{"id":62744,"date":"2026-04-23T09:24:42","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T15:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publicsquaremag.org\/?p=62744"},"modified":"2026-04-23T09:24:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T15:24:42","slug":"who-is-a-mormon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publicsquaremag.org\/media-education\/who-is-a-mormon\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is a Mormon?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the more confused habits in contemporary Latter-day Saint-adjacent discourse is the insistence that people who reject The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints still possess some special claim on \u201c<\/span>Mormon<\/span><\/a>\u201d identity.<\/span><\/p>\n

They talk as though \u201cMormonism\u201d were an ethnicity. As though there were something in the blood. As though having the right grandparents, the right zip code, the right memories of casseroles and church basketball and trek and EFY and green Jell-O and dirty sodas and ward culture means you retain some inherited authority to define what the Church is, what it should preserve, and what it owes the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Church of Jesus Christ is not an aesthetic, it\u2019s not an ethnicity, it\u2019s not a regional brand, it\u2019s not even a culture. It is a church.<\/span><\/p>\n

It has doctrine, commandments, ordinances, priesthood keys, and covenants. It has admission requirements, and it has boundaries.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMormon\u201d Isn\u2019t a Culture<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Beginning in the early- to mid-2010s, there was a tendency among online Latter-day Saint malcontents to claim they had a special say over what happened in the Church by listing their Latter-day Saint bona fides before they launched into whatever complaint they had.<\/span><\/p>\n

It started to become an embarrassing cliche, but these critics would usually talk about callings in which they served, people they knew, and their heritage in the Church, as though this gave them some special authority to critique.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most groan-worthy example of this was when The Washington Post described James Huntsman, who at that point was no longer a member of The Church of Jesus Christ, as <\/span>\u201cMormon royalty\u201d<\/span><\/a> because of who his family was.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time, these complaints were usually focused on tensions between the critics\u2019 progressive American beliefs and the positions of a worldwide church. And the attitude was imported from Reddit, a social media site that is designed to encourage groupthink, and condescension against those outside its own orthodoxy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, a trend began of conceptualizing a Latter-day Saint culture that was severable from the doctrine and practice of the Church, led by many of the mommy bloggers and eventual influencers. They showed their lives online, but often with the religious portions omitted or left on the edges to make the lifestyle content more broadly accessible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Increasingly, those who were in the space, but <\/span>not faithful Latter-day Saint<\/span><\/a>s themselves, would use the word \u201cMormon\u201d to describe themselves, their spaces, or their movement. In fact, on Reddit, they called the \u201csubreddit\u201d dedicated to criticizing The Church of Jesus Christ and its members \u201cr\/mormon.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I understand why so many people want to associate themselves with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>
\nThis trend has occasionally led to feelings of entitlement in discussing how the Church operates. For example, some who have left church membership have complained about Salt Lake Temple renovations that were optimized for visitors from around the world because their ancestors helped build the temple. As though those ancestors had built it as a cultural heritage for their great-grandkids, not a structure for covenant-making and keeping.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This trend has continued as the Church\u2019s actual membership increasingly lives outside Utah and the United States, among people who would be quite confused by carrots in Jell-O.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why Would They Still Want the Name?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I understand why so many people want to associate themselves with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the \u201cMormon\u201d name.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For the purposes of marketing, \u201cMormon\u201d clearly interests people. Latter-day Saints have incredible reputations worldwide. I can understand why those who don\u2019t choose to support The Church of Jesus Christ or live by its covenants and doctrines still want to participate in the sense of community and identity it provided. I would also love it if I could keep getting paychecks from my employer without doing any of the work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But just because their desire to stay associated with the Church makes sense doesn\u2019t mean that reasonable people need to abide by it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

John Dehlin, for example, criticized the Church with false information for so long and so consistently that he was excommunicated over a decade ago. His podcast, \u201cMormon Stories,\u201d is not about \u201cMormon stories,\u201d nor has it been for a very long time. The podcast is, by all rights, about \u201cEx-Mormon Stories\u201d or \u201c<\/span>Anti-Mormon Stories<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So when he recently described himself in a podcast as \u201cMormon,\u201d it makes sense, it\u2019s just not true, not in any meaningful way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And we would do well to look at such claims the same way Europeans do when Americans claim European identity\u2014with cringe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>You\u2019re not Irish.<\/span><\/a> Maybe your great grandparents were Irish, but then they left, and you\u2019ve been in America for a very long time.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Names have incredible power, which is why they are protected under trademark law. I understand faith transitions can be difficult, and they implicate identity in difficult ways. But if you apostasize from your faith, you don\u2019t get to keep claiming it. Or at least people should ignore you when you try to.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The process of leaving a faith fundamentally changes the way you think about it, the way you talk about it, and the way you remember it. This is why the Washington Post\u2019s reporting on James Huntsman <\/span>was so harmful<\/span><\/a>. If he were in fact a \u201cMormon\u201d who chose to sue the Church, that would communicate something very different about what was happening than the fact that he was an ex-Mormon and chose to sue the Church.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And that has nothing to do with the legitimacy of his point. But for someone on the inside to make certain kinds of claims is just different than when someone on the outside does the same. People understand this instinctively.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So when someone uses \u201cMormon\u201d to describe themselves or their community after they\u2019ve actually left, they are trying to appropriate credibility they haven\u2019t earned.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I understand that many people desire to discuss their experience growing up within The Church of Jesus Christ even if they\u2019ve left the Church. There is a simple, easy-to-understand way to describe this: \u201cEx-Latter-day Saint\u201d or \u201cEx-Mormon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Didn\u2019t You Give Up on the Name \u201cMormon\u201d?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Let\u2019s talk about the word \u201cMormon\u201d for a minute. Latter-day Saints no longer choose to describe themselves this way. We choose to find every opportunity we can to refer to Jesus Christ and our membership in His Church.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some have attempted to argue that because Latter-day Saints no longer use the description \u201cMormon\u201d for themselves, it is free for others to use.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kentucky Fried Chicken has recently decided to no longer use that name for its restaurants; it is<\/span> now called just KFC<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Names have incredible power, which is why they are protected under trademark law.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>But I cannot start a restaurant called Kentucky Fried Chicken, especially one with red and white stripes, because, despite their wanting to use a different name for whatever reason, I still cannot trade on the reputation it has built or attempt to deceive people who are still learning about the changed brand identity. The same goes for starting a club called the YMCA (now The Y), a car company called Datsun (Nissan), an outdoors group called Boy Scouts of America (Now Scouting America), or a shipping company called Federal Express. A shift in the way an entity wishes to refer to its identity is not new. And never has it meant the old identity was now free for vultures to descend upon.<\/span><\/p>\n

When The Church of Jesus Christ announced a reprioritization of its name, there were several simple short plugins for existing nomenclature. For example:<\/span><\/p>\n