The LDS Church has been increasingly moving away from the Book of Mormon for a long time. It’s been maybe 20 years since they moved all the BOM characters to the basement of the visitors center on TS. JS has been likewise deemphasized. His images are nowhere above ground on TS. Some of you certainly recall that there used to be a “new” visitors center in that building in the eastern part of TS on South Temple that had BOM characters as talking robots like Disney’s An Evening With Mr. Lincoln. Those are long gone. GCs rarely mention the BOM—certainly not Laminites and Nephites and the yin and yang qualities. You certainly won’t again see any GC -authored books about the BOM per se. Hinkley’s book came out maybe 20 years ago, and I remember looking in the index and not finishing a single reference in that entire door stopper to Lamanits or Nephites.
This latest request that we not call you Mormons anymore is part of that. I think people who identify with whatever should be called what they want to be called. So I say LDS when talking to members. I might say Mormon if my interlocutor is not too familiar with the LDS Church and I want him to know what I’m talking about. I don’t think Mormons has reached the point of being offensive to LDS; when that happens, I assure you I’ll expunge the word form my vocabulary. I doubt we’ll ever see an explicit characterization by the Church of the BOM as we have seen from the Church of Christ. It’s never that candid.
Thoughts?
This latest request that we not call you Mormons anymore is part of that. I think people who identify with whatever should be called what they want to be called. So I say LDS when talking to members. I might say Mormon if my interlocutor is not too familiar with the LDS Church and I want him to know what I’m talking about. I don’t think Mormons has reached the point of being offensive to LDS; when that happens, I assure you I’ll expunge the word form my vocabulary. I doubt we’ll ever see an explicit characterization by the Church of the BOM as we have seen from the Church of Christ. It’s never that candid.
Thoughts?
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