Salt Lake City: Not very Bible Minded!

[_EAllusion]

And what % within that subset are active, practicing Christians?

It's really tough to get a good number on a question like that. First, because people identify with a religion culturally and will report being a Christian in the same way I say I'm German even though I've never been to Germany. Second, people tend to drastically over-report their religiosity on open survey questions because they view it as a report of being of good character. Church attendance rates are, for example, overstated by an order of magnitude when people are asked about it compared to censuses of Church activity. Asking people if they are an active, practicing Christian is like asking them if they are faithful to their spouse.

So, it'd be hard to find numbers on his that aren't going to overstate what your anecdotal experience would suggest.

[_Blixa]

Salt Lake City: Not very Bible Minded!

Not surprising because Salt Lake City is only about 20% LDS and likely less who are actually active.
It's a city full of ex-mormons, anti's, atheists, etc.

How did Provo rank? Then you'll have a useful stat.

I'm sorry, but is there anything you have a clue about? That kind of ignorance is extremely offensive.

[_The Erotic Apologist]

Not surprising because Salt Lake City is only about 20% LDS and likely less who are actually active.
It's a city full of ex-mormons, anti's, atheists, etc.

You forgot to mention the fact that SLC is also the gayest city in America.

[_MsJack]

It's really tough to get a good number on a question like that. First, because people identify with a religion culturally and will report being a Christian in the same way I say I'm German even though I've never been to Germany. Second, people tend to drastically over-report their religiosity on open survey questions because they view it as a report of being of good character. Church attendance rates are, for example, overstated by an order of magnitude when people are asked about it compared to censuses of Church activity. Asking people if they are an active, practicing Christian is like asking them if they are faithful to their spouse.

The best people to ask would be the churches themselves. While individuals may feel the need to over-report their own religiosity, most denominations have little incentive to over-report congregant attendance. If they have 1000 people on the rolls, but only about 100 ever show up to church on a given Sunday, they will say so.

(That was exactly the case when I was attending the Assembly of God in Provo, by the way. The pastor said that we had close to 1000 people on the rolls, but our Sunday attendance usually hung out at around 100.)

The LDS church is somewhat peculiar in that regard in that they seem to take measures to inflate their reported membership numbers as much as possible (i.e. counting unbaptized children on the rolls, counting inactive members until they're over 100, only reporting the total membership number, etc.). Churches don't usually do that.

[_EAllusion]

The best people to ask would be the churches themselves.

Sure. I referred to that when I talked about Church censuses. The problem is that is just one thing we look at when we ask people about their religiosity to determine if they are active, practicing Christians. For example, it seems that this survey asked a question about how frequently people read the Bible. For some people, that's pretty much just like asking how often they tell their spouse they love them. There's a good body of evidence that for questions aimed at religiosity a substantial number of people are inclined to interpret as tests of moral character (to varying degrees), which they tend to over-report. So we have to be careful how we read the numbers.

[_The Erotic Apologist]

The inflating of membership numbers is a form of competitive posturing. In other words, organizations that feel they must compete with other organizations (i.e., the so-called “siege mentality”) have every reason to inflate their numbers. Take the Scientologists, for example. Scientology claims upwards of ten million members worldwide, but there are probably fewer than fifty thousand active Scientologists in North America alone. The JW’s probably also inflate their numbers, for similar reasons.

[Guest]

There's a good body of evidence that for questions aimed at religiosity a substantial number of people are inclined to interpret as tests of moral character (to varying degrees), which they tend to over-report. So we have to be careful how we read the numbers.

I agree, but unless we have reason to believe that Salt Lake City Mormons are overreporting their religiosity less than Christians in other cities, SLC's low standing on this survey is probably at least comparatively accurate.

Unless Mormons are answering more negatively because of how the question is phrased, which happens sometimes with these types of surveys.

Edit: SLC rated as the most religious city in America in this survey here, whereas Seattle was #49.

[_MsJack]

The JW’s probably also inflate their numbers, for similar reasons.

Nope. The JWs only count and report their active membership, and I think they even take it a step further and define "active membership" as "people who actively proselyte."

[_The Erotic Apologist]

Nope. The JWs only count and report their active membership, and I think they even take it a step further and define "active membership" as "people who actively proselyte."

No doubt, though I don’t see why a list of active proselyters cannot be tweaked and massaged as easily as a list of regular church attendees. Indeed, when I google “Do churches inflate their membership?” I come up with sufficient numbers of positive results to show this is indeed an area of concern.

In the end, I suppose, it all comes down to this: Do people who describe themselves as being “Bible minded” necessarily display a greater propensity for just and ethical behavior?

[_Maxrep]

I do like the two boyfriend analogy, but with a twist;

The Bible represents a real boyfriend, as the books within are historically viable. The Book of Mormon is similar to George Glass, Jan Brady's significant other. Like George Glass, the Book of Mormon is conveniently absent at all the key times, especially when history looks for its presence.