"...Edward Davies, Mitt Romney's militantly atheist father-in-law, was indeed posthumously converted to Mormonism by his family, despite the fact that when he was alive he regarded all religions as "hogwash."
...Ann Romney's Welsh-born father
...was a...resolute atheist who disdained all organized religion and raised his children accordingly.
Davies, his son Roderick told the Boston Globe in 2007, regarded the faithful as "weak in the knees."
...the Romney family launched a concerted effort to convert not only Ann but her entire family to Mormonism.
And they were wildly successful:
...Edward Davies was the only member of his clan whose soul the Romneys never claimed for their church.
Until he died.
According to this entry in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' genealogical database, Davies was baptized as a Mormon at a "special family meeting" 14 months after his death...
...the "ordinances" performed on Davies' spectral remnants included...
[A] canonical series of rituals that Mormons undergo (in life or death) in order to qualify for admission to heaven,
...an exceedingly odd way for the Romney family to honor the memory of a man who was committed, for his entire life, to the notion that organized religion is a fraud.
...Catholic and Jewish organizations have expressed outrage when the names of dead popes and Holocaust victims have turned up on Mormon lists of the baptized.
In 1995, the church pledged to "discontinue any future baptisms of deceased Jews" except for direct descendents of living Mormons, tacitly acknowledging that its creepy and weird to claim the souls of people who had no interest in Mormonism for their own.
...the Romney and Davies families didn't accord Edward Davies' memory the same respect."
John Cook
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