LDS President wants to discard the word "Mormon"

As reported by Peggy Fletcher Stack and Scott D. Pierce of the Salt Lake Tribune, August 16, 2018 (updated August 23, 2018) (bold, links in original):

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints really, truly, absolutely wants to be known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Not the LDS Church. Not the Mormon church.

It made that clear Thursday — even though the last attempt to eradicate those nicknames for the Utah-based faith flopped.

The new push came from God to President Russell M. Nelson, the church said in a news release Thursday.

“The Lord has impressed upon my mind the importance of the name he has revealed for his church,” Nelson is quoted as saying, “even The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

The faith’s headquarters in Salt Lake City and Latter-day Saints across the globe have much “work before us to bring ourselves in harmony with his will,” the 93-year-old Nelson said in the statement. “In recent weeks, various church leaders and departments have initiated the necessary steps to do so.”

Thursday’s statement — released on mormonnewsroom.org — referred readers to the “updated Newsroom style guide,” which calls on news organizations to follow these instructions:

• Use the full name — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — on first reference.

• Refer to “the Church,” the “Church of Jesus Christ” or the “restored Church of Jesus Christ” in shortened or subsequent references.

• Avoid using the abbreviation “LDS” or the nickname “Mormon” as substitutes for the church’s name, as in “Mormon Church,” “LDS Church” or “Church of the Latter-day Saints.”

• Refer to members as “members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” or “Latter-day Saints,” not “Mormons.”

The new guidelines also state that “‘Mormonism’ is inaccurate and should not be used,” and that the term “‘the restored gospel of Jesus Christ’ is accurate and preferred.”

The style edict says “Mormon” is correctly used in proper names such as the Book of Mormon, the faith’s signature scripture, or when used as an adjective in historical expressions such as “Mormon Trail.”

Still, many believing observers are skeptical that this drive will be any more successful than a similar effort to jettison “Mormon” that launched before the 2002 Winter Olympics. That attempt ended a decade later with a return to the long-standing and, in some quarters, beloved nickname “Mormon.”

Rocky Anderson, who was Salt Lake City’s mayor from 2000 to 2008, diligently followed the dominant church’s request back then — even using “the Church of Jesus Christ” on second reference, which sometimes earned jeers even from faithful Latter-day Saints.

“It was really awkward,” Anderson said Thursday. “I did find it a mouthful.”

What’s in a name?

For authorities such as Nelson, the faith’s name is more than branding.

After its founding in 1830, the church was known variously as The Church of Christ, The Church of Jesus Christ and even The Church of the Latter-day Saints. In 1838, it became The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when church founder Joseph Smith received what was recorded as a revelation from God:

“For thus shall my church be called in the last days, even The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Smith declared in Doctrine and Covenants 115:4.

Blogger Steve Evans, founder of By Common Consent, sees Nelson’s effort as “fighting for the divinely revealed name of the church in the hearts and minds of the members.”

In a 1990 speech (a year after former church President Ezra Taft Benson sang “I Am a Mormon Boy” from the pulpit), Nelson, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, spoke of the importance of using the church’s full name.

“He views it as something sacred, which I respect,” Evans said. “But the initiative won’t succeed — if success means getting everyone to stop using the terms ‘Mormon’ or ‘LDS Church.’”

Evans predicts this undertaking will only “confuse outsiders,” he said. “I don’t think it substantively alters external perspectives of the church, but I do think it makes us look a little persnickety.”

The church already has “a popular brand — why not embrace it and use it? … We should be leveraging those names instead, while simultaneously teaching the real name of the church and reinforcing why it is something holy to us.”

LDS blogger Jana Riess, a senior columnist for Religion News Service, also believes the drive may fail.

“It would be extremely unlikely for the majority of journalists to adopt this new style,” she said, “in part because the church has not provided a single-word term that is as descriptive as ‘Mormon’ or ‘LDS.’”

When people plug “the Church of Jesus Christ” into a Google search, Riess said, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints “is not going to come up.”

And Latter-day Saints themselves likely will continue to use the only monikers they’ve used their whole lives, she said, but now “might feel guilty about it.”

In academia, “Mormonism” is by far the preferred term, said Patrick Mason, head of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University in Southern California.

In addition to Claremont, there are three other professorships in “Mormon studies” — at the University of Utah, Utah State University and the University of Virginia.

“I cannot imagine a university approving a professorship in ‘Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint Studies’ or ‘Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ Studies,’” Mason wrote in an email. “‘Mormonism’ and ‘Mormon’ will continue to be dominant in the academy.”

Mason has a personal stake in this. He has just published a book called “What Is Mormonism?” Still, the LDS scholar concedes that Mormonism “has always been a fraught and imprecise term.”

Beyond the main body

Does “Mormon” apply equally to members of the mainstream LDS Church, the Community of Christ, the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and all other religious descendants of Joseph Smith and the early Latter-day Saint movement, Mason asked, “or just to the LDS Church?”

Some people are upset when “Mormonism” is used synonymously with the LDS Church and its members — as if they are the only “Mormons” and all the other groups don’t exist, he said, while members of the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) say “they don’t want to be called ‘Mormons,’ because they associate the term with the Utah-based LDS Church.”

Such confusion may have been part of the reason for this move, said historian Matthew Bowman, author of “The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith.”

“This strikes me as a move toward boundary maintenance, in both the manner of its presentation and the fact of it,” Bowman wrote in an email. “Nelson’s language asserts his revelatory authority and implicitly contrasts that authority with the common vernacular of the world. He frames language use here as a matter of discipline and loyalty. The nomenclature he offers stresses the uniqueness of the church.”

Bowman said that, in the end, “this effort seems to me an attempt to emphasize the distinctiveness of the church.”

A global faith

Wilfried Decoo, a Latter-day Saint writer and professor in Belgium, understands his faith’s desire to be seen as “Christian” by urging everyone to use its full name.

By rejecting “Mormon” as short for the church, Decoo wrote in a 2011 essay, “we give up the key element of our international brand name, recognizable in all languages.”

In another language, for example, “Latter-day Saints” is translated as: “I am a Holy Being of the Almost Final Period.”

“This policy kind of shows how parochial-American someone at the top thinks without any clue of international semantics,” he said Thursday from his home in Europe. “I don’t think it will have any effect outside of the church, and even inside … It’s just impossible to enforce.”

Gordon B. Hinckley, who became church president in 1995, understood the dilemma.

“‘The Mormon church,’ of course, is a nickname. And nicknames have a way of becoming fixed,” he preached in the October 1990 General Conference. “I suppose that regardless of our efforts, we may never convert the world to general use of the full and correct name of the church. Because of the shortness of the word ‘Mormon’ and the ease with which it is spoken and written, they will continue to call us the Mormons, the Mormon church, and so forth.”

Hinckley recalled a member in England telling him: “While I’m thankful for the privilege of being a follower of Jesus Christ and a member of the church which bears his name, I am not ashamed of the nickname ‘Mormon.’”

When someone asked him about it, the man replied, “‘Mormon’ means ‘more good.’”

Hinckley knew that wasn’t the actual meaning, but adopted the man’s thinking about the tag.

“We may not be able to change the nickname,” the affable leader concluded, “but we can make it shine with added luster.”

After all, Hinckley said, Mormon is the “name of a man who was a great [Book of Mormon] prophet who struggled to save his nation, and also the name of a book which is a mighty testament of eternal truth, a veritable witness of the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

This blogger finds the Latter-day Saints' desire to drop the word "Mormon" to be rather suspicious, as I remember seeing television commercials for the church in the 1980s where they referred to themselves as the Mormons. I suspect that the move is not only to continue the LDS practice of deceiving people into believing that they're actually Christians, but may also be because the word "Mormon" may have negative connotations, which begs the question as to why "Mormon" may have negative connotations. Could it be because when people hear the word "Mormon" they think of the word "cult?"

This reminds me of when Amway in North America tried using the name Quixtar in the early 2000s. Could that have been because the name Amway brought to mind thoughts of deceptive marketing practices? If I recall correctly, the television commercials for Quixtar mentioned it as being formerly Amway, which tended to negate whatever the purpose of the name change may have been.

I doubt that the Latter-day Saints will be successful in getting the word "Mormon" dropped from common use; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is just too long a name to be used comfortably in conversation or writing, and "Mormon" has been around too long to be discarded. I'm not the only one who's doubtful that Russell Nelson's desire will be realized (and I hardly need say, but will do so anyway, that the "God" who spoke to Dr. Nelson is a false god--a "god" who was once a man and is an extraterrestrial from a planet near a star called Kolob). According to Ms. Stack in the Salt Lake Tribune, August 27, 2018 (links in original):

So if “Mormon,” “Mormonism” and “LDS” are out, what’s in?

Go ahead. You find an appropriate one-word stand-in for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its people and its principles.

It must be clear and universally acceptable. It must tie the Utah-based faith to Christianity and its own history without confusing it with other denominations.

Oh, and it must be short, recognizable and straightforward. You know, like “Mormon.”

Moments after church President Russell M. Nelson announced last week that God told him to reinforce the faith’s full name and eschew its long-standing nicknames, speculation sprang up about alternatives.

We posed the question on social media and got hundreds of responses — some creative, some snarky, some silly, but none satisfying.

The Church Formerly Known as Mormon? May have worked for rock artist Prince, who died in 2016, but it violates church leaders’ request by including the very word they are trying to downplay.

Because “Latter-day Saint” is approved, how about Latter-day Saintism? Nah, too easily confused with more devilish devotions.

Ex-Mo or anti-Mo? Don’t go there.

Latter-day Sainthood (Laddies or Latties, for short)? Too haughty and presumptuous, perhaps.

Ziontology? Clever, yes, but ask Scientologists how that would fly.

TCOJCOLDS (pronounced Taco J. Colds)? An anagram lover’s dream but a marketer’s nightmare.

You see, if there were an obvious solution, it probably would have been trotted out already — and caught on.

A name or emphasis change is hardly an unreasonable request, but it’s especially tough for institutions to implement (think the New Coke).

Back in the 1990s, some folks quietly questioned the decision by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to switch to the Community of Christ, a vague-sounding nomenclature that meant reporters routinely would add (formerly RLDS) to explain the religion’s roots.

The problem for the Salt Lake City-headquartered faith is that “Mormon” is the most commonly used one-word moniker both inside and out of the 16 million-member church. It is familiar, easy and distinctive — and has been part of the lexicon for nearly 200 years.

Latter-day Saint authorities propose using “the Church” or “the Church of Jesus Christ” for shortened references, but the latter has a long association with other Christian faiths and the former is vague and could mean any church anywhere.

Besides, “The Church” traditionally refers to the Roman Catholic Church, which, with its 1.2 billion members, is by far the world’s largest Christian faith.

Lots of groups would lay claim to the “Church of Jesus Christ,” including Disciples of Christ, United Church of Christ and the numerous Churches of God in Christ (which often take a parenthesis to know they are Pentecostals).

A Latter-day Saint offshoot even has the website address thechurchofjesuschrist.org.

All this breeds confusion, not the clarity Nelson craves.

Some wonder if reporters or academics could say, on second references, The Church of Jesus Christ (Mormon), tying the two together — as earlier Latter-day Saint media ads did.

Would it be OK to dub the group Jesus Mormons? Nope, there’s that pesky term again.

How about Latter-day Saint Christians? That’s feasible. After all, church officials said “Latter-day Saints” is an acceptable substitute for members.

In fact, before the church’s full, formal name was spelled out in 1838 by founder Joseph Smith, many members called it the “Church of the Latter-day Saints.” But church brass specifically rejected that name for the institution in the style guide that accompanied Nelson’s pronouncement.

Through the decades, the term “Mormon” — the name of an ancient prophet in the faith’s foundational scripture, the Book of Mormon — became dominant and “Latter-day Saints” faded from public recognition.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the church pushed the public and members to drop “Mormon” in favor of “Latter-day Saints” or “LDS Church” as an attempt to counter the perception that members and their church were not part of the Christian family. It even adopted a new logo that emphasizes Jesus Christ by casting his name in larger letters.

The effort mostly failed. By 2010, the church reversed itself and wholeheartedly re-embraced “Mormon.” It spent millions promoting the “I’m a Mormon” ad blitz and two feature documentaries titled “Meet the Mormons.”

So is “Latter-day Saints” — or just “Saints” — a good replacement for all that? Meet the Saints. I’m a Saint.

Some members feel squeamish about calling themselves “Saints,” fearing that it sounds self-laudatory and self-serving.

Indeed, “Saint” generally is associated with an especially holy Catholic or Orthodox Christian — not to mention a prominent pro football team.

As to the word “Mormonism,” it covers many traditions and beliefs that track their origin to Joseph Smith, including the Community of Christ, ahem, RLDS.

Some have suggested members be called “Brighamites,” a throwback tag given to the main body of Latter-day Saints who followed Brigham Young along the Mormon Trail (the church gives a pass to the trail reference since it’s historic) to the Great Basin.

Clearly, coming up with a worthy replacement for “Mormon” is a tall order. Even the church-owned Deseret News needs time to devise one for its weekly Mormon Times content.

“We are currently evaluating potential names for this section,” Editor Doug Wilks writes, “and will make a change in coming weeks.” (The newspaper has dropped Mormon Times from its website.)

“Mormonism” has been a handy term, says Latter-day Saint scholar Richard Bushman, an emeritus history professor at Columbia University, to describe a bigger religious reality than a single faith group.

“We are a church. We are a gospel. We are a priesthood and an organization,” he says in the latest Salt Lake Tribune “Mormon Land” podcast. “But something larger has been created from that. ... We are a people, almost an ethnicity, and a culture that emanates from the people.”

Nelson’s injunction is no trivial exercise, Bushman says. It is forcing Latter-day Saints to “rethink who we are and what these words amount to.”

Stuart Reid, a former public affairs official who helped with the church’s earlier effort to drop “Mormon,” sees Nelson’s motivation as more expansive than a simple rebranding.

It is the result of “revelation,” Reid says in the same “Mormon Land” episode. The prophet is preparing the faithful “for the Second Coming of Christ.”

Language does evolve so there’s no telling how outsiders or insiders will describe The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints come 2050.

The word “Mormonism” could be little more than a vague echo of bygone days — or, if Reid is onto something, maybe the end of the world will already have happened.