Mormonism & the Mormon church

If you search for “Jew” on Google, the top result is an anti-Semitic site. Google is running an ad above it that explains why it appears first and that they don’t endorse the site. They also explain that the term “Jew” is often used in anti-Semitic contexts, while Jewish people themselves prefer the term “Jewish”. Google suggests searching “Judaism”, “Jewish”, or “Jewish people” to find more relevant results.

This parallels what has happened with Mormonism. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have typically used the terms LDS, Latter-day Saint, or LDS Church to speak of themselves, while people outside of the Church often use the terms Mormons, Mormon church, or Mormonism. Therefore, search results for this latter set of terms are often littered with sites that are unfriendly to the Church. (By the way, I’m not suggesting that the resulting anti-Semitic and anti-Mormon sites are equally bad — I don’t know — just that they are both “anti”.)

People interested in learning more about Mormonism will have more success by searching for “lds church” or by visiting Mormon.org directly. Other search terms like Mormonism or Mormon church aren’t great, but they are getting better.