Data story · Work in progress
Counting Christ
In April 2025 the Deseret News, which the Church owns, counted every reference to Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith and President Russell M. Nelson in the 34 talks of the October 2024 general conference: 1,604, 104 and 92. Its sources called that proof the critics were wrong. It is a count with two rulebooks, a generous one for Christ and an unwritten one for everyone else, aimed at a narrower complaint than the one it claims to settle. The frustrating part: a fair count of four decades of conference talks reaches the same conclusion. The story never needed two rulebooks.
1 · The tally
One conference, three names, two rulebooks
The Deseret News read the 34 talks by hand and counted every reference to Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith and President Nelson: 1,604, 104 and 92, or 47.2, 3.1 and 2.7 a talk. Christ’s column took in nearly anything that pointed to him: he, him and his, titles, scripture quotations, the Church’s own name, and every “they” that meant the Father and the Son, counted once for each. The other two columns come with no stated rules, and the story says many of their references were really about Christ. Three numbers built two ways can’t be set side by side, and the story sets them side by side.
What did the story count?References in the 34 talks of the October 2024 general conference, as published
The same story counted 700 references to God the Father and says telling “God” from “Lord” took judgment calls.
What went into each count?As the story describes it; “not stated” means the story doesn’t say
| Rule | Jesus Christ | Joseph Smith | President Nelson |
|---|---|---|---|
| Names | Counted | Counted | Counted |
| Titles (Savior, Redeemer, Master Potter…) | Counted | Not stated | Not stated |
| Pronouns (he, him, his) | Counted: 30 of the 74 in President Oaks’ talk | Not stated | Not stated |
| Scripture and other leaders quoted | Counted | Not stated | Not stated |
| “They” / “their” meaning Father and Son | Counted once for each | — | — |
| Trinity and Godhead mentions | Counted | — | — |
| The Church’s own name | Counted: a couple dozen | — | — |
| How references were read | All kept as Christ | Many recast as his teachings about Christ | Many recast as his teachings about Christ |
| An earlier conference to compare | None | None | None |
The story ran in the Deseret News, which the Church owns.
2 · The story, checked
Where the story outruns its count
Six things the story says, or lets its sources say, each set beside what a one-conference count can and can’t show. One holds. The rest are the moves that turn a lopsided tally into a verdict: rules nobody else can see, an error claimed in one direction, a trend read from one data point, and a real concern waved off while the people who hold it go unquoted.
| What was said | What holds up | The move |
|---|---|---|
| Speakers at the October 2024 conference referred to Jesus Christ 1,604 times, Joseph Smith 104 times and President Nelson 92 times.The story’s own count | Two rulebooks Christ’s column took in pronouns and titles (in President Oaks’ talk, 30 of the 74 were he, him or his; in President Holland’s, 19 of 108 used a name), scripture quotations, the Church’s own name (a couple dozen), and every “they” meaning the Father and the Son, counted once for each. The story states no rules for the other two columns, and recasts many of their references as teachings about Christ. The three numbers can’t be set side by side. | Uneven counting rulesChurch name counted as Christ |
| The count is imperfect, but its errors most likely leave Christ’s total too low.The story | Not shown The only hard calls the story weighs are “God” against “Lord”. The calls that ran the other way, the Church’s name and the double-counted plural pronouns, all went into Christ’s column, and with no rules published there is no way to check which way the errors net out. | Error claimed in one direction |
| The paper read the talks without AI or a computer database, because telling who a reference points to takes context.The story | Can’t be checked Reading for context is fine; leaving the calls unwritten is the problem. A hand count with unstated rules can’t be repeated or checked by anyone else. A rule set written down and applied the same way to every name can be, whether a person or a script runs it. | Rules unpublished |
| The count disproves the talk, heard in many quarters, that members hear more about President Nelson than about Jesus Christ.Terryl Givens, senior research fellow, BYU’s Maxwell Institute, quoted in the story | Holds That narrow claim fails whatever the rules. For President Nelson’s 92 to match Christ’s 1,604, 94% of Christ’s column would have to be pronouns, titles and double counts, and President Holland’s talk alone used Christ’s name 19 times. The fair count below finds the same against Joseph Smith: in the 2020s, Christ’s names alone outrun his 13 to 1. | Accurate |
| The count suggests leaders have noticeably re-centered their talks on Christ.Terryl Givens, quoted in the story | True, but not shown by this count Re-centering is a change over time, and the story counts one conference with nothing to compare it to. Another source in the same story expected April conferences, which fall near Easter, to run higher: one conference isn’t a baseline. It is real: in a fair count, Christ went from 48.0 references per 10,000 words in the 2000s to 112.4 in the 2020s. The story just can’t show it. | Trend from one data pointNo baseline |
| Critics haven’t been listening to conference for a decade; the complaint is an old one, from the days when unfriendly outsiders wanted to paint the Church as un-Christian.John W. Welch, founding director of Scripture Central, quoted in the story | Waves off a real concern The story’s first source puts the concern as Latter-day Saints speaking more about “the Brethren”, the Church’s leaders, than about the Brother, and calls it a complaint among some members as well as an accusation from other Christians. The story frames it as leaders citing Joseph Smith and his successors more than Christ, then counts two men. Nobody who holds the concern is quoted; the scholars who are call the count heartening, edifying or no surprise. | Narrower complaint testedCritics unquoted |
Everything in the first column is paraphrased from the story; read it for the original wording. The scholars are quoted there by name.
3 · The real numbers
A fair count finds the shift the story couldn’t show
One rule set for four decades of general conference, from BYU’s LDS General Conference Corpus: Christ’s names and titles, no pronouns, with the Church’s full name and each talk’s closing line taken out, per 10,000 words so decades of different lengths compare. The shift the story claimed is real. References to Christ ran 41.7 per 10,000 words in the 1980s and 48.0 in the 2000s, then 66.2 in the 2010s and 112.4 in the 2020s. His names alone went from 29.7 in the 2000s to 74.0. The name Joseph Smith held between 4.7 and 6.9. The conclusion survives. The count in the story never earned it.
How often do conference speakers refer to Christ, and to Joseph Smith?Our countReferences per 10,000 words of general conference, by decade: names and titles, no pronouns, with the Church’s name and each talk’s closing line taken out
Joseph Smith’s bar is his full name only, so it’s a floor: “the Prophet Joseph” and the rest are next on the list. The 2020s run through April 2026.
What’s next
Still to count
This page is unfinished. In order, what comes next:
- Recount October 2024, like for like. The same 34 talks, one rule set for all three names, run in the corpus: the direct answer to 1,604, 104 and 92.
- Even the fair count’s own rules. Christ gets names and titles here; Joseph Smith gets only his full name. “The Prophet Joseph”, “Brother Joseph” and President Nelson’s titles come next, so no column gets rules the others don’t.
- Test the complaint as members put it. The Brethren against the Brother: every reference to prophets, apostles and leaders against every reference to Christ, decade by decade.
- See what else the corpus holds. Twenty-five million words of conference since 1851: which words rose, which fell, and when.
Method
How the numbers were built
The tally and its rules are the story’s own; the fair count is ours, from the corpus, with every rule below.
- The published tally and its rules are as the Deseret News story describes them; where it states no rule, the table says so. What the story and its sources said is paraphrased, not quoted.
- The fair count comes from searches of BYU’s LDS General Conference Corpus (Mark Davies; 25 million words of conference talks, 1851 to April 2026), run September 23, 2026.
- Christ: Jesus, Christ and “Jesus Christ” counted once, plus nine titles: Savior, Redeemer, Messiah, Lamb of God, Son of God, Only Begotten, Good Shepherd, Prince of Peace and Holy One of Israel. Pronouns and “Lord” are left out, and so are the Church’s full name and each talk’s closing “in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”
- Joseph Smith: the full name only, so his line is a floor. His titles are next on the list.
- Rates are per 10,000 words; the 2020s run through April 2026. The count starts in the 1980s, the first decade where the closing line can be counted reliably.
- The Church’s own site bars automated access in its terms of use, so the counts come from the corpus, which is built for searches like these.
Tad Walch, Deseret News, April 4, 2025 (Church-owned; ownership) · BYU LDS General Conference Corpus (Mark Davies) · see also an independent analysis with different rules that finds the same rise. Data: lds-conference-mentions.csv · Data sources