Nauvoo, Scripture and the Records Behind It

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.