A top leader of the LDS Church has called allegations that the church is "buying" the names of thousands of dead Russian Orthodox members in order to baptize them as Mormons "absurd."

Proxy baptism of the dead in the faith's temples "is a religious practice that dates back to antiquity," according to a press release issued Friday by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The doctrine is central to the mission of the church, which includes "redeeming the dead" through proxy ordinances Latter-day Saints believe lead to exaltation in God's kingdom in the afterlife.

Elder D. Todd Christofferson, executive director of the church's Family and Church History Department, was quoted in the release as saying such baptisms have been practiced by the church almost since its founding in 1830. The release was in response to news reports of dismay by Russian Orthodox leaders in Moscow and New York regarding the recent procurement of names by the church in a Russian town.

While the church routinely seeks out names, birth and death dates of the deceased to add to its world-famous family history database, LDS church members also perform baptisms by proxy in the faith's temples for millions of such deceased persons.

The release did not give any details about whether the church had informed Russian officials that the names it was procuring for family history research would also become candidates for proxy baptism in LDS temples.

When asked whether that was the case, church spokesman Dale Bills said before the microfilming of records begins, "we clearly inform custodians of genealogical records who we are and what use we will make of the filmed records. Such discussion is a standard element of all negotiations with record-holding organizations." He declined to offer additional comment on the Russian records in question.

Newspaper account

A story in The Moscow Observer dated Nov. 23 was headlined "Russians fume as Mormons 'buy souls.' " It said the Russian Orthodox church "has expressed its outrage at what it claims is a Mormon scheme to buy up the names of dead Russians in order to baptize 'dead souls in their faith.' "

It says that in an archive in the town of Nizhni Novgorod, east of Moscow, the church "has paid ten U.S. cents for each page of thousands of names of dead people dating mainly from the late eighteenth century to be put on a microfilm.

"The idea, the last-ditch attempt of a cash-strapped archive to fund urgent preservation work, has caused a fury among the predominantly Orthodox nation," the paper reported. It said microfilming had ceased while officials examine the issue more closely.

That report and others it has generated are "disappointing," according to the press release quoting Elder Christofferson, because "it inadequately explains and mischaracterizes not only our religious practice but also our cooperative records preservation work."