The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints filed a lawsuit in April against John Dehlin, an excommunicated sixth-generation member, over his use of the name “Mormon Stories” for his podcast, alleging that his branding mimics copyrighted church imagery and creates public confusion about whether the podcast is affiliated with the church.
The church accuses Dehlin of “intentionally and willfully” displaying copyrighted imagery, including after he agreed to alter the logo and swap the navy blue font used by the church for orange, according to the lawsuit. The church said he refused to “take the actions needed to sufficiently address the confusion.”
Dehlin, a former Brigham Young University graduate, was excommunicated in 2015 for disputing “the nature of our Heavenly Father and the divinity of Jesus Christ,” calling the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham “fraudulent and works of fiction,” and rejecting that the church was “the true church with power and authority from God,” according to the Guardian. Dehlin has said his support for same-sex marriage and women’s equality in the church was also a factor; the church disputes that claim.
In a legal response last week, Dehlin said he and his organization were not backing down. The response, posted on the Mormon Stories website, accused the church of “weaponizing trademark and copyright laws to silence him and his podcast.”
“The LDS church does not own the word ‘Mormon,’ and it should not be allowed to use intellectual property law to control how people discuss Mormon culture, history, doctrine, or lived experience,” Dehlin said in a statement.
The church stopped using “Mormon” to describe itself in 2019, when church President Russell M. Nelson announced that the Lord had commanded the church to drop the term. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir was renamed the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, and the church’s “I’m a Mormon” advertising campaign was retired. Nelson told members that continuing to use “Mormon” would be “a major victory for Satan.”
Patrick Mason, a Claremont University scholar who specializes in the study of the Latter-day Saint movement, said the lawsuit is “part of an extension of the church’s policies to emphasize the move away from the nicknames Mormon and Mormonism.” The church wants to emphasize “the full and accurate name” and distinguish itself from fundamentalist groups that also use the term “Mormon,” Mason said, especially as television shows “tend to gravitate to the salacious and scandalous aspects of Mormonism.”
The timing of the lawsuit is notable, Mason said, because the podcast’s name had not been a previous concern despite years of criticism from Dehlin. “Why now and not five or eight years ago is curious,” he said.
Dehlin’s counter-claim argues that “Mormon” belongs to the public, including members of over 400 different Mormon sects nationwide, and that “no single church owns the rights to the words Christian, Catholic, Jewish, or Muslim.” The effort to shift away from “Mormon” is not new — similar efforts came in 1982, 2001, and 2011, the Guardian reported.
The case raises First Amendment concerns, Dehlin’s organization argued, asserting that hundreds of organizations, churches, businesses, websites, podcasts, blogs, and commentators use the word “Mormon” descriptively. Dehlin said the case “raises important questions that extend well beyond [the] Mormon Stories podcast.” The church is well-known for reaching for secular litigation against former members while refraining from it to settle disputes with existing members, the Guardian reported.