Seriously, folks, I feel like I'm going to throw up sometimes when my cousins who live in the Morridor call the LDS Church "the" church. "The" implies that there is one church. There are actually many churches in the world.

I know some will try to be cute and say that we use "the" church on this board because we're all discussing Mormonism, so it's "the" church we are discussing. It might even be grammatically correct when the religion we are discussing is understood to be the Mormon Church. It can be used in the sense of "used preceding certain nouns associated with one's culture, society, or community."
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/the

Frankly, it's not part of my culture, society, or community. So it is not "the" church for me.

In my opinion it gives Mormonism way too much power. I call it the LDS church or the Mormon church.

Other reasons it makes sense to stop using "the" church.
* Australian psychedelic band used the name "The Church"
* Italian horror film titled "The Church"
* Catholics call their religion "The Church"

The sooner we strike the misspoken phrase "the" church from our vocabulary, the better. The LDS Church is not "the" church. It's not important enough in my life to call it "the" church. It's just a church, one of many.

T-Bone

So I need to be careful not to use that term.

Thanks for the reminder.

My never-mo wife used to refer to it as "THAT church."

When talking to family I always say, "Your church" in conversations or "the Mormon church." It changes the dynamic of the exchange and levels the playing field.

Being specified to be 'one of many' reduces the assumed superiority.

That's one reason some people here, instead of writing "the church," write TSCC -- "that so-called church". Then we all know which one we're talking about :)

What I find almost more offensive is "The Gospel."

TBM's and big-wigs talk about "living the gospel", but they don't really mean those four books from the New Testament--they mean a whole big bundle of non-Jesus-y rules cooked up by JS & Co.....

"The Gospel" really bugs me as well. When people talk about "living the gospel" I ask them which one. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John??? Confuses the hell out of them. If I really don't like them I'll bring up the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, etc.

Yeah, good luck with that. It's not going to happen. If this was a board for Ex-Catholics, people here would know that "the Church" refers to the Catholic Church. It's the same thing here.

I don't even like referring to it as a church. I just say mormonism or lds. In my mind its a cult not a church.

Well, I think the Morg should be referred to as the muther church

Let's see... the morg, the cult, the cojcolds, TSCC. If you want to drive your cousins up a wall, innocently call it "the latter-day church". Then when they rebuke you by saying "it's called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", you say "huh??... well, whatever...there's a lot of churches out there."

I often refer to it as "the cult", but use these terms interchangably, although with different context. When they take a position or do something that is not terrible or immoral, I call it the church. Anytime they do or support something bad, I refer to them as "the cult". They get to decide how often the word "cult" is spoken with respect to how often I refer to them as the church. By their fruits ye shall know them. More often, that standard is applied when calling them a cult.

There was a case several years ago where a high priest left a substantial gift to "the church" in his will. The courts ruled that "the church" was not specific enough and the gift was split to all recognized churches in the area.

Oh my, I'm sure he was rolling in his grave over that one. Most people say the church because up until like the last 20 years or so it was basically the only church around physically. You could drive up 89 and never ever see a christian church anywhere. There was St. Josephs and Madeline Cathedral and that was about it.

Of course there were run down buildings that posed as churches, that traded hands many times but uppity Utahn's never looked at them as churches, really.

It doesn't bother me to hear it referred to as "the church" when you are on a message board of ex/inactive/questioning Mormons. Or when you are in a roomful of people of the same faith. I've heard the Catholic church referred to as "the church" in the same way. It comes down to knowing your audience.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2017 11:02AM by abby.

Catholics have a rather good notion that there are other options out there. I've never known a Catholic to actively recruit Christians in other denominations unless the other Christian really, really wants to be Catholic.

Among friends, I call it "the cult."

I can't call it a "church", because it isn't. (Oh, the arrogance of calling it by it's full name, "The Church of.....") It isn't a religion, either. It is far removed from Christianity. Calling it a "cult", which it really is, is too offensive and argumentative. So I call it "Mormonism." Mormonism and Mormons, like Scientology and Scientologists.

When I'm talking about the temples, malls, missions and missionaries, advertising, etc, I call it "LDS, Inc."

It is a business, as well as a cult.

I always thought that "the" church was referring to Roman Catholics.

I prefer "the cult."