LDS 2nd Fastest Growing
According to the just-released 2006 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches we are the second fastest growing church at 1.74% versus 1.81% for Assemblies of God. Of course that is from official records and neglects those who leave the faith. Assemblies of God does far, far better at retention than we do.
Assemblies of God does far, far better at retention than we do.
Is that what the article said?
Comment by Geoff J — April 7, 2006 @ 4:04 pm
The higher retention rate of Assemblies of God is actually a recurring theme in membership is a recurring idea in these discussions, but it may not actually be true. See a helpful and informative discussion (quite parallel to Mormon conversations, I might note) on this A/G blog.
For those who just want the big picture quick, click here. The resulting image shows annual A/G conversions and annual A/G change in adherent counts. Retention problems are indicated by any gap between the two rates.
The author’s summary sounds like a reasonable description of recent Mormon growth, as well: “If the data are accurate, we may be bringing folks to Christ in the A/G, but we’re not keeping them.”
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — April 7, 2006 @ 4:21 pm
Interestingly, while we may not be great at convert retention, only the Jewish are better at retaining those born in the faith. Alan Wolfe in The Transformation of American Religion that the majority of Americans change their faith at least once in their lifetimes, but often more. He then observes that Mormons (81.4%) are only second to Jews (85.4%) in retaining the faith of their childhood.
Comment by J. Stapley — April 7, 2006 @ 4:51 pm
For those interested, while its a few years old now, the 2001 Self-Identification Survey gives the best figures. (I actually knew someone who worked on it) It goes by what people consider themselves rather than rolls or other method. It shows LDS Americans having basically flat growth between 1990 and 2001. (From 2,487,000 to 2,787,000) Christians as a whole (including Mormons) went from 151,225,000 to 159,030,000. Jehovah’s Witnesses though were also relatively flat and actually lost members. (Going from 1,381,000 to 1,331,000) The big winners were non-denominational Christians (basically generic Evangelicals) who wen from about 8 million to 14 million, Pentacostal/Charismatic going from 3.2 million to 4.4 million, Assemblies of God going from 0.66 million to 1.1 million) and Church of Christ going from 1.8 million to 2.5 million. So Evangelicals and related fundamentalist Christians (outside of Baptists who lost members) grew by far the fastest, and quite significantly so.
That rise in 10 years of the self-identified from 2/3 of a million to over 1 million is pretty impressive. This is 5 years out of date, so things may have changed. But I’d be surprised if it had changed that much.
Comment by Clark Goble — April 7, 2006 @ 6:16 pm
Just to add, what may account for the discrepancy between the figures at the site RT referenced and the self-identification figures is activity in a particular community. Put in LDS terms they may consider themselves to belong to the Assemblies of God but not go to church. What is most depressing about the LDS figures is that so many people who were presumably baptized don’t even consider themselves Mormon. So it isn’t just an activity issue.
Is that because Mormons demand more than other faiths? After all one can self-identify as a Baptist yet not feel obliged to do much. It’s harder to do that as a Mormon I suspect.
Comment by Clark Goble — April 7, 2006 @ 6:19 pm
As Latter-day Saints we need to think of convert baptisms as a quality vs. quantity issue. Obviously if we are not careful about who we bring into the Church, but just baptize anyone we can talk into the water, we are going to have rentention problems.
But with that said, baptizing low quality converts may in fact be a good thing if we think of such new members as opportunities for further missionary work. But we saints seem to think of missionary work as something that is only appropriately done with non-members. I think that is wrong. Missionary work is needed within the Church as much as it is needed outside of it. Many Latter-day Saints do not have strong testimonies. Even some who were born into the Church in such Mormon strongholds as Utah have not been truly converted to the faith. They need us to do missionary work with them too. We need to testify to each other, and teach each other the doctrines of the kingdom. In fact, we are commanded by the Savior to do these things in the Doctrine and Covenants. We are to warn our neighbor and teach each other the doctrines of the kingdom. Is this not missionary work? I think it is. Among ourselves we should testify of the truth that we believe, not just assume that our fellow ward members are truly converted, or the saints among whom we associate online for that matter.
If we baptize people who are not thoroughly converted, there is great need for us to continue to do missionary work among our own members, particularly those who are converts that have never fully gained a testimony for themselves. Missionary work should not be reserved only for non-members.
Comment by John W. Redelfs — April 7, 2006 @ 6:41 pm
Clark, I think the self-identification data are a poor measure of the concept of “retention,” although they are clearly the single best available US data source on people’s religious identities. But retention in Mormon terms is about behavior rather than identity; if someone stayed on the rolls, came to church every week, and had a temple recommend, we would count them as definitively retained even if they didn’t self-identify as Latter-day Saints/Mormons. By contrast, we typically consider people who don’t attend but do consider themselves Mormon to be retention failures.
However, if we might agree among ourselves that “retained” individuals who don’t identify with the church are substantially more rare than “non-retained” individuals who do identify with the church, then the self-identification data are a helpful upper bound on retention.
The growth rate in U.S. Mormon self-identifiers from 1991 to 2001 is 12.1% for the entire decade. Roughly speaking, that rate is increased by births of children of record and convert baptisms, and it is decreased by deaths of members, failures of convert retention, and apostacy by established members. As J. Stapley notes, Mormons in the U.S. are quite good at retaining people born within the church, so the rate of apostacy by established members is pretty low. Furthermore, Mormon birth rates are still somewhat above the U.S. norm, and certainly higher than Mormon death rates. For example, demographic data show that the birth rate minus the death rate in Utah is about 1.3% per year–for every 100 living people at the beginning of the year, there are 101.3 living people at the end of the year. If that rate has been constant since 1991 (almost certainly an underestimate, since U.S. Mormon fertility rates have been falling), and if the Utah fertility rate accurately characterizes Mormons in the U.S. in general (almost certainly an incorrect assumption, but it’s unclear in what direction), then endogenous (i.e., non-convert) growth in the number of self-identifying Mormons should be about 10.5% over the decade between the two studies. Clearly, that covers virtually all of the observed growth.
The more individuals there are on the rolls who don’t attend but do self-identify as Mormon, the closer the effective retention rate slips to zero. (Given the substantial rate of convert baptisms in the US between 1991 and 2001, that retention rate is nearly zero in any case.)
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — April 7, 2006 @ 7:13 pm
Well, I for one feel that there are already far too many people in Utah. Let the new converts go somewhere else. I live in Sanpete County, which used to be basically the middle of nowhere. But now it is getting overrun. Guess I’m gonna have to move to Alaska to get any privacy.
These numbers and statistics are probably meaningful in some useful ways, but I don’t see them as very important.
Comment by Jim Cobabe — April 7, 2006 @ 8:14 pm
Jim: my demographics (intentionally) left out the factor that’s probably most responsible for the unfortunate crowding you’re experiencing: immigration to the state. Utah’s population grows at rather more than 1.3% per year because people are moving there more often than they move away; I was only considering endogenous growth.
So rather than blaming your neighbors or new converts for the crowding, blame the Californians or whatever…
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — April 7, 2006 @ 11:26 pm
I wish you would, Jim. I cannot think of anything that would thrill me more than having you as a fellow Alaskan living here in Ketchikan. Both the Church in general and the Church in Alaska need more saints like you.
Comment by John W. Redelfs — April 7, 2006 @ 11:27 pm
Blame Utah’s strong economy if you are going to blame factors. While the housing market in most of the nation is collapsing (finally) in Utah it is as strong as ever.
RT made the point about retention I was alluding to rather well. There are lots of indications that our retention is horrible.
Comment by Clark Goble — April 8, 2006 @ 12:41 am
Oops… Sorry, a quick correction: the 10.5% figure I cited above was under the conservative assumption of 1% endogenous growth per year. If we instead use the 1.3% figure which is relatively current from Utah, then births of children of record would instead account for 13.8% growth during the decade between the two survey data points. This means that births of children to Mormon families may more than account for the 12.1% observed increase in Mormon self-identifiers, unless U.S. Mormon birth rates outside of Utah are noticeably lower than within Utah.
This latter analysis suggests an effective convert retention rate of 0%, as well as some leakage among family-line Mormons.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — April 8, 2006 @ 1:19 am
John Redelfs,
I’m not sure what you mean by “low quality converts” but I’ve seen more problems with the system (and poor implementation of the system) than with the converts themselves.
Comment by a random John — April 8, 2006 @ 11:09 am
Jim -
Alaska is great. But move to Homer. Ketchikan is okay, but Homer is paradise.
(sorry John, but I’m biased – I grew up in Homer).
Comment by Ivan Wolfe — April 8, 2006 @ 2:26 pm
Clark and RT,
Remember that the margin of error might be pretty high when using the ARIS to estimate the change in adherents for mormons. If we assume a simple random sample, (which is probably not quite right, but oh well), I calculate the following approximate standard errors for the numbers of total self identifying mormons:
SE for 1990 total: 62K
SE for 2001 total: 107K
SE for change: 123K
Confidence interval for change: (56K, 540K)
CI for total growth: (2.2%, 21.7%)
So we really can’t learn anything very precise about growth from comparing the two cross sections. It does appear likely, though, that the number of self-identifying mormons is probably growing more slowly than the US adult population as a whole (19% growth).
(BTW, it would be nice if ARIS had provided some standard errors with their tables.)
Comment by ed — April 8, 2006 @ 2:55 pm
Random John,
I think that what Redelfs termed “low quality converts” are people that are getting baptized, but aren’t really excited about it and are having significant activity problems during the baptism process.
John W., I think you make a good point about the need for missionary work within the Church as well. While a given convert may not be the most active immediately, it is probably the easiest contact that the missionaries or people within the ward will ever get.
Comment by D-Train — April 8, 2006 @ 8:25 pm
ed, right–the sampling uncertainty is important. ARIS uses some clustering, as do most surveys, so we can really only guess at what the standard errors ought to be. That’s why I disregard them in talking about these data. But you’re overly pessimistic about what we can learn from the data. The 19% figure you cite for overall adult population growth is really essentially a constant, so it can be subtracted straight off from the confidence interval. Assuming a SRS (which is probably more variability than in the actual multi-stage sample), the CI for Mormon growth not accounted for by in-group births is (-17.8%, 2.7%). Sharp conclusions can be drawn from this: little if any real convert growth, and possibly substantial loss of BIC adults.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — April 8, 2006 @ 10:00 pm
9. So rather than blaming your neighbors or new converts for the crowding, blame the Californians or whatever…
So that’s what happened — the latest Church almanac shows that in 2004, California was one of only 4 states in which the number of LDS declined from 2003.
Comment by manaen — April 10, 2006 @ 2:30 am
This discussion is an interesting one. I wonder if any of you have paused to consider WHY converts, wether they be “low quality” converts or not, are joining the Church, and then leaving. Please consider my opinion, based on personal experience. When potential converts are given the missionary discussions, little to none of the more controversial issues of the Church’s doctrine and history (such as baptism for the dead, polygamy, racism, ect.) are omitted/ignored. The convert agrees to baptism before he/she is given enough practical information to make an informed choice, the decision is based on a very small percentage of the facts and their “feelings”. Then, once he/she joins, is baptised and confirmed into the church, they start to learn that wich was previously hidden. I say hidden because missionaries often refuse to even discuss touchy subjects with a potential convert, the “milk before meat” theory. They explain the inquirer is “not ready” for the less “mainstream Christian” concepts. I have always thought this was an error, as the convert frequently leaves when the information on the more “far out there” doctrine is discovered, and then they often feel decieved, as well they might. Perhaps, if potential converts were given ALL the information neccessary to make an intelligent choice as to join the Church or not, the conversion rate would drop dramatically, but the converts would be retained, with no nasty surprises later.
Comment by Christal Young — April 10, 2006 @ 9:38 am
JWR: I am wary of any approach that turns people into a means of accomplishing something else. To the extent that has been done, it is unfortunate. We need to view each individual, no matter how lowly, or “low quality” as you have said, as a son or daughter of God. As such, they are each infinitely valuable; their agency should be respected to the extent they have not violated just laws or damaged/injured other people. In my view, they deserve to be preached to and to be baptized as much as any others. This needs to be done through preaching the word and not through high-pressure sales or management techniques.
Christal: whatever the merits of your other points of contention, I think that including baptism for the dead in your list is inaccurate. This is an example of the powerful doctrine that attracts people to the Restoration of the Gospel, rather than repelling them from it. My recollection from preaching the Gospel as a missionary, through the standardized six discussions, was that baptism for the dead was not shied away from by any stretch of the imagination, but was taught as a strong point of the work of the Prophet Joseph Smith.
Comment by john f. — April 10, 2006 @ 1:54 pm
There certainly have been a lot of people moving from California to Utah the past 10 years. But I think a lot of that has to do with jobs and cost of living. If you grew up in California, especially the bay area, the chances of you being able to find a job that would let you buy a home are pretty remote. Housing in most places in California are about 4 – 5x what they are in Utah. And Utah has a very hot job market right now.
Comment by Clark Goble — April 10, 2006 @ 2:56 pm
John (#20), I agree they need to be preached to. However I think we all realize that missionaries often target the easy baptisms without concern of retention simply to get their statistics. They do the initial work without sufficiently preparing them to actually be a member. The Church has done better in this the past 10 years. But we still have a long ways to go. Without getting into an other discussion of the missionary program though, I tend to see the failure as primarily the members. We have to do better in our missionary work. Realistically tracting and the like simply are very inefficient methods of conversion and you’re apt to have more problems with retention with those you do find.
Comment by Clark Goble — April 10, 2006 @ 2:59 pm
So we switch from an old-fashioned sales-oriented approach to proselyting to a more modern, network marketing approach?
Comment by john f. — April 10, 2006 @ 4:00 pm
Well, put like that, it has been the emphasis of the missionary program for more than 20 years. The whole “networking” was certainly emphasized in the training materials I got in the MTC on my mission back in ’87,
Comment by Clark Goble — April 10, 2006 @ 10:20 pm
First, a brief response to what Clark stated in comment #21. Another reason for the exodus out of California is abruptly changing demographics. The sight of 700,000 Latinos marching through Los Angeles, many carrying Mexican flags, and some with signs stating “Our Continent, Not Yours”, is scaring people out of the state. And not just white people either, but responsible Californians of other races. This concern is justified; check the Mexica-Movement’s website to see their hostile, racist, separatist agenda. http://www.mexica-movement.org
Now, back to the central issue. Mormons who drift into activity aren’t always in danger of apostasy. I’ve been inactive since 1969, but I still believe in the whole program. Enough of the Gospel remains in my heart to place bounds upon my fleshly appetites and prevent me from making destructive choices with lasting negative consequences. So many who fall away are still better off spiritually than they were before they became Mormons in the first place. Mormonism answers more of my questions and offers me more possibilities than the other denominations.
The only reason I’m inactive is because I just don’t fancy the routine of going to church and doing the same routines every week. I really can’t get excited about listening to a 5-year old bear his testimony. But there’s nothing wrong with the Church as far as I’m concerned, and i would never demand it change to personally suit me. I’m of the old school; when the Brethren speak (in their official capacities), the debate is over, because the thinking has been done. I may choose not to follow them, but I won’t choose to debate them.
Comment by Anchorage Activist — April 11, 2006 @ 2:53 pm