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| 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.”
