The Salt Lake Tribune
For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, vicarious baptisms are a religious obligation to offer the dead a chance at salvation in the afterlife.
Yet the practice isn't unique to the LDS Church. At least one other group, Jordan's little-known Gnostic Mandaean sect, performs a similar rite, albeit with one notable exception. The Mandaean "baptism" isn't a baptism to admit a person into the Christian community. It's a cleansing ritual that may be performed on an individual who is ill or dying, and it may occur several times in the person's life.
"You have to be born a Mandaean, so they have no interest in converts," said Jorunn J. Buckley, an authority on Gnostic religions and as assistant professor at Bowdoin College in Maine. "For Christianity, baptism is an initiation into a new life. For them, it's a reconfirmation of their beliefs and they do it for the dead and the dying."
Mandaeans, who claim John the Baptist as their progenitor and messiah, believe the faithful must die in a "clean state," preferably washed in the waters of baptism. They traditionally have made their homes close to rivers, originating along the banks of the River Jordan and meandering over time to the area adjoining the Tigris River in what is now Iraq.
"If a Mandaean dies from being torn apart by a wild animal, or by falling from a date palm tree, then a baptism is done by proxy," Buckley said.
The process is highly structured. Unlike the Mormon ritual, proxies must resemble the dead in age and appearance, and the baptisms are performed by priests only on a certain day of the Mandaean calendar.
Today, Mandaeans are concentrated mainly in Iraq and Iran, but many, driven by political instability, have made their homes in countries across the globe, including the United States.
Their numbers cannot be known with certainty, but the Toronto, Ontario-based Mandaean Associations Union, an international federation of Mandaean groups, has estimated that between 70,000 and 100,000 still live in Iraq.
