'); DROP TABLE Baptized;--

    • gopher_space 3 days ago

      I mean I’d see that as an invitation to help myself to anything the church owns that isn’t nailed down.

      • Thiez 2 days ago

        Can you show damages? If you can win a lawsuit here that would be great, paving the way for sueing Christians for their passive aggressive 'I'll pray for you' nonsense would be amazing.