Source: Jesus Christ Told Us To Sue Mormon Stories Channel: Nemo the Mormon Published: April 26, 2026 | Archived: May 24, 2026

Video: Jesus Christ Told Us To Sue Mormon Stories
Channel: Nemo the Mormon
Published: April 26, 2026
Duration: 11:45
Views: 33,511
Category: Education
Video ID: fc6I42OskdI

Description

The Mormon Church just sued ⁨@mormonstories⁩

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📚 Sources & References:

The Suit https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.utd.163775/gov.uscourts.utd.163775.1.0.pdf

Church Position https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/getting-it-right-clarifying-trademark-branding-concerns

New Young Women Name https://www.thechurchnews.com/leaders/2026/04/22/young-women-age-group-names-doctrine-context/

Change to Church Classes https://www.thechurchnews.com/members/2026/03/30/sunday-second-hour-adjustment-class-meeting-schedules/

Stopping the Temple Building https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2025/10/58oaks?lang=eng

Major Victory for Satan https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2018/10/the-correct-name-of-the-church?lang=eng

Kevin Hamilton on The Lord’s Name https://youtu.be/Zm2EMhPAoSI?si=BwgpJBbsnLazrZlm

Thumbnail Image https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=2122123&itype=cmsid

⚖️ FAIR USE DISCLAIMER: Media used in this video (including the thumbnail) is used in a transformative way for commentary, education, and critique under Fair Use law.

🔖 TAGS: #Mormon #LDS #ReligiousStudies

Tags

mormon mormonism lds apologetics rebuttal fact check fact checking nemo fact checking nemo apologist ex-mormon exmo ex mormon progressive mormon ex mo prog mo christ christian jesus church god jesus christ faith faith crisis

Transcript — YouTube panel (human-authored)

0:00 Honestly, I leave for 2 weeks and everything falls apart. What’s going on? So much has been going on while I’ve been away that I put it to you, my audience, to decide what it is that you think I should cover. And the overwhelming response was that you wanted me to cover the legal issues. You wanted me to cover specifically the fact that Mormon stories run by John Delin is being sued by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And the key to that dispute seems to be that the church, who have publicly distanced themselves from the label Mormon, are now trying to enforce their trademark over the word Mormon because John Dyn’s podcast is called Mormon Stories.

0:38 Yeah. Right. Now, it’s worth making a very important caveat here, which is that I’m not a lawyer. In much the same way as I got involved in the issues of the temple in Fairview, Texas, I can’t speak to who’s right legally. I can’t speak to whether the church has legal merit to their arguments. What I can do is look at what the church is saying, whether it’s honest or not, and whether it seems reasonable because I’m not sure it is entirely reasonable for the church to be trying to enforce this trademark.

1:07 Legally, they might be entitled to, but those are two different things. After months of mediation between John Derlin, who runs Mormon Stories, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who again don’t like to be called Mormon, on Friday the 17th of April, 2026, the Mormon church decided to sue John Derlin and the Open Stories Foundation, which is the nonprofit that contains the Mormon Stories podcast. And this is the reasoning that they gave.

1:36 Mormon Stories and specifically defendant John Pedelin knowingly and intentionally adopted and uses the name Mormon Stories for its podcast and business with conscious disregard of the church’s rights in the Mormon marks and with the intent to cause confusion among consumers and to mislead the consuming public into believing that Mormon stories is affiliated or associated with, endorsed or approved or sponsored by or otherwise connected with the church when it is not. Now, it’s just occurred to me that there is in fact no way you can have a podcast that commentates on the church or tells people’s stories of leaving the church that is not in some way connected to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So, essentially, as far as I understand it, they’re suing him over his use of the word Mormon, his use of branding that they allege is too similar to their branding, and for using church

2:26 photos in thumbnails. They said he did these things with the specific intent to cause confusion as to the affiliation of the Mormon Stories podcast. Now, I’m not a lawyer. I think I’ve already made that clear. So, those that are, feel free to chime in in the comments. But it does seem interesting to me that the specific focus of the church’s suit seems to be around confusion, around the confusion that is being generated by Mormon Stories branding versus the church’s branding, by their use of church images.

2:53 Rather than just saying, “Look, he’s infringing our trademarks. Make him stop.” They are saying given the confusion caused by defendants’s persistent use of the church’s intellectual property, plaintiffs file this complaint to prevent defendants use of trademarks likely to cause confusion to the public. Their argument seems to rely heavily on this point of confusion. as well as wanting absolutely no apparent connection to the church, which maybe there’s a legal definition for this, but it seems to me somewhat difficult to have a podcast that talks about the church, commentates on the church, or in other ways tells people’s stories of leaving the church, that doesn’t therefore have some kind of connection to the church, even if it’s not an official or an endorsed one.

3:35 The current prophet of the Mormon church, Don H. seems to be on a mission to reverse, adapt, or halt many of the things that defined his predecessors term of office, if that’s the term you want to use for a Mormon prophet. Let me give you a few examples. The decision to remove names for different age groups for young women in the church was reversed just this last week when new names were announced. Russell M. Nelson reduced church on a Sunday from 3 hours to two. Now under downh oaks while it remains 2 hours we have seen a change that brings back weekly Sunday school meetings and weekly gendered instruction sessions for men and women under Russell M. Nelson they alternated week by week.

4:13 We’ve got three-hour church now in 2 hours. DH Oaks also immediately put the brakes on Russell M. Nelson’s temple building spree and he did so before he had even declared himself prophet and he did it 6 months before he was sustained by the members of the church to be the next prophet and perhaps most significantly to this conversation it would seem that Dan Ho is trying to road back the changes that Russell M Nelson put in place to get rid of the nickname Mormon today I feel compelled to discuss with you a matter of great importance some weeks ago I released a statement regarding a course correction for the name of the church.

4:53 I did this because the Lord impressed upon my mind the importance of the name he decreed for his church. Even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That announcement from Russ M. Nelson began the great rebrand of the Mormon Church. It is not rebranding. Gone was the I’m a Mormon campaign. The name of the church website also changed. And even the world famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir became the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. Church apologists took the name Mormon out of their handles as well. Midnight Mormons became Ward Radio. Fair Mormon just became fair. Alignment with the church, trying to look like an insider, trying to look legit to a Mormon crowd became not using the word Mormon at all. From the moment Russell Nelson declared the name Mormon a major victory for Satan, it was a race to drop the M-word from your handle. And so really, if John Delin had wanted to try and catfish

5:56 people into thinking that he was in some way affiliated with the church, surely he would have done the same. He would have dropped the Mword as well. He would have stopped calling himself Mormon stories. He would have become something like Latterday Stories or whatever. And while I can’t speak for John, and really I wouldn’t want to, what I will say is for many of us in this space, me included, using the name Mormon while everyone else was running around going, “Um, it’s the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, actually became a sign of our nonconformity. It was a symbol that we weren’t bowing down to what is now becoming increasingly obvious as just a whim of Russell M. Nelson’s.

6:33 It is not a whim.“ And if you don’t want to characterize it as a whim, you can at least appreciate that it was definitely something that was his issue and something he felt very strongly he wanted to speak about. Now, all that is to say, any member who hasn’t been under a rock for the past 10 years is fully aware that the church has shifted its position on the nickname Mormon. And so I find it incredibly unlikely that any member of the church who’s been paying attention is going to stumble across a podcast called Mormon Stories and think it’s any kind of official church publication because the church very overtly removed the word Mormon from all of its official communication channels.

7:10 \[music\] This legal action by the church is in my opinion going to damage their public reputation, their credibility and their mission. \[music\] This legal action makes the church look petty, like they can’t stand criticism. And it also makes them look, frankly, uncchristian, which is ironic given you’ve got church leaders like Kevin Hamilton going out there and trying to paint the church as though it is the absolute manifestation of exactly what Jesus Christ would do. Consider this.

7:40 As I visit with members across the church, I sometimes hear things like, “I don’t support the church’s policy on,” and then you fill in the blank. or I don’t agree with the way the church does this or that. Could I suggest an alternative approach? Substitute the word savior or lord or Jesus Christ in place of the church as in I don’t support the savior’s policy on you fill in the blank or I don’t agree with the way Jesus Christ does this or that.

8:17 For me personally, that seems to put a very different perspective on things. Does the church really want headlines that say something like Jesus Christ sues ex Mormon podcast? And on that note, do leaders of the church really think that this kind of legal action is what Jesus would do? Do we have any record of Jesus suing anyone? DH spoke in this last general conference about being a peacemaker. And it seems odd to me that rather than use their vast wealth and their influence and power to end wars, the church is instead choosing to use their vast wealth, influence, and power to try and crush a small ex Mormon podcast that says critical things about them. In fact, the accusation has been leveled at the church that they are a corporation dabbling in religion. And this kind of petty latigious behavior does nothing to dispel those kinds of accusations.

9:12 The Striand effect is a well-known enough phenomenon by now that the church really ought to be aware of it. John Derlin’s own video addressing this lawsuit has well over a 100,000 views and counting. In fact, I would bet that there isn’t a time in the last 10 years where more members of the church have been aware of the name John Delin and the podcast Mormon Stories than right now. Not only does this lawsuit bring more attention to the issues that Mormon stories raises, potentially exposing church members to those issues, but just on the face of it, seeing the church suing a small podcast that’s critical of them will damage the church’s reputation amongst any members that become aware of this. Well, not any members, but it’s surely a nonzero amount of church members who see the church behaving this way and take problem with it. And this brings us back to the question of what Jesus would do. When members see the church acting in profoundly uncristlike ways, it creates a dissonance that can be hard to ignore. And so I’ll make this

10:08 my final point. It seems this petty legal action by the church to shut down Mormon stories on a technicality is profoundly uncristlike because you don’t have to be ex Mormon to believe that everyone regardless of where they are and particularly if they’re going through a faith crisis deserves love and help. And that is what Mormon Stories has offered to countless people over the years. They’ve offered it in the absence of any kind of robust pastoral care for those going through a faith crisis offered on an official basis by the church. Yes, there are apologists. Yes, there are fair Mormon. Terrell and Fiona Given are trying their best to help those who go through a faith crisis. But the church as an institution is woefully lacking in resources for those who experience challenges of faith. And so it falls to podcasts like Mormon Stories to offer a place for people to go when they start to realize that things weren’t quite as they had always believed them to be. That is a deeply uncomfortable experience for many people

11:03 and Mormon stories offers a landing place for those people. So to see the church trying to shut that place down on a legal technicality doesn’t seem to me to be what Jesus would do. Now, if you value the work of content creators in this space who now operate under the very real threat of legal action by the church, then your support would be greatly appreciated. You can go to donorbox.org/nemotheormon where 5, 10, $20 a month will help to ensure that this channel continues to run. And if you want extra bonus videos and extra content, you can go to patreon.com/nemotheorman where you can find all that fun stuff.

11:36 So, I’ll say thank you so much in advance for your support and I’ll see you on the next one.