On Sunday morning, President Nelson dedicated his full full talk to shutting down the use of Mormon and other nicknames for the church. This seems to be something he feels passionate about, and something that has been weighing on his mind for a long time. He went so far as to assert that Jesus is offended if we use, or allow others to use, nicknames for the church, and at least intimates that the use of nicknames represents both a victory for Satan and disregard for the Atonement.
So what are we, as faithful members of the church, to do with this? We absolutely have to take it seriously.
But that raises the question of what taking it seriously means. And I believe that this is a tougher question that it appears at first blush. Because taking it seriously isn’t (necessarily) the same as obeying. To take it seriously requires that we engaged, spiritually and intellectually, with what Pres. Nelson has said.
Engaging spiritually and intellectually means we can’t do two things: we can’t reject it out of hand. But also, we can’t accept it reflexively. Neither of those demonstrates any kind of engagement or thought. And neither of those meets our duties in this life.
See, we can’t offload our spiritual life to the church. Brigham Young said this explicitly:
I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by Him. I am fearful they settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation, and weaken that influence they could give to their leaders, did they know for themselves, by the revelations of Jesus, that they are led in the right way. Let every man and woman know, by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates, or not. This has been my exhortation continually.
He may well have assumed that the whispering of the Spirit would in fact confirm everything he said, but he nonetheless put the onus on us to determine whether he was, in fact, providing the will and the word of the Lord. J. Reuben Clark emphasized that, while the prophet is the only person entitled to receive revelation for the body of the church,
I do not know if this [the story he just told] ever happened, but I say it illustrates a principle—that even the President of the Church, himself, may not always be “moved upon by the Holy Ghost,” when he addresses the people.
Blindly accepting everything the church leaders—including the president of the church—say as the will and the word of the Lord frankly doesn’t allow them to be human, with the tics and idiosyncratic preferences that we allow to other people. And it doesn’t fulfill our duty to figure out what the Lord wants us to do.
At the same time, though, reflexively rejecting the Pres. Nelson’s words is just as untenable a position for faithful members of the church. The president of the church is the single person who can speak on behalf of the whole church. He’s the mouthpiece God can use to communicate, when God wants (or needs) to do so.
So, having taken Pres. Nelson’s injunction very seriously, and having thought about it deeply, I’ve come to my conclusion: I’m going to continue to use Mormon both to self-identify and as shorthand when talking about the church.
And right here, I need to stop and make a couple things clear: I speak 100% for myself here. I don’t speak for my cobloggers or anybody else—it’s perfectly reasonable that they could look at the same things I’ve looked at and come to a different conclusion (and, in fact, I know that some have). Also, I’m not making any normative statements beyond the statement that we have a responsibility to engage deeply with Pres. Nelson’s words. I certainly don’t think we have a duty to continue to use Mormon, and I don’t think anybody who has come to a different conclusion than I have has an inferior engagement with his words.
So why do I come out where I do? A handful of reasons
A Debatable Reading of Scripture
Pres. Nelson grounds his assertion that we shouldn’t use nicknames in two scriptures: D&C 115:4 and 3 Ne. 27:7-8.
In D&C 115:4, the Lord says, “For thus shall my church be called in the last days, even The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” In 3 Nephi, Jesus sounds the same theme, saying, among other things, “And how be it my church save it be called in my name?”
Pres. Nelson is reading the word “called” in the sense of the first clause of definition 2(a) in the contemporary Merriam-Webster dictionary:
to speak of or address by a specified name : give a name to
(emphasis added). Now, that’s a perfectly fair way to read it today. But D&C 115 was received in 1838, and 3 Nephi was translated in the 1820s. And what did “called” mean then? Well, the 1828 Webster’s dictionary doesn’t include the “speak or address” definition. But note that even the contemporary dictionary has a second clause, which reflects definition 1 from 1828:
To name; to denominate or give a name.
I mean, it’s possible that the Lord meant, in scripture, that we were to refer to the church as “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” But if we were to read D&C 115 in both a presentist and literal enough manner to exclude the use of the nickname “Mormon,” we couldn’t justify any nickname, even if it included the name of our Savior. Because read literally with a contemporary definition of call, D&C 115 would require the full name every time. But even the church recognizes that sometimes we’re not going to use the whole thing, which cuts against that kind of super-literalistic reading of D&C 115:4.
At the very least, it’s remarkably plausible (and, I’d say, likely) that the use of “called” in the scriptures means “named.” And the church is named “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” no matter how we refer to it.[fn1]
“Mormon” Has Been Accepted and Used By All of the Prophets Until Now
I’m going to grant Pres. Nelson the ability to use hyperbole. I don’t think he actually believes that the use of the word “Mormon” to describe the church means a victory for Satan or the disregarding of the Atonement. I mean, afaik, every prophet in the church’s history has used the term. They may have used it reluctantly. They may not have loved it. (Otoh, they may not have used it reluctantly, and they may have loved it.) But it has been an acceptable part of discourse within (and without) the church for a long time.
And that’s not to say things can’t change. But it’s not to say the must change, either.
“Mormon” is an Important Identifier
I know that, technically, Mormon church and LDS church and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are all fungible. But, it turns out, they’re not all fungible everywhere. I mean, I grew up in Southern California, where there were and are a ton of Mormons. But my wife’s grandmother grew up in rural West Virginia. She eventually joined the church after her daughter-in-law joined. And how did she know about it? The Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s radio broadcasts. That gave her some idea of what Mormons were. If we take out that identifier, what are we going to replace it with? Because honestly, people aren’t going to bother with (or necessarily remember) the full name of the church, unless and until they have time to engage it. But if they can’t remember what it is, why are they going to bother engaging it.
We can’t do “Church of Christ” or “Church of Jesus Christ,” because those denominations exist. (Also, they’re not what D&C 115 says we’re to call the church, if we’re stuck on that reading of call.) We may be a restorationist church, but “Restoration Movement” has an accepted meaning (which, as a spiritual descendant of Alexander Campbell, we kind of fit in). So we have, apparently, to coin a new shortened name, without the history, and, frankly, without the ability to claim “Jesus Christ” within the name.
I Don’t Need to Agree With Prophetic Preferences
I get that Pres. Nelson really cares about this. He has every right to. But I’m not obligated to share the tastes of the church leadership. For instance, nobody ever demanded that I share Pres. Monson’s taste in poetry (which I don’t). I would be shocked to find out that any of the general authorities listen to the music I listen to, watch the TV shows I do (though they should watch The Good Place, because everybody should), or engage in the sports I enjoy.
I share a central interest and goal with them—the goal of fully taking advantage of the good news of Jesus—but outside of that, my interests and preferences diverge from theirs. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Final Thoughts
So that’s my evaluative processes. Like I said, you may well come to a different conclusion than I have. I don’t think my decision to continue to use “Mormon” and “LDS” is True or is morally better than someone else’s decision to drop them. But I do think I have taken Pres. Nelson’s words seriously, and engaged them in an honest and deep way. And, as I said, the sole normative takeaway I want from this is just that: when the prophet speaks, we have an obligation to take what he says seriously, to truly engage it critically, and to come to a conclusion. And, when we’ve come to our conclusion, we have the additional obligation to respect the conclusions others have come to.
[fn1] FWIW, this definition of “called” still seems to have significant currency, at least in British English. See, e.g., Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: “In the autumn of 1806 they received an addition in a gentleman called John Segundus.” (I have it on Kindle, so it’s toward the beginning, Location 126.)
You can hear a couple British financial journalists using “called” to mean “named” at this Slate Money podcast, too. Listen especially to the minute or so starting at 7:20, and couple dozen seconds starting at about 24 minutes.