Who Owns "Mormon"
"Mormon" has never had a single stable owner. It began as an outsider's insult, was worn as an identity for nearly two centuries, and has since been let go of twice, by two different institutions, for two different reasons, without ever stopping being the word the rest of the world uses.
This chronology tracks two separate detachments running in parallel: the Community of Christ's institutional distancing from the Book of Mormon's historicity, and the LDS Church's rejection of "Mormon" as a name for itself and its people. By 2026 that second rejection had escalated into a federal lawsuit over who is legally permitted to use the word at all.
Neither institution disputes that Mormon exists as a word. What they dispute is what kind of thing it names, and, as of 2026, who is allowed to say it.
Wallace B. Smith and Section 156
Wallace B. Smith, RLDS Church President and great-grandson of Joseph Smith Jr., presented what became Section 156 of the RLDS Doctrine and Covenants, calling for the ordination of women and construction of the Independence Temple. The revelation caused significant internal division. Dissenting members formed independent Restoration branches that continue to reject women's ordination.
Section 156 was not itself a statement on Book of Mormon historicity. Its significance here is structural: a Joseph Smith descendant, acting in the office of prophet-president, demonstrated that the RLDS presidency would exercise revelatory authority in ways that diverged sharply from LDS practice, opening the doctrinal space in which later historicity questions would be raised.
Historicity becomes an open question
Church president W. Grant McMurray later described the Book of Mormon's historicity as having been under "wide discussion" within the church since the 1970s, citing both historical questions and concerns about the text's treatment of race and ethnicity.
Veazey rules historicity out of order
At the Community of Christ World Conference, President Stephen M. Veazey ruled out of order a resolution to formally "reaffirm the Book of Mormon as a divinely inspired record." He stated the church affirms the Book of Mormon as scripture and makes it available for study, but does not mandate a particular degree of belief in it, consistent, he said, with a longstanding tradition that belief in the Book of Mormon is not a test of membership.
This is the clearest institutional marker of the Community of Christ's detachment from Book of Mormon historicity as settled doctrine: not a rejection, but a formal refusal to require belief.
The corporate name splits from the religious name
Under President Heber J. Grant and Presiding Bishop Charles Nibley, both former businessmen, the church's operations are divided across separate corporate entities rather than held by the church as a single legal person. The Corporation of the Presiding Bishop (CPB) is created in 1916 to manage charitable donations and buildings. The Corporation of the President (COP) follows in 1923, overseeing all other church assets used for religious purposes. For the following century, when the institution acts in a legal capacity, signing contracts, holding title, appearing in court, it does so as one of these corporations, not as "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."
Corporation of the Presiding Bishop v. Amos
Arthur Frank Mayson, a building engineer at the church-operated Deseret Gymnasium in Salt Lake City, is fired in 1981 after failing to qualify for a temple recommend. See What a Temple Is. Mayson sues under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, arguing the exemption for religious discrimination in employment should not cover a secular job like building maintenance. A federal district court agrees.
The U.S. Supreme Court reverses, 9–0, holding that Title VII's exemption for religious organizations may constitutionally extend to their nonprofit, non-religious activities without violating the Establishment Clause. The named defendant and party of record throughout is not "the church" in any colloquial sense — it is the Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the entity actually authorized to hire, fire, and be sued.
An earlier round: Nelson and Hinckley
In April 1990, Elder Russell M. Nelson, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, delivered "Thus Shall My Church Be Called," calling "Mormon" not an appropriate alternative to the church's full name. Six months later, President Gordon B. Hinckley, then First Counselor in the First Presidency, opened his own conference address by commending Nelson's talk to the congregation, then reached the opposite practical conclusion. Rather than retire the nickname, members should redeem it, adopting the motto "Mormon means more good."
Hinckley became church president in 1995 and served until his death in 2008. Two years later, in 2010, the church launched "I'm a Mormon," an eighteen-year, roughly $300 million global advertising campaign built explicitly on Hinckley's 1990 motto, running through the presidencies of his two successors and into Nelson's own, before Nelson ended it in 2018. Nelson's 1990 position was not revisited publicly again until he held the same office Hinckley had held in 1990.
Nelson's style directive
Newly installed LDS Church President Russell M. Nelson announced that "Mormon" and "LDS" should no longer be used to refer to the church or its members, calling the church's full name "not negotiable" and describing the change as impressed upon him by revelation. The church's style guide was revised accordingly. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir was renamed the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, and Mormon.org was redirected to ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
The directive preserved "Mormon" only in fixed proper names and historical phrases, the Book of Mormon, the Mormon Trail, treating the word as acceptable in reference to the past but not to the present institution or its living members. Nelson's 2018 address does not reference his own 1990 talk or Hinckley's reply to it.
The corporate and religious names merge
Nelson directs the merger of the Corporation of the Presiding Bishop and the Corporation of the President into a single legal corporation, formally renamed The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For the first time in over a century, the entity's legal name matches its religious one. The merger follows the 2018 style directive by roughly twelve months. Neither public statement references the other.
Bad Mormon trademark dispute
The church disputed a trademark application by television personality Heather Gay for the title of her memoir, "Bad Mormon." Gay abandoned the trademark attempt. The dispute signaled that the church, despite Nelson's 2018 directive discouraging use of the word, continued to actively assert legal interest in who could register "Mormon" commercially.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Dehlin
The church and its intellectual-property entity, Intellectual Reserve Inc., filed a federal trademark and copyright complaint against John Dehlin and his Open Stories Foundation over the "Mormon Stories" podcast. The suit alleged Dehlin's branding, a blue color scheme and light-ray design elements, created confusion with official church materials, and separately alleged use of copyrighted church photographs.
The complaint stated the public has associated the term "Mormon" with the church since its 1830 founding and that the church continues to hold trademarks incorporating the word. According to reporting on the case, the church had asked Dehlin to rename the podcast "Ex-Mormon" or "Post Mormon Stories" and to add an on-air disclaimer. Dehlin made some changes, including altering his logo's color scheme and adding a written disclaimer, but declined the renaming request and the additional spoken disclaimer.
Dehlin, excommunicated from the church in 2015, stated publicly that he did not believe the church retained a legitimate claim to the word "Mormon," a position he and others have connected to the church's own 2018 directive discouraging its use. The church's filing stated the trademark claims were unrelated to the podcast's editorial viewpoint.
Reading the two tracks together
Placed side by side, the two chronologies describe the same underlying fact from different angles. The Community of Christ track shows an institution loosening its grip on what the word's central text refers to, treating the Book of Mormon's historicity as a matter of individual conscience rather than doctrine. The LDS Church track shows an institution divided against itself over the word as a self-designation for nearly three decades before resolving in one direction, then, eight years after that resolution, attempting to tighten its grip on the word as legal property, against a critic who had used it for two decades without incident.
Ex-Mormons, post-Mormons, journalists, and researchers kept using "Mormon" through both institutional shifts, largely without regard to what either church had decided about it internally. By April 2026, one of those institutions was suing to stop that usage in court.
Sources
- "Comparison of the Community of Christ and the LDS Church," Wikipedia — on Wallace B. Smith and Section 156, 1984.
- MormonWiki, "Reorganized (RLDS) Church" — on W. Grant McMurray (2001) and Stephen M. Veazey (2007) statements on Book of Mormon historicity.
- Russell M. Nelson, "Thus Shall My Church Be Called," General Conference, April 1990.
- Gordon B. Hinckley, "Mormon Should Mean More Good," General Conference, October 1990, excerpted at margiesmessages.com.
- "Called in His Name," Ensign, September 2018 — official LDS style guide statement.
- Deseret News, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issues new name guidelines," August 16, 2018.
- The Church News, "The name of the Church: See what has changed since President Nelson's announcement."
- Axios Salt Lake City, "LDS Church sues critical podcaster over 'Mormon' trademark," April 20, 2026 — on the Heather Gay/"Bad Mormon" dispute and Dehlin's account of the church's demands.
- The Salt Lake Tribune, "LDS Church sues 'Mormon Stories' podcast host John Dehlin over trademark claims," April 19, 2026.
- Deseret News, "Church of Jesus Christ files trademark suit against John Dehlin," April 19, 2026.
- "I'm a Mormon," Wikipedia — on the 2010–2018 campaign dates and scope.
- Church Newsroom, "'I'm a Mormon' Campaign," churchofjesuschrist.org.
- Faithwashed, "The Mormon-to-LDS Rebrand Through Free Labor & Influencer Campaigns" — on the campaign's commissioning under President Thomas S. Monson and reported cost.
- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "Church Incorporation" and "Church Finances," churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics — on the 1916 and 1923 corporate entities and the 2019 merger.
- Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Amos, 483 U.S. 327 (1987), Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School.
- Nathan B. Oman, "'Established Agreeable to the Laws of Our Country': Mormonism, Church Corporations, and the Long Legacy of America's First Disestablishment," Journal of Law and Religion 36, no. 2 (2021): 202–29.