If this information is correct, it doesn't bode well for the Church in the U.S.
In 2012, 5,196,287 in the U.S. identified as LDS. In 2022, only 3,921,685 identified as LDS. If trends continue, in 2032 there will only be around 2,000,000 in the U.S. that identify as LDS.
"Enos Envy" wrote:This would confirm a lot of speculation...The #Mormon Church is in full decline. Assuming the trend is only linear, they've got about 30 years left, but if it's parabolic, the collapse of local units will be even faster.
#Mormonism will once again be confined primarily to Utah.
It may be even worse than it looks superficially: depending on how the question is asked, I may identify as Mormon, because my name is on the books.
But while the church might like to claim me as a "number", my status as a member is not in any other way a plus for the strength of the church. I imagine that a number of US Adults who identified as Mormon in the study would likewise not be a net positive for Mormonism.
In this study, the multiple-choice question was: "What is your present religion, if any?" and one options was "Mormon". For that specific question, I would have selected either "Atheist", or "Agnostic", depending on how I felt that day. But during the time that I was a non-believing but semi-active member, I might have chosen "Mormon".
You can help Ukraine by talking for an hour a week!! PM me, or check www.enginprogram.org for details. Слава Україні!, 𝑺𝒍𝒂𝒗𝒂 𝑼𝒌𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒊!
It may be even worse than it looks superficially: depending on how the question is asked, I may identify as Mormon, because my name is on the books.
But while the church might like to claim me as a "number", my status as a member is not in any other way a plus for the strength of the church. I imagine that a number of US Adults who identified as Mormon in the study would likewise not be a net positive for Mormonism.
In this study, the multiple-choice question was: "What is your present religion, if any?" and one options was "Mormon". For that specific question, I would have selected either "Atheist", or "Agnostic", depending on how I felt that day. But during the time that I was a non-believing but semi-active member, I might have chosen "Mormon".
For me, it might depend on how the option is listed. If the option is "Latter-day Saint," I'm likely to choose "Other." If the option is "Mormon," I'll choose that.
It may be even worse than it looks superficially: depending on how the question is asked, I may identify as Mormon, because my name is on the books.
But while the church might like to claim me as a "number", my status as a member is not in any other way a plus for the strength of the church. I imagine that a number of US Adults who identified as Mormon in the study would likewise not be a net positive for Mormonism.
In this study, the multiple-choice question was: "What is your present religion, if any?" and one options was "Mormon". For that specific question, I would have selected either "Atheist", or "Agnostic", depending on how I felt that day. But during the time that I was a non-believing but semi-active member, I might have chosen "Mormon".
Interesting points. To make matters worse, I would guess that only about 30% of the self-identified Mormons are active.
I can't see any possible way for the Church to put a positive spin on these numbers. Thankfully, there is still Africa.
"I'm on paid sabbatical from BYU in exchange for my promise to use this time to finish two books."
It may be even worse than it looks superficially: depending on how the question is asked, I may identify as Mormon, because my name is on the books.
But while the church might like to claim me as a "number", my status as a member is not in any other way a plus for the strength of the church. I imagine that a number of US Adults who identified as Mormon in the study would likewise not be a net positive for Mormonism.
In this study, the multiple-choice question was: "What is your present religion, if any?" and one options was "Mormon". For that specific question, I would have selected either "Atheist", or "Agnostic", depending on how I felt that day. But during the time that I was a non-believing but semi-active member, I might have chosen "Mormon".
For me, it might depend on how the option is listed. If the option is "Latter-day Saint," I'm likely to choose "Other." If the option is "Mormon," I'll choose that.
I can see that, Tim.
In spite of not believing in any god, I have come to have an appreciation for the Community of Christ and their approach to people (I was going to say religion, but it's not that.).
About 10 or so years ago I got to know one of their pastors, and have had the privilege of speaking briefly to several of the general officers of the church. I don't think that it's just a function of the relative sizes of the organizations that I have found them to be very approachable, and refreshingly honest and straightforward, compared to even stake-level LDS folks that I've known. All just personal impressions, of course.
A couple of years back I knew a young LDS person who was having some problems, and I contacted a few people looking for help, advice, etc. I never heard back from the LDS, but the CoC person took action immediately. Again, just a personal anecdote, but it left a powerful impression.
And I absolutely love their inclusiveness.
So if I were asked which religious organization I most identify with, I'd have no hesitation in saying it was CoC.
Note that I'm not saying that I don't know good LDS folks that I respect and trust - just that I feel I have good reason to prefer the CoC.
You can help Ukraine by talking for an hour a week!! PM me, or check www.enginprogram.org for details. Слава Україні!, 𝑺𝒍𝒂𝒗𝒂 𝑼𝒌𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒊!
It may be even worse than it looks superficially: depending on how the question is asked, I may identify as Mormon, because my name is on the books.
But while the church might like to claim me as a "number", my status as a member is not in any other way a plus for the strength of the church. I imagine that a number of US Adults who identified as Mormon in the study would likewise not be a net positive for Mormonism.
In this study, the multiple-choice question was: "What is your present religion, if any?" and one options was "Mormon". For that specific question, I would have selected either "Atheist", or "Agnostic", depending on how I felt that day. But during the time that I was a non-believing but semi-active member, I might have chosen "Mormon".
Interesting points. To make matters worse, I would guess that only about 30% of the self-identified Mormons are active.
I can't see any possible way for the Church to put a positive spin on these numbers. Thankfully, there is still Africa.
The church has a "living wage" being established to help. Elder Christofferson recently said this.
Enough to support yourself, support your family, and have enough left over so you have time to serve in the church.
Latest from Mormon Land: Missionary baptism rates decline
By David Noyce
| Oct. 19, 2023, 7:21 a.m.
How many converts do missionaries baptize?
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) A Latter-day Saint baptism in Africa. The average number of converts baptized per missionary has been declining for decades in the faith.
Although convert baptisms shot up by 25% in the first quarter of 2023 — putting the church on pace for more than 265,000 for the year, the highest total in nearly a decade — independent researcher Matt Martinich notes a downside remains in those proselytizing gains.
If 72,000 full-time missionaries are in the field at year’s end, Martinich reports at lds church growth.blogspot.com, that would translate to an average of 3.68 converts per missionary, far below the 8.03 in 1989, and continuing a decades long downward trend, but above the 2.43 in COVID-crimped 2020.
Latest from Mormon Land: Missionary baptism rates decline
By David Noyce
| Oct. 19, 2023, 7:21 a.m.
How many converts do missionaries baptize?
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) A Latter-day Saint baptism in Africa. The average number of converts baptized per missionary has been declining for decades in the faith.
Although convert baptisms shot up by 25% in the first quarter of 2023 — putting the church on pace for more than 265,000 for the year, the highest total in nearly a decade — independent researcher Matt Martinich notes a downside remains in those proselytizing gains.
If 72,000 full-time missionaries are in the field at year’s end, Martinich reports at LDS church growth.blogspot.com, that would translate to an average of 3.68 converts per missionary, far below the 8.03 in 1989, and continuing a decades long downward trend, but above the 2.43 in COVID-crimped 2020.
This thread made me come back to my old puzzle about why the global membership of the LDS church seems to have been growing linearly, rather than exponentially, for the past forty years or so. The fact itself is just that, a numerical fact. You can lay a ruler along the bar chart. The church hasn't been adding exactly the same number of members each year, every year, all that time—but the year-to-year variation in growth has been comparatively small, and with no discernible trend over time.
I found it hard to understand how the church was avoiding exponential change, whether increase or decrease. We speculated that the numbers the church claims might somehow be fake.
I read a bit more just now, though, and found that there is one commonly used mathematical model for population growth that includes limitation as well proliferation. That is, it has the basic factor of the-more-you-have-the-more-you-get, which by itself makes for exponential growth, but then it adds a limiting factor as well. The limiting factor is just represented as reduction in annual growth—a sort of clawback tax—that is proportional to the square of the current population.
Any version of that kind of proliferation-plus-limitation model gives a universal kind of population growth over time: instead of the exponential function, it's a slightly more complicated thing called the logistic function. (The name is a historical coincidence having nothing to do with logistics.)
Logistic functions always start out looking just like exponential growth, but then they go through a long linear phase, before finally levelling off to an eternal plateau. I thought for a little while that I could actually fit the whole history of LDS membership since 1900 with a single logistic function, but actually I can't quite get the first and second halves of the last century to match. The fit to a single logistic function since about 1976, though, is pretty darn good. That's already into the linear phase, so this isn't really saying more than what we already knew, that growth from the late seventies on was quite linear until it started plateau-ing in the past few years.
Still the point I take is that the absence of exponential growth may not be so surprising after all. We just have to postulate some kind of negative feedback effect, whereby the average effectiveness of each Mormon, in creating new Mormons, goes steadily down, the more Mormons there are. If any such effect does exist, it will start to become noticeable once Mormon numbers get large enough, and then it will quickly throttle growth down from exponential to linear, and eventually cause a permanent plateau.
What could that effect be, exactly? If we take the model seriously, it should be something that has stayed pretty consistent since the mid-seventies.
One prediction is easy to make by extrapolating the model into the future: the ultimate plateau population, under logistic growth, is twice the population in the middle of the linear era (that is, at the moment when the growth is most perfectly linear). The membership in the middle of the linear era, in 1997, was around 10 million. So this predicts that the membership will plateau at around 20 million. We're not so far short of that now.
