Earlier today, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints received word that the Church’s decades-old website will be renamed. Instead of the longstanding LDS.org, members will now turn to ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Along with the main website, there are also changes to other outlets in order to bring various departments into compliance with President Nelson’s name correction for the Church. As reported by the Church’s Newsroom earlier today:
- MormonNewsroom.org will become Newsroom.ChurchofJesusChrist.org
- Mormon.org will become ComeUntoChrist.org
- The Church’s official presence on Twitter will switch from @LDSChurch to @ChurchNewsroom (this is the new Twitter account of the Church’s newsroom, previously @MormonNewsroom)
- On Facebook, a new “group has been established to build community and better inform individuals about Church news and updates. This group is called ‘The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—Inspiration and News.’ This group is designed to be a place of community and connection for Latter-day Saints.” (Not explicitly mentioned in the Newsroom release is the fact that the Facebook page for the Church changed from facebook.com/LDS to facebook.com/ChurchOfJesusChrist)
Fun fact, LDS.org became the official website of the Church in 1996. The domain name was privately purchased by a church employee before the Church even considered the idea of having an “online presence.”[1] Someone else snagged the ChurchofJesusChrist.org domain name in 1999.[2] That website was long operated by the Church of Jesus Christ in Zion, based out of Independence, Missouri (see 2011 screenshot below). It looks like around 2014, the group started using that domain to redirect to a new website, ChurchofJesusChristinZion.org (no longer active).
Other media coverage of the name changes: Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News, FOX 13, KSL, ABC4.
Comments?
[1] Footnote added 3/6/19: as reported by the 2014 article “The History of LDS.org Shows God’s Hand – Part 1 of 2” by G. C. Duerden and Ben Groen. Part 2 can be found here. The articles give great historical info and include lots of screenshots of lds.org over the years.
[2] Footnote added 3/6/19: as noted on the ICANN WHOIS database for churchofjesuschrist.org. The database indicates that the domain was originally created 4 January 1999.
much ado about nothing.
And someone else has thechurchofjesuschrist.org which is still active and, from its website, clearly not The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I wonder what attention was paid or will be paid, if any, to the distinction between churchofjesuschrist.org and thechurchofjesuschrist.org. Oh well.
Mormon Heretic,
I actually agree. I will also agree that whatever essays, blog posts, and tweets that take the time to complain loudly and forcefully about this non-issue will likewise be “much ado about nothing”.
As long as they don’t turn off the redirect for lds.org, I’ll survive this (even though I think the whole thing is excessively stupid).
lcr.lds.org is one of the sites I use most often. And it’s insanely easy to navigate to. For me, it’s genuinely faster to type lcr.lds.org than it is to use a bookmark. lcr.churchofjesuschrist.org is a terrible, from an ergonomic perspective. What do I get for a lifetime of service to the Church? carpal tunnel from typing the stupid domain name.
#priorities
Dsc, Some tweets, etc. may just be “much amused about nothing,” but maybe those are not loud and forceful complaints.
It is still not the name of the church as requested by Jesus Christ himself. Partial victory for Satan.
All of the money and time spent rolling this out and the best they could do to set their website apart from that of another religion was to remove the word “the” before “churchofjesuschrist.org”????????? Yeah, that’s not going to cause any trouble, considering that the group that owns the website “thechurchofjesuschrist.org” also believes in the Book of Mormon and has 12 apostles.
All of this effort and money and change might be justified if it were, say, changing long and cumbersome Church URL’s to something short and catchy, like say LDS.org or maybe even Mormon.org. Going the other direction seems to offer little or no benefit.
Maybe the leadership thinks the whole name change thing will cause other Christians out there to say, “Oh, look, their URL is churchofjesuschrist.org, I guess they really are Christians just like us!” That’s not gonna happen.
As my wonderful grandfather used to say “Whoop de fricken do”!! This nonsense is so bad….I’m actually feeling empathy for the LDS Church’s PR team! Meaningless!
I’ll always be inspired by the words of President Monson:
“Dare to be a Mormon;
Dare to stand alone.
Dare to have a purpose firm;
Dare to make it known.”
I can only imagine Pres Hinckley and Pres Monson in the spirit world rolling their eyes and shaking their heads in disbelief at the pettiness of all of this. Pres Hinckley in particular “Come on, Russell. Back in the early 90’s you floated this “Mormon is bad” stuff in General Conference and I very gently put you back in your place. Did you really hold this hobby horse in your heart this many years?”
Hmm….. isn’t that an inappropriate shortening? Shouldn’t it be http://www.thechurchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaints.org?
I think it’s kind of embarrassing for the church to be focusing so publicly on something so petty. (Shoulder shrug and eye roll)
I wish the question “unleashed or unhinged?” had not been put to me. I don’t have an answer I’m satisfied with. Maybe Lucy van Pelt has one.
I find this whole rebranding (that we’re not allowed to call rebranding) ample evidence that the Mormon church is not the church of Christ.
The Presbyterian congregation I attended last week wasn’t worrying whether their name should or should not be abbreviated or nicknamed or truncated. The service was the equivalent of their primary program, with children leading the meeting. The focus was on Christ’s parables of the lost coin, lost sheep, and the prodigal son. Then on Monday, they were cooking dinner at the local YMCA and next Sunday they are collecting socks for the homeless.
Changing the name of the church to mention Christ, will do little or nothing to change the fact that the Mormon church isnt very Christlike. (That last comment is directed at the church generally, not at individual members.)
Wynton Marsalis: “Don’t settle for style. Succeed in substance.” Someone should put this on a plaque (or a golden plate?) and send it to the Q15.
This whole things strikes me as a solution in search of a problem.
TheChurchofJesusChrist.Org is the Bikertonites.
“A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose “🌹
Gertrude Stein