KC interesting post. As I read it I wondered if your living in a ward that is established. Our ward members forget to use thee an thou and refer to Jesus as him or he.

I suspect most people who object to “X-mas” probably aren’t aware of its origin. The “X” seems more like an erasure than a euphemism to them. That’s how it seemed to me too, until someone explained it to me.

Interesting post. I have no trouble at all using “Jesus” in a wide variety of contexts, not just those you list. I have no trouble using “God” and use it frequently, and again use it frequently in a wide variety of contexts, though I’ll disambiguate when I feel it’s necessary with “Heavenly Father”. I do tend to use “Holy Ghost” over “Holy Spirit”, though I plan (and had already planned) to use both in tomorrow’s Gospel Essentials lesson on the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Note, by the way, that the phrase “Holy Spirit” appears far more frequently in both the Book of Mormon (16 times) and the Doctrine & Covenants (21 times, if you include “Holy Spirit of promise”; 14 times if you don’t) than it does in the New Testament (just 4 times, one of which is “Holy Spirit of promise”) or the Old Testament (just three times, all of which are “his holy Spirit”). Note also that there are verses in both the Book of Mormon (Jacob 6:8) and the D&C (121:16) that use “Holy Spirit” and “Holy Ghost” in the same verse. So your question is an excellent one: why do we seem to prefer “Holy Ghost” to “Holy Spirit.”

Here, I think, is the answer: the phrase “gift of the Holy Spirit” appears nowhere in the scriptures, while “gift of the Holy Ghost” appears 16 times (in every volume except the OT). My observation is that we treat the formal ordinance of the gift of the Holy Ghost far more literally than do most other Christian religions, that we talk about “the gift of the Holy Ghost” far more often than do these other religions, and so we tend to prefer the phrase “the Holy Ghost” over “the Holy Spirit”, even though LDS scriptures make more use of “the Holy Spirit” than does the Bible.

By contrast, while we do tend to say “the Holy Ghost” in the Church, we also tend to say “the Spirit” (vs. “the Ghost”; no, seriously). And I suspect we Mormons refer to “the Spirit” more often than we refer to “the Holy Ghost”, particularly while talking about promptings and inspiration.

So I’m not convinced that these are euphemisms. Instead, I think they reflect doctrine (LDS concept of Godhead) and practices (ordinance of the gift of the Holy Ghost) more than an attempt to avoid Protestant or Catholic usage.

Of course, you could ask why we use the phrase “Mary, Mother of God” in the Church that often. ..bruce..

It seems to me that Chi, in all of its forms, seems to be avoided by people of the church like crosses are. So, if you ask lots of members if they would put a “fish” Chi on their car, (anecdote alert), many would say no, and have varying reasons (that’s something other denominations do, but isn’t an emphasis for us, etc.,).

I don’t know if the LDS avoidance of Chi is similar to its avoidance of the cross.

About the usage of “God,” I think in addition to sanctity, it might also be avoided because it is an ambiguous term. As discussed previously on this blog, “God” can correctly refer to any or all members of the Godhead collectively or individually, depending on context. Using “Heavenly Father” leaves no question as to who is being referred to, while “God” even “Eternal Father” could in some cases correctly refer to Jesus (cf. Mosiah 16: 15, Alma 11: 38-39)

Kuri, I have also thought about D&C 107:3-4, and there certainly is something to be drawn from that passage. But consider the insistence of many LDS people to avoid the abbreviation “X-mas.” The X actually is the greek letter “Chi,” and is the first letter of Christ’s name in Greek (as it appears in NT manuscripts). “X-mas” seems to be fully in line with the idea: “out of respect or reverence to the name of the Supreme Being, to avoid the too frequent repetition of his name.” Yet many Latter-day saint will shun it, out of some concept that X-mas takes the Christ out of Christmas.

I see a contradiction here. On one hand, there is a sense for a need to preserve religion in its purity, but on the other hand there is also a sense to leave certain areas—even theologically crucial areas—untouched and unvisited. And somehow I don’t think that does any favors towards preserving religious purity.

What was interesting to me is that when I was growing up, it seemed that Satan had that kind of Voldemort/He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named effect. I remember my father saying that I should avoid using that name often or else I’d be giving him more power to control me, and instead I should use “The Adversary.”

It seems really funny to me now.

1 There are, in the church, two priesthoods, namely, the Melchizedek and Aaronic, including the Levitical Priesthood.
2 Why the first is called the Melchizedek Priesthood is because Melchizedek was such a great high priest.
3 Before his day it was called the Holy Priesthood, after the Order of the Son of God.
4 But out of respect or reverence to the name of the Supreme Being, to avoid the too frequent repetition of his name, they, the church, in ancient days, called that priesthood after Melchizedek, or the Melchizedek Priesthood.

Maybe we began avoiding saying “Jesus” or “Jehovah” “out of respect or reverence to the name of the Supreme Being, to avoid the too frequent repetition of his name”? (Although it’s quite interesting that the term being avoided, “Son of God,” can itself be considered a euphemism.)

On my mission, this was one of those timeless questions: how peculiar ought we to be? Should we let them slip by in using confused ideas/terminology (Ammon did, after all) or should we stand our ground, teach them the “proper” title for things, and if they don’t like it, consider it to be a planted seed and move on? I still remember Elder taking great umbrage when a man closed his testimony “in the name of God,” though we too accept that Jesus is of the same stature as the Father. For them, it was a test of his orthodoxy–had he learned the gospel lingo? Was he “one of us”?

Neither of these things are necessarily wrong; if we don’t want to drown in postmodernism, then we must admit that giving a name to something has real ramifications for how the idea is perceived, even if those ramifications are sociocultural rather than inherent.