#DezNat (shortened from Deseret Nation) is a Twitter hashtag that was created in 2018 by Logan Smith, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) who goes by "JP Bellum" on Twitter. [1] It refers to a loosely affiliated group of LDS Church members who use the hashtag. The Church neither endorses nor denounces the hashtag and it is unclear how many followers or adherents of the DezNat concept exist.
Contributors to media outlets The Daily Beast and The Daily Utah Chronicle have described DezNat as an extremist alt-right, white nationalist movement, [2] [3] [4] while journalists at The Guardian consider the group right-wing with elements of the alt-right, white nationalism, [5] and eugenics. [6]
Some members of the DezNat community wish to recreate the historical State of Deseret, which the LDS Church declared in the 1840s to cover modern-day Utah and parts of adjacent states, as well as the secession of a theocratic Mormon state. Some DezNat commentators have suggested this should be a white ethnostate. Some have also used neo-Nazi and far-right accelerationist imagery. [5]
Users of the hashtag say they are not alt-right but are simply unapologetic about their beliefs. [3] [7] DezNat supporters have no formal organization but they share a common ideology. [4] Smith says the hashtag recognizes faithful LDS Church members as "a unique people and should be united spiritually, morally, economically, and politically behind Christ, the prophet, and the church" adding that DezNat "is the idea that devout members ought to work together to support the church, its doctrines, and each other, on social media and in their communities to further build the Kingdom of God". [2] [8]
The community has been criticised as promoting bigotry and harassment against members of the LGBT community, non-Mormons and ex-Mormons, feminists, abortion advocates, and pornographic film actors. Some have criticized the Mormon blog By Common Consent for being too politically progressive. [2] Members also use bowie knife imagery as a homage to Brigham Young and the concept of blood atonement for certain sins, [2] a practice the LDS Church leadership has disavowed. [9] According to the feminist writer Mary Ann Clements, DezNat proponents regard themselves as being in line with the actions of former church presidents, therefore not supporting polygamy today but referencing it regarding the past (e.g., by portraying Young as a polygamous "chad" or powerful alpha male). [10]
In July 2021, investigative journalists at The Guardian identified Matthias Cicotte, an Alaska Assistant Attorney General, as a poster of racist and anti-Semitic Deseret Nationalist content using the Twitter account @JReubenCIark. [5] [lower-alpha 1] Following the release of the report, civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, called for the termination of Cicotte from his position and the reopening of his cases. This prompted an investigation from the Alaska Department of Law and Cicotte was removed from his caseload. [11] A Department spokesperson confirmed Cicotte was no longer working for them, stating: "However, although we cannot talk about personnel matters, we do not want the values and policies of the Department of Law to be overshadowed by the conduct of one individual." [12] Shortly thereafter, the deans of J. Reuben Clark Law School, of which both Cicotte and Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor are graduates, released a statement condemning the "venomous and hateful Twitter messages against a variety of vulnerable groups" from the @JReubenCIark account. [13]
Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several groups following different leaders; the majority followed Brigham Young, while smaller groups followed Joseph Smith III, Sidney Rigdon, and James Strang. Most of these smaller groups eventually merged into the Community of Christ, and the term Mormon typically refers to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as today, this branch is far larger than all the others combined. People who identify as Mormons may also be independently religious, secular, and non-practicing or belong to other denominations. Since 2018, the LDS Church has emphasized a desire for its members be referred to as "members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", or more simply as "Latter-day Saints".
Deseret is a term derived from the Book of Mormon, a scripture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other Latter Day Saint groups. According to the Book of Mormon, "deseret" meant "honeybee" in the language of the Jaredites, a group in the Book of Mormon that were led by God to the Americas after the construction of the Tower of Babel. Latter-day Saint scholar Hugh Nibley suggested an etymology by associating the word "Deseret" with the ancient Egyptian dsrt, a term referring to the "bee crown" of the Lower Kingdom.
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is a religious sect of the fundamentalist Mormon denominations whose members practice polygamy. It is variously defined as a cult, a sect, or a new religious movement.
During the history of the Latter Day Saint movement, the relationship between Black people and Mormonism has included enslavement, exclusion and inclusion, official and unofficial discrimination, and friendly ties. Black people have been involved with the Latter Day Saint movement since its inception in the 1830s. Their experiences have varied widely, depending on the denomination within Mormonism and the time of their involvement. From the mid-1800s to 1978, Mormonism's largest denomination – the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – barred Black women and men from participating in the ordinances of its temples necessary for the highest level of salvation, prevented most men of Black African descent from being ordained into the church's lay, all-male priesthood, supported racial segregation in its communities and schools, taught that righteous Black people would be made white after death, and opposed interracial marriage. The temple and priesthood racial restrictions were lifted by church leaders in 1978. In 2013, the church disavowed its previous teachings on race for the first time.
The State of Deseret was a proposed state of the United States, promoted by leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who had founded settlements in what is today the state of Utah. A provisional state government operated for nearly two years in 1849-50, but was never recognized by the United States government. The name Deseret derives from the word for "honeybee" in the Book of Mormon.
The status of women in Mormonism has been a source of public debate since before the death of Joseph Smith in 1844. Various denominations within the Latter Day Saint movement have taken different paths on the subject of women and their role in the church and in society. Views range from the full equal status and ordination of women to the priesthood, as practiced by the Community of Christ, to a patriarchal system practiced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to the ultra-patriarchal plural marriage system practiced by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and other Mormon fundamentalist groups.
The Latter Day Church of Christ (LDCC) or Davis County Cooperative Society (DCCS) is a Mormon fundamentalist denomination within the Latter Day Saint movement. The DCCS was established in 1935 by Elden Kingston, son of Charles W. Kingston, and in 1977 members of the DCCS organized legal recognition as the Latter Day Church of Christ. The organization has also been called the Kingston Group or Kingston Clan, and internally it is known as "the Order" or "the Co-op".
The Deseret News is a multi-platform newspaper based in Salt Lake City, published by Deseret News Publishing Company, a subsidiary of Deseret Management Corporation, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Founded in 1850, it was the first newspaper to be published in Utah. The publication's name is from the geographic area of Deseret identified by Utah's pioneer settlers, and much of the publication's reporting is rooted in that region.
Blood atonement is a disputed doctrine in the history of Mormonism, under which the atonement of Jesus does not redeem an eternal sin. To atone for an eternal sin, the sinner should be killed in a way that allows his blood to be shed upon the ground as a sacrificial offering, so he does not become a son of perdition. The largest Mormon denomination, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has denied the validity of the doctrine since 1889 with early church leaders referring to it as a "fiction" and later church leaders referring to it as a "theoretical principle" that had never been implemented in the LDS Church.
The Mormon blogosphere is a segment of the blogosphere focused on issues related to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
James Henry Moyle was a prominent American politician in Utah and noted as "one of Utah's most distinguished citizens and one of the Nations' able and devoted servants."
Deseret may refer to:
Bruce Clark Hafen is an American attorney, academic and religious leader. He has been a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1996.
Marlin Keith Jensen is an American attorney who has been a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1989. He served as the official Church Historian and Recorder of the church from 2005 to 2012. He was the 19th man to hold that calling since it was established in 1830. Jensen was made an emeritus general authority in the October 2012 general conference.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Mormon abuse cases are cases of confirmed and alleged abuse, including child sexual abuse, by churches in the Latter Day Saint movement and its agents.
Early in its history, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had a series of negative encounters with the federal government of the United States. This led to decades of mistrust, armed conflict, and the eventual disincorporation of the church by an act of the United States Congress. The relationship between the church and the government eventually improved, and in recent times LDS Church members have served in leadership positions in Congress and held other important political offices. The LDS Church becomes involved in political matters if it perceives that there is a moral issue at stake and wields considerable influence on a national level with over a dozen members of Congress having membership in the church in the early 2000s, and about 80% of Utah state lawmakers identifying as LDS.
Transgender people and other gender minorities currently face membership restrictions in access to priesthood and temple rites in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints —Mormonism's largest denomination. Church leaders have taught gender roles as an important part of their doctrine since its founding. Only recently have they begun directly addressing gender diversity and the experiences of transgender, non-binary, intersex, and other gender minorities whose gender identity and expression differ from the cisgender majority.
This is a timeline of LGBT Mormon history in the 1990s, part of a series of timelines consisting of events, publications, and speeches about LGBTQ+ individuals, topics around sexual orientation and gender minorities, and the community of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although the historical record is often scarce, evidence points to queer individuals having existed in the Mormon community since its beginnings. However, top LDS leaders only started regularly addressing queer topics in public in the late 1950s. Since 1970, the LDS Church has had at least one official publication or speech from a high-ranking leader referencing LGBT topics every year, and a greater number of LGBT Mormon and former Mormon individuals have received media coverage.
Kirton McConkie is an American law firm headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the largest law firm in Utah, and it has long served as the external legal counsel for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was ranked the 300th largest law firm in the United States in 2022 by the National Law Journal.