"AT SOME POINT in the last 50 years of daily Washington Capital Beltway traffic updates, reporters stopped saying the “Mormon Temple” and just called it the “Temple.” As there is no other temple of glowing white marble and stained glass, with a gilded angel towering 288 feet above the crest of a forested hill next to the heavily traveled freeway, this causes no confusion. No doubt, it also pleases leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who in 2018 formally requested that the name “Mormon” be discontinued as a shorthand reference that distracted from Jesus Christ. (The nickname “Mormon,” which had long been embraced by the Church, derives from The Book of Mormon, an ancient scripture delivered to Church founder Joseph Smith by an angel in 1823. Critics of Smith had originally used it as a slur.)"