Anyone who has gone down the long list of church names in the Yellow Pages or special church directories quickly finds it’s easy to get confused by names. Distinctly different are the Church of Christ, the United Church of Christ, the Community of Christ and the Christian Church, Scientist. Not to mention the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Getting Christ’s name in there somewhere in the name is fundamental.

But given the past couple years in which Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have captured headlines over complaints of polygamy, child abuse and forced marriages, it’s not surprising that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is weary of it all.

On Wednesday, church leaders in Salt Lake City put out the word that it doesn’t want the public to make any mistakes. It has placed new video interviews on its Web site to “illustrate the differences” between Mormons, including those in Texas, and those members of the isolated FLDS. It is also making a “written appeal” to the media to “make the important distinctions between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Texas group.”

Seems the 13-million member church, which formally ended the practice of polygamy in 1890 as a provision to Utah statehood, commissioned a survey that “found a high level of public awareness of stories about the polygamous compound near San Angelo, Texas.” A raid followed, with hundreds of children taken from their FLDS parents and put into Children Protective Services care, until a series of legal actions allowed them to return to their parents.

The survey found more than a third of the people asked (36 percent) “erroneously thought that the Texas compound was part of the Mormon Church, based in Salt Lake City.” Some 6 percent believed the FLDS and Mormons were “partly related.” Twenty-nine percent “correctly said the two groups were not connected at all.” Another 29 percent were unsure.

When the public was directly asked which religious organization members of the polygamous groups belonged to, 30 percent of the time, they responded, “Mormon,” “LDS” or “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Fourteen percent said “FLDS” and 6 percent said “Mormon fundamentalists.” A whopping 44 percent said they were not sure. The survey was conducted May 29-31 and involved 1,000 adults in households in continental U.S.

That’s not good news for Mormons – including the 260,000 members in Texas.

“We’d much rather be talking about who we are than who we aren’t,” said Elder Quentin Cook, a Mormon apostle. He continued, “People have the right to worship as they choose, and we aren’t interested in attacking someone else’s beliefs. At the same time, we have an obligation to define ourselves rather than be defined by events and incidents that have nothing to do with us.”

In this case, and in politics 2008, we must recognize that there are “low-information” people in the population where their knowing too little can be dangerous. Their relationship with news and events is minimal. They don’t pay much attention, so they typically lump “related things” together. Compare it to how much most of us know about worldwide soccer and which are the strong and weak teams. All too little.