Posted by:
T-Bone
(
)
Date: January 09, 2017 07:11PM
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/theFrankly, 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