Refmological

A blog by a Reform Mormon on Mormonism, scriptures, religion, and stuff

[refmological]

Typefaces of the Restoration, part 1

Typefaces (sometimes erroneously equated with fonts) are a basic element of design, and as such, they can be important parts of how an organization chooses to present itself towards the public. Religious institutions, like churches, are no exception, which makes this a topic of interest when it comes to different parts of the Restoration. This especially applies to the LDS Church. As a proselytizing religion, they like to put lots of effort into uniformity and "brand" recognition. After all, most of us familiar with Mormonism would recognize an LDS chapel with the church logo on its side, or a blue missionary edition of the Book of Mormon, even if the text itself were in a language we do not speak or understand. The LDS Church likes it that way, and they are very careful about keeping their visual identity clean and consistent.

Another important topic when it comes to religion and typefaces is the question of scriptures. The question of what typefaces to use when printing Bibles has been relevant for centuries now. One issue is readability. What is the purpose of the Bible? Do we want a priest to be able to read a pericope from it on the pulpit? Do we want the text to be easily readable for those who study the scriptures often? Do we want the text to be more compact, making the book easier to carry? (A standard 66-book KJV Bible has over 780,000 words.) These questions can sometimes be even more important within Mormonism due to the volume added by extra-Biblical scriptures. The LDS Church famously has scripture bundles called "quads" (KJV Bible + Book of Mormon + Doctrine and Covenants + Pearl of Great Price) or "triples" (same as a quad, sans the Bible). Community of Christ used to have their own "triple" (JST/IV Bible + Book of Mormon + Book of Doctrine and Covenants), and other RLDS groups still print these. Some smaller Mormon groups use other combos, such as the Snufferite "New Covenants" (a JST/IV New Testament + Book of Mormon).

In this post, I would like to show some examples of specific typefaces that are relevant to the Restoration in one way or another. There is no prior knowledge of typefaces or typesetting required, maybe except for the words serif and sans-serif, and the difference between typefaces and fonts. A serif typeface is one that has a small bit attached to the ends of each letter or symbol, like Times New Roman, Bookman, or Garamond. A sans-serif typeface is one that has no serif, such as Arial, Helvetica, or Calibri. A typeface (sometimes font family) is the overall design of a family of text (like Helvetica or Garamond), whereas a font is a specific version made by that may be a variation of a typeface in size, weight, slope, width, etc. (like Helvetica Narrow Bold, Monotype Garamond Italic 36pt, or EB Garamond SemiBold 12pt).

Church Logos

I do not plan to go into the history of the LDS logo pre-1974, but mormonr.org has a really good post about it here.

In 1974, the LDS Church introduced its first official logo:

They used this logo, or a version of it, in all languages. In some cases, it even survived different internationally used names and entities of the LDS Church, such as in Hungary:

[The full name of the LDS Church, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", is notoriously hard to translate to some languages due to the two continuous possessive prepositional phrases. The above image shows the change from "Az Újkori Szentek Jézus Krisztus Egyháza" (≈"The Jesus Christ Church of the New Era Saints") to "Jézus Krisztus Mai Szentjei Egyháza" (≈"Church of Today's Saints of Jesus Christ"), two of the four names the LDS Church ever officially used in Hungarian.]

The official logo from 1974 to 1995 used the typeface Baker Signet, slightly modified by the logo's designer, Randall Smith. The typeface was originally designed by Arthur Baker in 1965. It's a serif typeface with a professional look that is easily readable.

The Baker Signet fonts were not only used for the LDS Church logo, but also for the covers and title pages of LDS scriptures starting with 1979, but I will discuss this in a later section.

In 1995, a new logo was designed, meant to visually emphasize Jesus Christ at the centre of the LDS Church. This one was designed by McRay Magleby, and it managed to beat the 21-year record of the previous logo by 4 years, having been used until 2020. The proprietary typeface used for this one, called Deseret, was designed specifically for the logo, and is meant to resemble the lettering on Trajan's Column in Rome. It has more prominent serifs than Baker Signet, which might contribute to a more "serious" look.

This typeface is still used on the current LDS Church logo and as far as I am aware, it was never used for any other purpose. People trying to replicate this logo at home definitely have a much harder time than those trying to create a knockoff of the Baker Signet one. You will not find Deseret on any website for downloadable fonts, free or paid. There are some, however, that come close. It must be emphasized that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints restricts members from using its official symbols, reserving them strictly for official materials. Even if you are not a faithful LDS member, be aware that the LDS Church takes copyright issues very seriously, and attempts to pass a fake logo off as the real one will most certainly draw legal consequences.

That said, a few similar serif typefaces come pretty close, Trajan being the most popular of them. As you can see, the Trajan Pro 3 Regular font comes very close:

The slight differences are obvious to the trained eye, but they are not so obvious that they would be immediately noticeable without an easy way to compare. Another similar typeface is Cinzel. Here, we can see how the Cinzel Regular font is close, but still more noticeably different from Deseret than Trajan is:

Additionally, HTF Requiem seems to be another close relation to Deseret:

The new church logo used since 2020, that includes the Christus statue in its full-size form, still uses Deseret, although the scaling has changed. BYU also uses Deseret, apparently:

However, on their medallion and on their institutional stationeries, BYU officially uses the previously mentioned Requiem typeface.

Another interesting Mormonism-related use of the Deseret-like Trajan was for the logo of the Romney/Ryan 2012 US Presidential campaign. Not to go too deep into conspiracy territory, but I highly doubt the use of Trajan was a concindence here, Mitt Romney being LDS and all.

The kerning is absolutely awful. No wonder Obama won in 2012!

The last Brighamite typeface I want to look at in this section is the one used for exterior stone inscriptions, such as the "HOLINESS TO THE LORD / THE HOUSE OF THE LORD" inscription used on LDS temples. This, to me, seems like the typeface Michelangelo or something very similar.

Michelangelo was designed by Hermann Zapf and introduced in 1950. I believe it's a match. Anyway, let's move on from the Brighamites for a while.

The RLDS logo went through many iterations, although ever since the RLDS Church's name change to Community of Christ in 2001, they have been using the same logo:

It appears on any official Community of Christ material, as well as the Temple in Independence, Missouri. Once again, we're dealing with a typeface with a long history that was only slightly modified for this logo. Its name is Civilité, and its history goes back to 1557 when it was created by the French designer Robert Granjon to imitate formal handwriting of the time. It survived to the digital era and is still used in different iterations. This is how the logo would look like using the Civilite Std Regular font:

Apart from some minor differences (made most obvious by the capital "C"s), it is the same typeface.

I looked into the logos of other denominations within the Restoration, but I did not find any other logos where I believe the typeface used to be iconic and unique. If you know of any, please let me know, and I will investigate.

In part 2 of this post, I will look more into typefaces and fonts used specifically within Restoration scriptures, including but not limited to the Book of Mormon. If you thought part 1 was interesting, stay tuned!

[refmological]

I Used to Hate the Inspired Version

Most people who have a basic level of familiarity with Mormonism know that one of the main differences between mainstream Christianity and Mormonism is that most Christians consider their scriptures to be within a closed canon, although the number of books Christian Bibles contain varies from 66 to as many as 81, depending on the tradition and the way of counting. Mormonism was shipped from the factory with an open canon: the moniker "Mormon" itself comes from the "Book of Mormon", a book of scripture first printed in 1830, and brought forth by Joseph Smith, Jr., who claimed it to be translation of ancient American records.

When I converted to Mormonism in 2009, I was immediately fascinated by new scripture. Even though I was deeply interested in Christianity before, the idea of a closed canon never made sense to me. Hebrews 1:1-2 did not convince me, since if that meant revelations were over with the coming of Jesus, why would any of the New Testament after the Gospels be canon? Revelation 22:18-19 is also utterly unconvincing, as even if we took it at face value, it would mean not adding or taking away from the Book of Revelation; it has obviously nothing to do with adding to a Biblical canon that did not even exist for another few hundred years yet when Revelation was written.

So, I loved the open canon then, as I still do. My whole conversion story - a tale for another time - started with trying to track down a copy of the Book of Mormon, which wasn't easy in my home country. And although it was hard to convince myself of the Book of Mormon's origin story being true, I successfully managed for a few years, and I liked the Book of Mormon. A whole new book of scripture with its own lore, teachings, identity? I was amazed then, and now, seeing the Book of Mormon as a 19th century human writing, I still have lots of love for it despite its issues. Other Mormon scriptures such as the Doctrine and Covenants also made sense to me. After all, if the continuance of revelation didn't stop with the Bible, why would it stop with the Book of Mormon? Logical.

I had a bigger issue with what is often called the Joseph Smith Translation (within Brighamite circles) or the Inspired Version (within Josephite circles). First of all, in the LDS tradition, the JST/IV is not really used. Despite the inclusion of the Book of Moses and Joseph Smith—Matthew within the Pearl of Great Price, as well as the footnotes and excerpts found within LDS editions of the Bible since 1979, the text used in these versions is still the King James Version of the Bible. But I thought this was the magnum opus of our prophet, Joseph Smith! Why wouldn't we use it? I later learned that one reason for that might have been the fact that the RLDS Church (today Community of Christ) owned the original manuscripts for the JST/IV. They also used to use it as their preferred Bible text, and although Community of Christ officially moved on to the scholarly acclaimed NRSVue, more conservative RLDS folks such as Restoration Branches or the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints still prefer the JST/IV. (By the way, the LDS Church purchased the JST/IV manuscripts from Community of Christ in 2024.)

However, even later as someone interested in Mormon history and scriptures, the Inspired Version never did it for me. The Book of Mormon? Even if it's not an ancient text, one must admit it is a fascinating piece of (mostly original) writing that speaks directly to many issues Christians faced in the 19th century, and I would argue it is the true magnum opus of Joseph Smith. The Book of Abraham? Yes, obviously not a translation of Egyptian funerary papers, and sadly the point of origin for certain detestable racist doctrines, but also brings a fascinating cosmology to Mormonism that gives it a fantastical identity distinct from all the rest of Christianity, and brings back the idea of a Divine Council similar to that in the original Canaanite religions that Judaism evolved from. And the Inspired Version? As I saw it, nothing but Joseph Smith going through the Bible with a red pencil and crossing out the parts he didn't like and scribbling in other words he liked more. Boring.

While talking to fellow Reform Mormons, the Inspired Version came up multiple times, and I was surprised to see how many people liked it. I started to wonder if others saw something I did not. It is clearly not the restoration of an older textual version of the Bible, and some of the edits are extremely blatant and cheeky, such as the ones where Joseph Smith put a prophecy into Genesis 50 about himself. However, this post is not about the origins of the Inspired Version, it is much more about the intent of it. After identifying this intent, I may have managed to find a little bit of understanding within me for the JST/IV.

Simply put, the intent of the Inspired Version is to edit previously existing scripture to better serve the rhetorical and theological goals of the editor. That's it. This made me think about whether this is as terrible a crime as I previously believed, or whether if it is as unique to Smith as I thought, and undoubtedly, many think. From the perspective of a closed-canonist Christian treating the Bible as the pure word of God, it sure is a terrible crime. However, from the scholarly, text critical perspective, this is something that humans have been doing since forever, and not unique to Joseph Smith at all. If we truly want to call the JST/IV an inspired version of the Bible, one could argue that...

Genesis may be an inspired version of previous Ancient Near Eastern creation and flood myths

Depending on which hypothesis we accept regarding the composition of the Pentateuch, much of it could be inspired versions of previous stories, some still in the Bible (see doublets and triplets)

Genesis 1 could be an inspired version of the much more anthropomorphizing Genesis 2 (or the other way around) by an editor with a different theology

The Binding of Isaac might be an inspired version of a previous story in which Isaac was sacrificed

Parts of Proverbs 22-24 might be inspired versions of the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope

Stories about Esther and Mordecai might be inspired versions of storied about Mesopotamian gods Ishtar and Marduk

And moving on to the New Testament...

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke are clearly inspired versions of the Gospel of Mark (and the Q Gospel, if you suppose its existence) with their own agendas, a Jewish Christian-specific one in Matthew's case and a Gentile-specific one in Luke's case

According to the majority of scholars, the Gospel of of the Lord (aka Gospel of Marcion) was an inspired version of the Gospel of Luke with an anti-Judaistic theological agenda, but according to a minority view, Luke might have been an inspired version of Marcion's gospel

The Gospel of John very well could be an inspired version of the synoptics, made by the Johannine community with a clear agenda of showing Jesus as divine and eternal

In these cases, when I say inspired version, it simply just means a rewriting of a previously existing text with an agenda. Of course, in some of the cases, the existence of multiple versions of a story isn't simply the result of someone actually rewriting a text, especially when talking about stories that were originally most likely spreading orally. Yet, even in these cases, a Priestly or Deuteronomist scribe or editor would still have their own agenda that the stories would reflect in the form they would write them down or edit them.

Clearly, Joseph Smith was not the first person to edit previously existing texts with a personal theological agenda, and not the last. And if we think about his cheeky vaticinium ex eventu addition of a prophecy about himself, he was also not alone in doing this:

The pseudoepigraphic Book of Daniel was clearly written after the events that the prophecies contained within it point to - they are meticulously accurate to a certain point in time, which is likely when it was written

Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) is another great example, obviously written during the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE) and long after Proto-Isaiah (8th century BCE) - included in the Book of Mormon as well, within 2 Nephi, which would be impossible if the Book of Mormon were an ancient text!

The Destruction of Jerusalem in the Synoptic Gospels was likely included as a prophecy after the destruction of Jerusalem had already occurred

Many other extra-canonical works like 1 Enoch or 4 Ezra, as well as writings completely unrelated to Abrahamic religions in any way like the Sybilline Oracles, use these after-the-fact prophecies to reinforce their own legitimacy

These conclusions all point to the fact that although the Inspired Version was an extremely daring and to many people, offensive endeavour in an era of many Christians believing the Bible to be the strict and untouchable word of God, in the grand scheme of things, it was business as usual when it comes to Judaism and Christianity, and to scriptures and religious texts in general. As I like to say, Mormon history is a microcosm of Christian history. Learning about how different people, traditions, beliefs, agendas, stories shaped Mormonism shines a good light on Christianity and religion in general. The only difference is that in many cases, Mormonism has traceable evidence of this process, while in the case of more ancient religions, scholars have to come to conclusions based on what survives, with only rarely hitting the jackpot by finding new sources of ancient texts (such as the Dead Sea Scrolls) that help them compare textual variants.

Finally, what do I think of creating new scriptures such as the Book of Mormon, or altering existing ones, like the Inspired Version did? I believe that new scriptural works can be very useful. Although we can still find meaning within ancient writings, most often, scripture speaks to the communities it was written or revealed to. The letters of Paul specifically spoke to the Christian communities in Paul's time. The Book of Mormon was specifically addressing issues within 19th century American Christianity. Different versions of the Doctrine and Covenants all addressed Mormons in real time whenever questions arose. More modern scripture like the Book of the Lavens addresses Mormons today with questions, such as those about queer issues or entheogens, that were not a common part of discourse before. As a Reform Mormon, I do not condone the creation of new scripture while simultaneously being untruthful about its actual origins, whether Joseph Smith, James Strang, or modern authors are doing it. I am glad to belong to a community that moved past these practices and values intellectual honesty. However, this does not mean we need to move past creating scripture as art. Rather, I think it can be very meaningful and useful to create scripture in the here and now, speaking to people today. I choose to close this post with a quote from a Reform Mormon scripture, the Book of Michael:

People have created all scripture and all art. All art is an expression of faith. It is all therefore available for you to explore and use, to view the eternal and gain new knowledge. Choose to designate that which is important to you carefully and do so without limiting yourself from all of the other forms of organization and creation available to you. (Michael 5:28)

[refmological]

About Me

Hello and welcome everyone to my blog, Refmological. I hope to use this space for my longer musings and ramblings about Mormonism, scriptures, religion, and other things.

I was not raised in any religion. After an initial interest in Catholicism and Islam in my teens, I was baptized and confirmed LDS in May 2009. I was ordained into the Aaronic Priesthood in May and the Melchizedek Priesthood in November 2009. I did not serve a mission. I gradually left the church around 2013 and identified as an agnostic atheist after that.

I still found an interest in Mormon history and scriptures later on, and it became one of my special interests. I found Community of Christ through John Dehlin and John Hamer in 2017. I did not join, but I stayed a regular attendant of the Tuesday online lectures of Toronto Centre Place and an occasional attendant of the Sunday online services of Beyond the Walls, a global ministry of Community of Christ and Centre Place. I still have lots of love and respect for the kind and welcoming community at Centre Place.

I encountered Reform Mormonism in January 2025 and I was immediately drawn to it. I enjoyed being part of the community as a "fellow traveler" and while still identifying as an agnostic non-theist with some pantheistic leanings, I found a community with all different kinds of progressive Mormons within Reform Mormonism. Almost every day, I've been thinking about how to redefine or undefine God - a phrase that John Hamer put into my head in 2021 - and today, I identify as a Reform Mormon of the agnostic pantheist kind. Although I still believe I also fall under the non-theist umbrella, I have long given up on being overly specific about matters of belief.

Some of my favourite things about Mormonism include:

open scriptural canon - where scriptures are understood as human-made art to explore ideas about the divine

diverse interpretations of the divine and its manifestations

early pre-1830 non-hierarchical Mormonism (as described by David Whitmer in 1887)

early post-1844 openness to more racial and gender equality (as practiced by Rigdonites and Strangites, for example)

Brighamite cosmology, exaltation theology, union of the divine and mundane, exploration of the Divine Feminine

Community of Christ's ideas of a prophetic people and collective discernment

Godbeite openness to science, progress, and rationality

religious syncretism (when we are being open, honest, and careful about it)

narratives of personal religious exploration and rejection of previous dogmas (see: First Vision)

the principle of common consent

Some of my least favourite things about Mormonism include:

hierarchies / authoritarianism and exceptionalism / exclusionism ("one true church" narratives)

colonialist (manifest destiny, American exceptionalism), racist, patriarchal, and other discriminatory tendencies fueled by doctrine

denialism and apologetics related to sexual and other abuses of power

lack of informed consent and transparency (temple ceremonies and covenants, use of tithes, decision-making processes)

the tendency to calcify into dogmatic, often regressive denominations despite the rejection of earlier dogmas

If you want to learn about Reform Mormonism, see our website: