Decline of Mormonism in USA

[Jeffret]

From time to time I still come across various statistics about the decline of religion in the USA. I'm always interested to see the changes, and particularly when it relates to Mormonism I like to post it here in case anyone else is interested.

In the Washington Post article Opinion:
The GOP has a glaring Mormon problem, data columnist David Byler has interesting data and graphs about the decline of Mormonism in the USA. He shows that there's a relatively decent straight-line approximation of Mormon membership dropping from about 1.8% of the population in 2008 to about 1.2% in 2022. These are numbers of those who identify as Mormon, which is more reliable than the Church's own numbers.

I wrote another post here some months back about similar numbers, but I wasn't sure if the 1.2% was reliable or just statistical anomalies. He has enough data points to indicate the trend is very real.

Byler states, "In raw terms, that’s a net loss of roughly 1 million adult members."

The Church claims 6,804,028 members in the USA. That million member loss is at a minimum 15% reduction. It's not clear exactly how numbers match up, but the actual number of people who identify as Mormon is much lower, making the actual percentage much higher.

He also points out, in another graph, that even by the Church's own claimed numbers, its growth is rapidly decelerating. In 1986, the USA growth rate was 2.0%. Up until about 1998, the growth rate was usually above 2.0%. It's been dropping since then in a pretty straight-line fashion, indicating the trend is consistent and real. The Church claims a growth rate of 0.3% in 2021 and a slight uptick in 2022 to 0.6%.

For a long time, the Mormon Church has been an unusual standout of churches not experiencing significant declining membership. The count of those who report membership, though, has declined substantially at this point. Even the best, most finely polished numbers the Church can produce demonstrate the trend.

[Just This Guy]

Lets put some numbers to this and look at the results. Numbers come from US Census Bureau and the article linked.

In 2008, US population was 304,100,000. 1.8% of that is 5,473,800 LDS members.
In 2022, US population was 333,290,000. 1.2% of that is 3,999,480 LDS members.

WOW!!! So in a time where the US population grew by +9.3%, the number of people publicly claiming to be LDS dropped by 1,474,320 or -26.9%. So membership doesn't even keep up with the rest of the population.

Now, according to the article, peak church membership was in 2009 where 1.9% claimed to be Mormon. US population was 306,800,000. That means that there were 5,829,200 members. This means that since that peak to today, the church has lost 1,829,720 people, or -31.4%. That has got to sting.

[nibbler]

The article brings this point up; the GOP has a Mormon problem and the Mormons have GOP problem.

It's tough to feel any sense of belonging with my church community when the line between politics and religion are nonexistent. Not only do you have to contend with the constant loyalty tests to church, church leaders, and church doctrines but you also have to deal with constant political loyalty tests.

What do you do when you roll up to the stake patriarch's house for your kid's PB and the stake patriarch's yard is littered with Trump 2024 memorabilia? In the year 2023. You trust that guy's judgment and ability to be inspired by god? You trust that guy's religion to teach people right from wrong?

What do you do when it's not just the stake patriarch, it's over 50% of the ward? They might not all fly the flags but the attitudes are the same.

[Hagoth]

Thanks Jeffret!

I don't know if you've heard Mormon Stories interview with the sitting bishop in Mexico (I think there's a new one after he finally left). The census there requires people to declare a religion. I can't remember the actual statistics, but the number of Mexican people who self-identify as LDS/Mormon are something like 20% of the number claimed by the church.

[moksha]

Mormons might know Trump is full of BS, but my suspicion is that once they enter the voting booth they will go into their customary trance and vote Republican because they sincerely believe that is what their Church leaders want.

[Gatorbait]

Interesting post for sure and comments I've enjoyed reading.

Where we live, in southeast Idaho, there's plenty of Mormons to go around and to spare but unfortunately, it seems like the sickening self righteous ones are the ones moving in, but not around my place in the boonies thankfully. Our daughter and son in law live in an Idaho Falls ward that's been split a bunch of times in the past seven years they've been there. Steady growth and much of it Utah transplants.

That said, my wife and I took our whole fam-damily on a week's long trip to Maine last September. Bunch of us now including the grandkids. I told everyone that I'd pay $5.00 for every LDS meeting house they spotted in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. Told them that if all of them saw one, I'd pay each one the $5.00. The adult children yawned and sighed as they'd gone through this exercise before when they were much younger, when we vacationed there, but the grandkids went berserk. They all figured they'd each have enough to buy a go-cart when they got home, or the like.

You guessed it- we traveled all the way from Boston to close to the top of Maine and back taking different routes and not one LDS meeting house was spotted. Not one. Forget about seeing mission mormonaries. Zip there too. No sign of Mormondum. Guess the dear Lord doesn't much care about those sinner types up there, yet we found them charming, friendly, and very happy. At least not enough to send missionaries to people I doubt have ever had their "chance" to accept or reject the restored gospel. And yet the beginning of the church started right there in New England. Think of that.

The pay-to-play to "earn" your way into the celestial kingdom hasn't caught on up there like it has in Utah and Idaho- mostly by the Republican Trump loving types mentioned by some of you.

[Jeffret]

I don't know if you've heard Mormon Stories interview with the sitting bishop in Mexico (I think there's a new one after he finally left). The census there requires people to declare a religion. I can't remember the actual statistics, but the number of Mexican people who self-identify as LDS/Mormon are something like 20% of the number claimed by the church.

I don't usually pay a lot of attention to Mormon Stories interviews, unless somehow I run across one that catches my attention. I haven't seen that one.

The numbers sound consistent with what we've known from Mexico for a long time. A lot of people have been baptized there, but a small percentage actually have continued to be involved and many barely remember it.

John Dehlin got his start questioning Church practices when he was a missionary in Guatemala and observed how few people that were baptized actually continued to be involved, or frequently ever came back to church again, at least after their missionary moved on. At the time there were two missions in Guatemala. John served in the North one. I served in the south one, based of Guatemala City. We were in Guatemala at about the same time, though I'm not positive now if our times exactly overlapped. My mission had tremendous, huge numbers of baptisms, but I was dismayed at the same observations as John. We baptized a lot, but it accomplished little.

[2bizE]

Thanks Jeffret!

I don't know if you've heard Mormon Stories interview with the sitting bishop in Mexico (I think there's a new one after he finally left). The census there requires people to declare a religion. I can't remember the actual statistics, but the number of Mexican people who self-identify as LDS/Mormon are something like 20% of the number claimed by the church.

Here is the link to the interviews.
The first is audio only I believe, but I cannot get it to work:
https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/m ... tatistics/

The second is on YouTube and is after the Bishop has “come out” more.

https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/b ... oni-ortiz/