Mormon Inforgraphics: Are these statistics accurate?

[_Buffalo]

Some sources are listed below. I've not checked them out. 77% seems high. My experience for the USA is about 50%.

So in other words, the church is propagating falsehoods. Thanks!

[_Uncertain]

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/mormonism-101#C3

Do nine out of ten Mormons read scriptures and pray with their children?
Do 96% donate to religious causes each year?
Do 77% of Mormons attend church weekly?

Many of those numbers were likely taken from a recent Pew survey. This survey disagrees in many respects from other recent surveys that have been done and should be viewed with some caution. Basically the church took the survey that showed the most positive numbers and used those numbers.

Here is a good discussion of the Pew survey in question.

http://bycommonconsent.com/2012/01/12/m ... um-2012-2/

First comment.


"There are probably some methodological issues that are inflating most of the measures of religious activity in this survey.

At one point the report says that self-identified Mormons constitute 2% of the population (p. 5), then in another place they say “slightly less than 2%” (p. 7). They were administering surveys in November of 2011. The Census Bureau’s population clock puts the U.S. population at 312,510,000 at this time. If “2%” and “slightly less than 2%” = 1.9%, then that’s 5,937,690 self-identified U.S. Mormons. On 1/1/2011, the church claimed 6,144,582 total members in the United States. Let’s say that 2011 was a banner year for growth in the U.S., and 90,000 converts and children of record had been added by November 2011. That would put the official church figure at 6,234,582 members at the time of the survey. Thus, Pew asserts that the church in the U.S. has about a 95% retention rate. (If you define the “retained” as those on official church rolls who also self-identify as Latter-day Saints.) In other nations, where self-identified Mormons are counted by the national census, the “retained” constitute between one third and two thirds of the church’s official total. That would make the U.S. an outlier to be sure. In an earlier survey, Pew found that 29% of people raised Mormon no longer consider themselves to be LDS. (see: http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Mormo ... -in-the-US–Social-and-Political-Views.aspx). If both of these Pew surveys are methodologically sound, then the church has been fastidiously cleansing its rolls of these disaffiliates in the United States, but not in other nations.

Now consider the fact that Pew asserts that 77% of self-identified Mormons attend church services weekly. (!) That’s 4,572,021 members who never miss church. Another 9% attend “once or twice a month.” If everyone who said “once or twice a month” attends only once a month, that’s another 133,589 in the pews every week. The church had 11,551 wards and 2040 branches in the United States on 1/1/2011. Let’s lump wards and branches together, and assume that by November 2011 the church had added as many new congregations (wards + branches) as it did in all of 2010: 117. That’s 13,705 congregations in all. So ((4,572,021+133,589)/13,705) = an average of 343 people in every congregation in the United States on every Sunday, conservatively estimated. Sounds kinda high.

Either their estimate of the size of the self-identified LDS population is off, or their church attendance estimates are off. Both things can’t be accurate.

The study also asserts that 65% of self-identified Latter-day Saints hold a current temple recommend. That also seems high. At one point the LDS statistical almanacs used to report the percentage of Mormon men over 18 who had been ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood. These numbers were issued by the church itself. The last year they came out, a total of 59% of eligible men in the United States had been ordained. Obviously it is not possible for the percentage of Latter-day Saints holding a current temple recommend to exceed the percentage of eligible men ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood.

I suspect there might be two sources to these problems. The first is that the study does not rely on a simple random sample. (see pp. 68-69) To cut costs, Pew went to where the Mormons are, oversampling counties with dense concentrations of Mormons. Fully 35% of the survey’s respondents came from counties where Mormons have a >50% “market share.” The only counties that fit this bill are in southeast Idaho and along the Wasatch Front. There is lots of evidence from other studies showing that social pressures and cultural norms elevate church activity in these places. Pew uses statistical weighting to adjust for these oversamples, but this is not ideal, and their sampling strategy increases the likelihood of error and bias both in their estimate of the size of the self-identified Mormon population and in their estimates of religious activity.

The second possible explanation for inflated numbers is something sociologists call “social desirability bias,” or the tendency for people to project an ideal self to a survey researcher. You can see how this might happen in this survey. After asking respondents how active they are in the church and gauging their belief orthodoxy on a number of items, the researcher then asks, “Have you served a mission?” “Do you pay your tithing?” “Do you hold a valid recommend?” Lots of research shows that people are inclined to fudge a bit on things like this.

Tl;dr: I might dial everything in this survey back a bit to account for sampling issues and social desirability bias. I think what we’ve got here is a statistical portrait of the political and social attitudes of highly religious Mormons, particularly those living in Utah and the West. As such, it is a fascinating and informative study. I am not inclined to generalize to all U.S. Mormons from these findings. "

[_Themis]

Some sources are listed below. I've not checked them out. 77% seems high. My experience for the USA is about 50%.

So in other words, the church is propagating falsehoods. Thanks!

And according to him it's doctrine, or should we say false doctrine. LOL

[_Buffalo]

And according to him it's doctrine, or should we say false doctrine. LOL

[_mfbukowski]

Can anyone tell me if the answer the article gives to the question ''Do LDS believe they can become Gods?'' is a YES or a NO?

I think you are capable of reading it for yourself.

Essentially it is stating that the notion that we can become godlike is a biblical doctrine.

Since as you point out, it is taught in Gospel Principles, which is considered the major teaching source for investigators (Gospel Essentials class manual) it should be clear that this is doctrinal and taught to investigators.

If I had written it, I might have added something along the lines of "We believe this to be Biblical doctrine since it teaches that...." or something like that. That would have clarified that it was not giving a yes or no answer- and I admit that the way it was phrased threw me off on the first reading too. But if you read it carefully it becomes clear that they are trying to show in the fewest amount of words, that the Bible teaches the same thing. I would have added a few more words to make it clearer, but they forgot to ask my opinion ;)

[_Drifting]

Can anyone tell me if the answer the article gives to the question ''Do LDS believe they can become Gods?'' is a YES or a NO?

I think you are capable of reading it for yourself.

Essentially it is stating that the notion that we can become godlike is a biblical doctrine.

Since as you point out, it is taught in Gospel Principles, which is considered the major teaching source for investigators (Gospel Essentials class manual) it should be clear that this is doctrinal and taught to investigators.

If I had written it, I might have added something along the lines of "We believe this to be Biblical doctrine since it teaches that...." or something like that. That would have clarified that it was not giving a yes or no answer- and I admit that the way it was phrased threw me off on the first reading too. But if you read it carefully it becomes clear that they are trying to show in the fewest amount of words, that the Bible teaches the same thing. I would have added a few more words to make it clearer, but they forgot to ask my opinion ;)

I would think fewer words would have been, "Yes, we do believe LDS can become Gods".

[_Themis]

I think you are capable of reading it for yourself.

Essentially it is stating that the notion that we can become godlike is a biblical doctrine.

Since as you point out, it is taught in Gospel Principles, which is considered the major teaching source for investigators (Gospel Essentials class manual) it should be clear that this is doctrinal and taught to investigators.

If I had written it, I might have added something along the lines of "We believe this to be Biblical doctrine since it teaches that...." or something like that. That would have clarified that it was not giving a yes or no answer- and I admit that the way it was phrased threw me off on the first reading too. But if you read it carefully it becomes clear that they are trying to show in the fewest amount of words, that the Bible teaches the same thing. I would have added a few more words to make it clearer, but they forgot to ask my opinion ;)

I would think fewer words would have been, "Yes, we do believe LDS can become Gods".

That would have been honest. It never did say yes or no, so I doubt many outside the church would be satisfied with their non-answer. It unfortunately is the milk before meat thinking going on here. The church should be honest here, even if they want to use the Bible to make their case for why they do believe we can become Gods.