Russell M. Nelson, a former middle surgeon and longtime church chief, was once 93 years previous when he turned into president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2018. However any individual who assumed that his tenure could be uneventful, because of his complex years, was once temporarily proved fallacious. Visiting South The us that 12 months, he advised contributors to buckle up: “Eat your vitamin pills. Get your rest. It’s going to be exciting.”
Nelson, who died on Sept. 27, 2025, at age 101, proved a consequential reformer: an vigorous chief who streamlined paperwork, took steps towards gender fairness and ended the church’s century-long courting with the Boy Scouts, whilst reaffirming its opposition to LGBTQ+ relationships and identities.
He suggested the church unapologetically thru storms of public scrutiny, together with accusations that the church had hid the price of its investments. For the devoted, Nelson represented God’s mouthpiece on Earth. The church considers each and every president to be a “prophet, seer, and revelator.”
But one in every of his projects made an have an effect on that rippled a long way past the church. In 2018, he stunned observers via mentioning the usage of the phrase “Mormon” a “major victory for Satan,” insisting on the usage of the church’s complete identify. People have been to be identified via their institutional association, as “members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
The identify of the church was once given via God, and shortening it erases “all that Jesus Christ did for us,” Nelson argued. But adherents have lengthy self-identified as Mormons, so the rebrand felt like a novelty to a few contributors.
As a school lecturer educating classes on American faith and Mormonism, I used to be one of the who wrestled with this alteration in terminology – and noticed the demanding situations it created for my scholars and associates. For nearly two centuries, the phrase “Mormon” has framed how American citizens take into accounts and speak about this religion.
Start of a church
The identify Mormon comes from the identify of the Ebook of Mormon, a non secular textual content distinctive to the religion. Founder Joseph Smith, who arranged the church in 1830, believed he have been suggested via God to revive Jesus’ true church. He claimed that an angel had led him to discover and translate historical gold plates that detailed the spiritual historical past of an historical civilization within the Americas, based via Israelites who fled Jerusalem.
An 1841 version of the Ebook of Mormon, on show within the museum on the Springs Maintain in Las Vegas.
Prosfilaes/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
Early critics satirically hooked up the phrase Mormon to the motion, however Smith insisted that within the ebook’s unique language, the phrase intended “literally, ‘more good.’” By the point Smith was once killed via a mob in Illinois in 1844, his fans had embraced the phrase.
After Smith’s demise, Mormons cut up into other factions, with the biggest crew touring via foot and wagon to the a long way American West. But, the gang’s evolving practices persisted to spark controversy. Polygamy and the church’s political and financial affect contributed to a long time of animosity between Mormons and the remainder of the country.
The US started seizing church assets and imprisoning polygamist leaders, coercing church president Wilford Woodruff to finish authentic toughen for polygamy in 1890.
A brand new debut
3 years later, on the Chicago Global’s Truthful, the church rebranded Mormonism, presenting Mormon pioneers as an embodiment of the values of the American frontier.
Woodruff, then 86 years previous, spoke of himself as Utah’s oldest residing pioneer and of Mormons as a individuals who constructed the American West. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir carried out on the honest, reintroducing Mormons to the broader public as an advanced and creative other people. The gang shouted, “Three cheers for the Mormons!” The Chicago Usher in wrote, “Mormons and gentiles came together as friends.”
The Nice Basin on the Chicago Global’s Truthful in 1893.
Chicago Historical past Museum/Getty Pictures
In spite of this, many American citizens nonetheless distrusted Mormons. In 1903, high-ranking church authentic Reed Smoot was once elected to the U.S. Senate, which provoked nationwide outcry and ended in Senate hearings that lasted till 1907. The hearings substantiated fees that the apply of polygamy endured however exonerated Smoot as a person. As Smoot argued, Mormons have been impartial of the institutional church and thus devoted American citizens. He satisfied his fellow senators that if the church’s teachings got here into war together with his sense of right and wrong or oath of workplace, then, as a Mormon, he would uphold the latter.
‘Meet the Mormons’
Ab Jenkins, a race automotive driving force whose data made him a global famous person within the Nineteen Thirties, capitalized in this new symbol of Mormon individuality and wholesomeness. The “Mormon Boy” credited his blank, church-approved way of life for his good fortune. On his automotive, the Mormon Meteor, Jenkins rejected alcohol and cigarette endorsements and as an alternative brandished an indication that learn, “Yes, I’m a Mormon.”
Ab Jenkins begins a 1939 take a look at run in his race automotive, the Mormon Meteor III, on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Apartments.
Underwood Archives/Getty Pictures
For a number of a long time, different Mormon celebrities like circle of relatives band The Osmonds and golfer Johnny Miller persisted to form sure public perspectives of Mormons – hitting a high-water mark in 1977, when Gallup discovered that best 18% of American citizens held unfavourable perspectives.
Church efforts to persuade social problems, on the other hand, reminiscent of its decades-long opposition to the Equivalent Rights Modification, ultimately took a toll. By way of 1991, public opinion of Mormons had fallen dramatically, with 37% of American citizens viewing them unfavorably – and leaders determined that some other rebrand was once so as.
The former 12 months, senior chief Gordon B. Hinckley had admonished contributors to make the phrase Mormon “shine with added luster.” When he turned into president in 1995, Hinckley labored to reframe how the general public noticed Mormons, arguing at the “60 Minutes” TV display that Mormons have been “not a weird people.”
The Salt Lake Town Olympics in 2002 driven Mormonism into the nationwide highlight, and that very same 12 months, the church introduced its primary web site, Mormon.org, with tales and headlines liberally the use of the time period “Mormon.” A media marketing campaign adopted a decade later, that includes distinguished contributors mentioning, “I’m a Mormon.” Atypical contributors have been then inspired to add their very own “I’m a Mormon” profiles to this web site and percentage them on their very own social media accounts.
The Latter-day Saints temple in downtown Salt Lake Town, middle, as an Olympic banner drapes the church workplace development subsequent door all the way through the 2002 Video games.
George Frey/AFP by means of Getty Pictures
Mitt Romney’s Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential election and the recognition of the satirical “Book of Mormon” musical driven Mormons once more into the nationwide highlight. In 2014, the church produced a documentary titled “Meet the Mormons,” proven in theaters around the U.S., which apostle Jefferey R. Holland defined was once to “show people what we’re really like.”
In 2017, a Pew Analysis Heart survey’s “feeling thermometer” discovered public opinion of Mormons to have risen to the “somewhat warmer” ranking of 54, a 6-point building up from 2014.
‘More good’?
That mentioned, the church’s courting to the phrase Mormon has at all times been advanced. Way back to 1990, Nelson was once already caution fellow Latter-day Saints that Mormon was once “not an appropriate alternative” for the church’s complete identify. All the way through the 2002 Olympics, the church prompt media that the nickname was once applicable for people however to not discuss with the establishment itself.
Total, I might argue the church has used the phrase Mormon to fortify public opinion for greater than a century. A part of this branding downplayed in style fears in regards to the church and its affect – permitting outsiders to broaden favorable perspectives towards Mormons, even though they disliked the establishment itself.
In March 2023, a Pew Analysis ballot reported a low level in public opinion of Mormons, falling for the primary time beneath each different measured crew. 1 / 4 of American citizens held “unfavorable views of Mormons,” whilst best 15% held “favorable” ones.
A month later, Nelson pleaded with contributors to be peacemakers, lamenting that “many people seem to believe that it is completely acceptable to condemn, malign and vilify anyone who does not agree with them.” Nationally, intense polarization and violence have persisted since then – together with a horrific assault in Michigan on a Latter-day Saints church development on Sept. 28, 2025, simply at some point after Nelson’s demise.
“Mormon” has been a very powerful time period in attractive the ones out of doors the religion, specifically in countering unfavourable perceptions. Whether or not or no longer the phrase disappears, what might topic extra for Nelson’s legacy is whether or not other people out of doors the church affiliate it with “more good” – each institutionally and in my view.
That is an up to date model of a piece of writing initially printed on Sept. 5, 2024.
