TO AVOID CONFLICTS BETWEEN HOME AND CHURCH, NEW POLICY BANS BAPTISM OF CHILDREN OF REPUBLICANS

Elder Christofferson explaining the gap between the
Gospel of Jesus Christ and Republicanism

Salt Lake City, UT—Last night the church’s Handbook of Instructions was updated with a policy banning the baptism of children of Republicans. In response to waves of confusion and criticism, Elder Christofferson met with reporters from the Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer and other, lesser news outlets to clarify the new policy.

“This policy is first and foremost about love,” said Elder Christofferson. He continued that “we want to bless the lives of all children, but we also want to avoid painful confusion that children might experience if they are learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ at church and then confronted by Republican ideas at home.”

When asked what he meant by this, Elder Christofferson explained that “imagine a child hearing King Benjamin’s words that we are all beggars and that we sin when we don’t help those in need, but then that same child goes home to a Republican parent—or worse, two parents—only to hear justifications for why we cannot help Mexican immigrants or Syrian refugees.”

Elder Christofferson was asked about baby blessings for the children of people who are Republicans. Here again the Apostle drew a clear line, warning that a baby blessing would generate a membership record for a child who, in Elder Christofferson’s words, “would encounter a home life filled with the extremist obedience and self-reliance rhetoric that would make Christ’s grace seem meaningless or absurd.”

Reporters asked Elder Christofferson if this might mean missed opportunities at an important life stage if these otherwise innocent children could not be baptized. In response to these concerns, Elder Christofferson said that “when these children are old enough to realize and fully denounce the ignorance, fear, narrow-mindedness, and xenophobia that Republicans rely upon to prevent reasonable gun laws and their enforcement and to resist a fair and humane immigration policy, when young people can show, unlike Republicans, that they embrace and love others of different faiths and backgrounds, then those young people are prepared to really understand and even preach the faith and love that are the center of Christ’s teachings.” 

“Let me be clear,” concluded Elder Christofferson, “we simply want to prevent the jarring confusion a young person would feel by hearing about trusting God and being a Good Samaritan at church and then hearing about trusting a false god like the US military (and its outrageously out-of-proportion budget) and then hearing that we cannot afford to help the poor, the sick, the naked, the needy, and those who Republicans dismiss as undeserving, lazy moochers instead of children of God.”