It's happening faster than I expected, but I was sure that getting rid of the name "Mormon" was really the precursor to dropping "Latter-Day Saint" also. And, despite what we may want to think about Russ and gang, they have only a couple of objectives that they are all about: 1) Making sure the corporation survives, 2) keeping the money stream flowing, even while the current is slowing, and 3) figuring out how to reverse course down the road and become a growing organization again (so that #'s 1 and 2 are once again a given as they were in previous times).

With those goals in mind, I have to admit that they are doing a great job. If I had a dying corporation, I would want someone like them in charge. The biggest road block, of course, will be melding the temple theology with the mainstreaming of the church. They will probably go into a holding pattern for a bit when it comes to that, but they've made some significant changes for the current membership to be a little more comfortable--dropping some of the misogynistic parts of the temple, re-designing the undies somewhat, getting rid of the more bizarre elements of the ceremony, etc.

But the HUGE step is re-branding. How do you move away from the history, the tie with the polygamists, the negative connotations with the word "Mormon?" There are tried and true steps any business takes to rebrand. And there are SO many business professionals in the formerly LDS church. They are proving their worth. Here is a typical basic rebranding pattern many businesses follow (and remember we ARE talking about a business):

https://logogeek.uk/branding/rebranding-7-steps/

So what is the new brand? THE church of Jesus Christ. And guess what, the brand is essentially very available, it doesn't completely change the name of the church, and the members will be thrilled to be able to drop the LDS part for "simplicity's sake" now that they can't say "mormon." They will always have the full name officially, but wink wink nod nod, we know what we mean so we don't have to say it. Coming to a church near you: Formerly COJCOLDS church buildings will have a new plaque on the outside and it will say "The Church of Jesus Christ. Visitors Welcome."

In the meantime the outside world just sees "Jesus Christ." And almost unbelievably, there is no large denomination with the same name. There have been small upstarts who tried the name in both the reformation and restoration movements in early US religious history. And there was a church associated with the KKK of the same name. But most other small groups with that name are already just early offshoots of Mormonism. Now the LDS can push them out, claim the name and it will be way different from the names the polygamist groups have adopted that have LDS in them. Groups such as Churches of Christ, United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, and even Community of Christ, are established enough that people in the know will not confuse the new Church of Jesus Christ with those denominations.

In another generation, LDS will totally be associated with polygamy, The church of Jesus Christ, will be something old people say "they used to be the Mormon church," but their children won't even know anything about Mormons.

Yes, they will have to come back to the temple problem and maybe even more difficult, the LGBTQ stance, but in the meantime, they will continue to make changes that move them forward in the mainstreaming effort, make it more palatable to converts and give the current young generation an idea that they just really aren't weird. I do believe for that reason there will be MANY more changes like we've seen, i.e., female mishies wearing pants, mishies calling home more often, the more tolerated wearing of beards and two earrings in each ear, etc. REBRANDING.

Maybe Russ really is inspired. Naw, kidding. He's surrounded with some of the best businessmen around. He's taken a different approach to being a "prophet." He knows his legacy will be great because of it. If the rebranding effort results in more members, he will be it's hero.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/2019 11:29AM by lachesis.

Written like a proud apologist.

It's still the same crappy church that we walked away from.

Full of hate, bigotry, intolerance and racism.

A church that won't allow you attend the chapel location based on some invisible ward boundary line.

Nothing to cheer about!

If they can distance themselves from some of their "unique" features (and that's a huge "if") they may have some success getting people to accept the new brand, but if they abandon (or change/de-emphasize) things like:

temple
sealing for eterity
the only priesthood valid for baptism, marriage sealing, and ordinances needed for exaltation
literal prophets called by god
Bom, D&C, PoGP
etc., etc., etc.

What will they have? A generic Protestant church? Best case scenario: they leave a sinking ship to get on a ship that's sinking perhaps a bit slower.

mainstream protestant sects, why would anyone bother to join it?

The presbyterian church down the street is better managed (full-time trained pastor for one congregation), is cheaper (whatever you want to put into the collection plate or donate--no 10% on gross) and usually has more interesting activities and events.

Who ever heard of, or would continence, a Christian church that would not allow parents and siblings to attend a wedding ceremony based on worthiness issues?

Jesus Christ fix that first!! (Works with or without a comma!)

Maybe they've already approached the owners of the name 'church of Jesus Christ' to see if they're open to selling the copyright/TM of that name....

'you can buy anything with money', ya know...

And we know that TSCC has "sufficient for their needs." ;)

"'you can buy anything with money', ya know..."

they say everyone has their price and if there is a way to get back the decades and thousands of dollars they stole from me i could be for sale. well maybe not but the thought of getting something or anything back could lessen the damage but then again, maybe not.

and come clean to the members that they don't really have any superpowers of revelation or discernment and do not really have any special authority, then we'll know that they're serious.

Of course that's when the Church actually loses its last justification for existing.

What you have left will be nothing more than a social club loosely focused on do-gooderism, based on the most popular version of Jesus beliefs accepted by society at large.

Nobody is going to pay 10% on gross for that.

The Brethren will then just have nothing left to do but to sell all the temples and real estate, figure out a way to put most of the cash proceeds into the pockets of their friends and relatives...and then get out of town.

and can you imagine the size of the bonfire with all that worthless material they have fed us and the books they have written?

it would be a beautiful site

The Church of Jesus Christ is the legal name of another church. It is an LDS offshoot - and they own the name.

L-d$,inc does not own the name. All their "re-branding" using it is dishonest. Then again - dishonest is who they are.

Two words -> New Coke.

Oaks will quickly be thrown under the bus after he dies. The anti-LGBT stuff is bad for business.

I think they know the jig is up on the BoM and they aren’t fooling themselves about its historicity. That’s a real accomplishment. But there are always spoilers like Bednar.

Bednar in charge means you will not need vitamins or rest. He will put Mormonism back on course for the straights of narrow minds.

It's going to be very interesting to watch. And yes, a lot of the plan depends on whether Nelson outlives Oaks. And you can't count on the younger guys to keep the momentum up. Because as you say, Bednar.

Sperlings Best Places gives statistics on every city in the U.S. including religion. It used to label Mormons as LDS. It now says Church of Jesus Christ. Who will even knows what that means?

They won't want to drop "Latter-Day Saint" because it does distinguish them from other denominations and points to one of their foundational doctrines. The so-called great apostasy.

Besides, like someone else pointed out, another church already owns "The Church of Jesus Christ"

The original post in this thread gives the church too much positive credit. So the church leaders might occasionally make a clever move after they have screwed things up badly and need to somehow recover from their own stupid mistakes. Changing the church name may or may not backfire on them. Time will tell. But brilliance is not something I would attribute the church leaders with.

A few years ago, one of the television networks was sensationalizing a news story on an act of terrorism. The president said something like "you don't call this guy (one of the terrorists) the mastermind. Why give him that much credit? He is just the guy in the dirty hat. That's how they should refer to him. They shouldn't call him the mastermind. He is just the guy in the dirty hat". The same goes for the terrorists that run the mormon cult. Nelson and his kind are just like the guy in the dirty hat, nothing more.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2019 06:40AM by azsteve.

Re-branding a religion is entirely different than re-branding a business or a marketable product for the simple reason that doing so admits that your original version was WRONG.

That's a pretty big deal when put in the context of a church claiming they have living prophets that speak directly to god AND that their church was founded by revelation, direct communication, with god.

Guess god isn't omniscient and eternal after-all....which raises the question, why worship said god??

But who's to care whether they're wrong or not? The people who grew up LDS or Mormon will stay loyal and follow the name change. They'll be members of the Church of Jesus Christ and never use the other names. They hope that future people won't associate them with Book of Mormon, the Musical or internet searches of the word, Mormon. They haven't got to admit anything. It's for a new start, and it makes a lot of sense: dump the baggage.

Haven't posted in quite a while (mostly lurking), but had to chime in on this. As someone who has been involved in rebranding organizations for years, I know how difficult it is these days to get a clear domain name registered-- one that isn't already in use, or owned and being held by some individual or company. Even making minor changes in spelling or making up an entirely new word for a .com is a frustrating task. Nearly EVERYTHING has been taken already!

My point is that I am certain that TSCC had to buy these domain names from someone because they were already owned, AND if the owner knows how badly the buyer wants the name, and how deep their pockets are, prices can skyrocket--like six figures even. If I owned the name and the mormon church came calling with an offer to buy, I would certainly jack the price to get the most possible. So, there is no telling how much they paid to get these domains.

I think that the reason behind this "rebranding" is that someone in mormon org forsees the day when the church will be required to disassociate itself from the Book of Mormon, and will not want to have that name in the title of the church, or be associated with its members. A new book Deseret Book is promoting is titled "A Case for The Book of Mormon" written by Tad Callister. The title alone is an admission that their foundational document is under attack from within. They know they are losing members since the truth about the origins of the BOM are now readily accessible. Callister is the Sunday School General President, a GA, so they surely felt this defense was necessary.

I also think they will ultimately eliminate "of Latter-day Saints" from the name, and changing the domain and church name to "The Church of Jesus Christ" just paves the way for that smooth transition.

The bottom line is... it's all lipstick on a pig. Call it what you want, as I learned back in Seminary years ago, you can't take a living branch from a dead tree. They can "rebrand" all they want in an attempt to make themselves more palatable to world, but the MORMON church is still rotten to its core.

I think that church will always be known by its fruits.

So it forever will be called Our Shit Still Smells (OSSS).

It's a short-lived fix. All the crap associated with "Mormon" will eventually (soon, perhaps) be associated with the new brand.

A pig with a new shade of lipstick is still a pig.

Many believe the true successor to Joseph Smith was Sidney Rigdon who was involved in starting the church now know as "The Church of Jesus Christ" who owns the website www.thechurchofjesuschrist.org. When you do a Google search for "The Church of Jesus Christ" the first result is the church Sidney Rigdon was involved in starting. The LDS Church's main web site is now www.churchofjesuschrist.org. Love the irony!

I agree the Church is rebranding because the name “Mormon” has negative connotations to the outside world, especially to other Christians. I believe it’s an effort to HIDE Mormonism from unsuspecting prospects. Smart move? Yes. Deceptive? Yes, and within the true character of the Mormon Church.

It's nothing new. In fact at one point Pres Hinckley gave him a polite rebuke about it in General Conference.

Technically its the Churches of Christ as each is operated independently under a set of doctrines -- fairly fundamentalist and evangelical, similar to Baptists, and popular in the Bible Belt, similar to the Baptists. The "Jesus" is implied, so if they were so inclined they might sue LDS, Inc., but they are not a big corporation, just this loose organization of independents so it probably won't happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churches_of_Christ

Will BYU be rebranded as Trump University ?

there are tons of Christian splinter groups off of the mother harlot Catholic church

Joseph Smith started his con by simultaneously condemning and emulating Christianity. The Book of MORmON was the supposed mandate for another christian splinter group. THe book of MORmON was the one thing to set apart Smith's scam from all of the other many run of the mill protestant Christian denominations.
Now Nelson wants to dump all of that well established MORmON brand differentiation .........because its so embarrassing.

What a fine kettle of fish for the dumb ass MORmONS.

The movement to dump MORmONISM as a brand name will be as dead as Nelson as soon as Nelson is dead.

New Coke.

I haven't been here in months (maybe more than a year), but I had been wondering about this ever since Christmas when my parents told me that they're not supposed to go by "Mormon" any more.

I thought it was fairly ridiculous and could remember times in the past when church leaders tried to de-emphasize "Mormon." But then I noticed that Mormon Boyz . com, a gay p*rn website that I've frequented, has changed its name to Missionary Boyz . com. I was wondering if any of this latest attempt to de-emphasize has any possible legal benefits for the church? The website features gay male models in temple garments having sex with each other, and is quite a profitable little site that has grown quite a lot over the last few years. (I know for a fact that the same owner is running several other p*rn websites, but am pretty sure that this was his first.)