However, (also FYI), adherents prefer if you refer to the church as "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" and members of said church "Latter-day Saints" or simply "Christians".
I know "Mormon" is a long-standing nickname and most people don't intend to use the term derogatorily, but calling Latter-day Saints "Mormons" is like nicknaming Muslims "Mohammeds" or "Qurans" or nicknaming Islam "the Mohammed Church" or "the Quran Church".
Mormon is an effective short form of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints", which is a mouthful. And sometimes, you might want to refer to a specific type of Christian, such as Baptist, Protestant, Catholic, or in this case, Mormons.
“Muslim” and “Islam” weren't imported from Arabic into general use in English (or most other Western European languages) until after “Mohammedan(ism)” or similar constructions had been around for a long time.
> Mormon is an effective short form of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints"
It's a short alternative, but it's not really a short form as it does not derive at all from the long form. (LDS is more of a short form.)
I agree, but they've asked not to be referred to by that term. If we extend the courtesy to trans people who don't want to be referred to by certain terms, I don't see why we shouldn't extend the same courtesy to religious people who don't want to be referred to by certain terms.
I have a hard time referring to them as Christians when they think that the non-Latter-Day Christians are someone that needs converted. They sure send a lot of missionaries to go after (other) Christians. They sure seem to teach that you have to be part of their church. In short, they sure seem to act like they regard other Christians as "other".
So, no, I have a hard time calling them "Christians".
(And if you're going to say that they self-identify as Christians, well, Jesus said something about "Not everyone who calls me 'Lord, Lord'...")
Most Christian groups think that “Christians” outside of their group need to be converted. There are theological reasons why large groups of Christians exclude LDS, SDA, JW, and certain other groups that self-identify as “Christian” from the scope of that term (while still including very large sets of ‘Christians’ with whom they otherwise disagree), but “they think other ‘Christians’ need to be converted” isn’t one of them, and there would be no Christians at all if that standard was applied consistently.)
Yet I'm assuming you have no problem calling both Sunni and Shiite Muslims "Muslims" even though they each think the other is wrong and that the other needs converting to their way of thinking? Disputes about which church/sect is the one true church authorized by God are going to happen in every major religion. I think the term "Christian" though is generic - if you believe in and follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, you are a Christian.
The first for members is problematic (especially in speech, where there is no equivalent to capitalization to distinguish the proper nouns from a combination of common words; and plenty of people discussing “Latter-Day Saints” would very much not want to endorse the idea that the people referenced are “latter day saints”.
The latter of those is even more problematic for somewhat similar reasons, since there are lots of other people who identify as and are commonly known as Christians, so it's not particularly good to distinguish Latter-Day Saints. Especially given that the boundary large groups of Christians who disagree on, well, nearly everything else draw around the boundary of “Christian” excluded Latter-Day Saints.
> Calling Latter-day Saints "Mormons" is like nicknaming Muslims "Mohammeds" or "Qurans" or nicknaming Islam "the Mohammed Church" or "the Quran Church".
Or, to use a less hypothetical example, it's like calling Muslims and Islam “Mohammedans” and “Mohammedanism”, respectively.
President Monson even ran an ad campaign called "I'm a Mormon".
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/-i-m-a-morm...
Of course his successor is trying to erase all of that by banning even using LDS ... now you must say they're a "Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints"
There was a time when we simply preferred to be LDS, then we started embracing Mormon cause that's what people called us anyways so might as well go with it if it allowed opportunities to proselyte/teach the gospel etc...
I left the church in 2017 though after reading https://cesletter.com it woke me up to just how much of a cult the church is, and how white-washed their history is...
I was taught by my Bishop an ex member of the seventy that Joseph Translated the bible by using an ancient Urim and Thumim device in a breastplate with seer stones.
Church now admits nope: He used a stone he found digging a well, dropped it in a hat and put his head over the hat.
There's also too many similarities with The book of Mormon and other similar books of that time like "The Late War".
A good comparison can be found here: http://wordtree.org/thelatewar/
Anyhow, I think the new "rules" about ditching LDS, Latter-day Saints, and Mormon nomenclature at every chance came out iirc around 2017-18 it was after I had my membership removed... My wife's still a member but she's a lot less believing especially after how the church didn't really come out very strong in favor of protecting people from the pandemic and re-opened a lot of wards.
The prophet was a cardiologist he could've done more to persuade the members to wear masks but did not.
All I know is if someone asks me to use a different term when referring to them, I usually oblige out of respect. That goes for transgender people that want me to use different pronouns/names, religious people that want me to use different terms, etc. If someone says "please don't refer to people of my tribe as 'Native Americans', we prefer the term 'Cherokees', I'm not going to start debating them and be like "well, your leaders last decade wanted 'Native American' so I refuse to call you what you currently prefer". Intentionally ignoring a request like that is incredibly disrespectful and rude, in my opinion.
There are atheists who would like me to call them "Brights" but I won't do that because it's conceited and pretentious.
I won't be calling Mormons Saints either.
Edit: I do refer to the church as "LDS" though, "the Mormon church" is underspecified.
