Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

In response to Board Question #56493

Growing up in Utah, I frequently heard non-members referred to as gentiles. I still hear it relatively frequently, but I'm outside of Utah now so it's not as common. But the joke that I'm 'living amongst the gentiles' is quite common in talking to people who are still in Utah.

Calling members of the church Jews is not something I've ever encountered.

The only times I've heard it have been in religion classes. My first semester of Book of Mormon we learned that we are pretty much Jews. And in my Isaiah class right now anytime Isaiah is talking about Jews, Judah, Jerusalem, etc., it can be extended to us.

Because of the covenant people thing. Most of the time, though, we refer to ourselves as House of Israel.

Back in the 1950s we still heard occasional talk about “gentiles” being those who were non-LDS. It wasn’t common, however. I think it was once common long before my time.

However, our family had a good Jewish friend who knew quite a bit about the Mormon “gentile” expression. He used to joke about the only place where he was considered a gentile was among the Mormons. As soon as Ezra Taft Benson became the Secretary of Agriculture our Jewish friend told us that he heard that at least one member of the cabinet was not a gentile.

We called ourselves the House of Israel, not Jews. Technically we aren't Jews because we are not from the tribe of Judah.

I grew up in Wyoming and I remember hearing non-members referred to as Gentiles, sometimes. Isaac Asimov (who was Jewish) had a funny quip about that Mormon peculiarity:

Isaac Asimov wrote:[My wife] and I have a special interest in stories about Mormons. In [my wife]'s case there's a loose genealogical connection. In my case, there's an interest in any group that considers me a Gentile.
(Isaac Asimov, Laughing Space, Boston: Houghton Mifflin (1982), p. 334)

"We're not supposed to call them non-ninjas any more! Those are my friends of other disciplines!"

According to Jeopardy and the esteemed Alex Trebek, non-Mormons and non-Jews are gentiles.

To be fair, I think the only time we talked about non-members being Gentiles was in reference to passages in the Doctrine and Covenants that identified them as such. We, ourselves, didn't make a habit of using that term.