‘Mormon’ name flip not easy for some

SALT LAKE CITY — After finally getting her twin babies to fall asleep in Rexburg, Idaho, Kristine Anderson described herself as a “stereotypical, Mormon stay-at-home mom.”

Then she sighed loudly, annoyed that a lifetime habit had slipped out.

“Ugh,” she said. “I just said the word ‘Mormon’ again. I apologize.”

It’s been almost a year — last August — since the leaders of her faith announced a game-changing divine revelation. Russell Nelson, the church’s president, said God had “impressed upon my mind the importance of the name he has revealed for his church.” Church members should no longer call themselves Mormons, or even use the shorthand LDS, the church announced.

Instead, they should use the church’s full name and refer to themselves as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Or, if they wanted a shorter version, Latter-day Saints was preferred. Because Nelson is revered as a living prophet, the announcement had divine weight.

For the church’s 16 million adherents, the shift has meant lighthearted screwups, logistical complications and reflections on an unexpected question: What do you do when a name that has been core to your identity suddenly changes?

The word “Mormon” has been with the church from the beginning. It comes from the Book of Mormon, the church’s signature text (the main thing associated with the church that is keeping its name), which adherents believe was recorded on gold plates by the prophet Mormon and his son, Moroni.

The church has tried to stress its full name at various points in the past, including before the 2002 Winter

Olympics in Salt Lake City, and has discouraged phrases like “the Mormon Church.” But until Nelson’s announcement of the divine revelation, the push hadn’t stuck.

The church’s longtime website, LDS. org, now redirects to Churchofjesuschrist.org, and Mormon.org will soon switch over, too. In May, the church stopped posting on its Mormonchannel Instagram feed and encouraged followers to move to Churchofjesuschrist instead.

The church-affiliated publishing house, Deseret Book, has been phasing out or renaming titles that used the word Mormon, prompting authors to scramble to rename their books and figure out new marketing plans — ones that don’t require the use of internet search terms that are 11 syllables long.

The shift became impossible to ignore when the church’s iconic musical organization announced in October that it would no longer be known as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.

Some members have felt relief and a new optimism about broader inclusion in American society. The move signals a top-down effort to ensure the faith is taken seriously as part of the Christian community, said Amanda Hendrix-komoto, an assistant professor of history at Montana State University, who studies the church but is not a member.

“If you walked into any of the Christian bookstores,” she said, “Mormonism was in the cult section.”

Their place in the Christian tradition is something many church members struggled to make clear as they shared their faith with others.

In significantly evangelical Dallas, Phylicia Rae Jimenez, a high school English teacher, said that even before

the move to drop Mormon, she had usually introduced herself as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “My faith has always been rooted in being a Christian, as opposed to, ‘I’m a Mormon,”’ said Jimenez, 31, who converted about 10 years ago.

Still, when she tells people she is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she often loses them before she is halfway through the name.

“You always have to follow up with Mormon,” she said. “Because it’s longer, people are like, ‘Oh, it’s the Seventh-day Adventists.’ I’m like, no, still no.”

But others have felt frustration — even anger and confusion — over the name shift.

When Alma Loveland of Springville, Utah, heard the announcement last summer, her day was “wrecked.” To be Mormon had long been her cultural identity, she said, even though she stopped practicing the faith three years ago and now calls

herself an ex-mormon or former Mormon.

“It was a source of pride for me,” Loveland, 38, said. “This is the word. It was community, my people.”

National groups are trying to strike a balance between following church guidance and holding to their own missions.

Mormon Women for Ethical Government, an activist women’s group that was formed in response to President Donald Trump’s election, has decided to keep its name, at least for now. A change in the future could come if more women from other religious traditions join, said Sharlee Mullins Glenn, the group’s founder.

“In this case,” she said, “we would most likely change our name to something like Women of Faith for Ethical Government.”

Ahead of the 2020 election, grassroots political campaigns are launching with names like “Latterday Saints for Warren” and “Latter-day Saints for Harris” instead of the

“Mormons for Hillary” effort of 2016.

But Latter-day Saints Democrats, a political group most commonly known as LDS Dems, is keeping its logo, a blue circle with “LDS” in the middle, with an extralarge D.

“If the name of our page was Democrats from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we are posting about Wilbur Ross manipulating the census, we feel like that is taking the Lord’s name in vain,” said the group’s national co-chairman, Rob Taber, referring to the commerce secretary. “We find that to be mildly sacrilegious.”

Leaders at the Mormon History Association, whose members study the full spectrum of traditions connected to Joseph Smith — who published the Book of Mormon in 1830 — took just five minutes to decide to keep their name at a recent board meeting.

“You can’t scrub ‘Mormon’ out of Mormon history,” said W. Paul Reeves, the group’s president.