Ms. Jack, I temporarily suspend my policy of not interacting with you to respond to this post, because I think it raises a couple of valid issues to which I should respond.
That's interesting. They're free, of course, to call themselves "Mormons" if they choose. I don't care. Whether I'll use the term to refer to them, though, is another matter. (See below.)
MsJack wrote:That people might mistake them for members of the Salt-Lake based church if we allow them the term "Mormon" strikes me as a poor reason to deny it to them.
I haven't advocated denying it to them.
But I do think that clarity is, on the whole, better than confusion.
MsJack wrote:People might mistakenly think Mormons believe in the Trinity if we allow them the term "Christian," but that's also a poor reason to deny it to them.
I don't see the two situations as precisely comparable. Membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a very specific and quite easily definable thing, so that confusion as to membership in the Church obfuscates what is, in principle and typically in fact, a very clear matter. One either is a member or one isn't, and the question isn't really open for debate.
"Christianity," by contrast, lacks the clear, institutionally-defined boundaries that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has, and, thus, fudging its boundaries isn't the obvious sin against unambiguous clarity that wittingly or unwittingly fudging the boundaries of the Church would be. Moreover, Christianity has always included non-Trinitarians within its fold -- at least, according to normal English usage (and the usage of every other language, both ancient and modern, that I've checked).
MsJack wrote:Which is pretty much why Chap said there isn't an argument one can make to support Latter-day Saints using the term "Christian" which doesn't work just as well in granting the FLDS the term "Mormon."
I'm still not altogether convinced. They're perfectly free to use it for themselves, obviously, and others are free to use it for them, too, if those others so prefer.
But I believe that doing so obscures an important distinction.
If, by "Mormon," people overwhelmingly intend to say "specifically of or pertaining to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" -- which I suspect to be true -- then terming members of another church "Mormons" is intentionally or unintentionally misleading or confusing. (Again, by contrast, I have already demonstrated, at length, that, when using the term
Christian, ancient writers and modern scholars have routinely included non-Trinitarians -- and other kinds of alleged "heretics" -- under that title.)