Boston Herald article on Mormonism

[pelagius]

Originally Posted by hyrum

Actually, I meant 15 years ago, 2% of the population said they were Mormon. Recently 2% of the population said they were Mormon. See, for example, Pew and Gallup surveys. So US growth has kept pace with US population growth despite faster population growth in Mormon families than the general population. So, again, my point was that there is an underlying problem of retention, didn't intend to start a war over the race with the Seventh-day Adventists.

I can't speak to the surveys specifically, but I think the sampling error is probably too big to be useful in giving us a sense of the growth rate of a relative small US religious minority. In fact total US membership as reported by the church doesn't support 2% in 2005. For example, the church reported 5.7 million in 2005 and I believe the US population was about 296 million in 2005. That is only 1.9% of the population. So the number of practicing or self-identifying Mormons is almost surely significantly lower than 2%. I think you need a survey that specifically asks people about joining or leaving churches.

Okay, here is where I agree with you; The LDS church growth rate is not that high. Based on the growth in stakes that I cited earlier it probably is around 2.5% a year in terms of practicing Mormons (at least worldwide). Does this imply a retention problem? Not by itself. I think the survey cited by the Trib gives much stronger evidence of a retention problem:

When the Graduate Center of the City University of New York conducted an American Religious Identification Survey in 2001, it discovered that about the same number of people said they had joined the LDS Church as said they had left it. The CUNY survey reported the church's net growth was zero percent. By contrast, the study showed both Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists with an increase of 11 percent.

If this is right then the LDS church growth in the US is basically driven by the difference between the US Mormon birth rate and the US Mormon death rate.

[FMCoug]

One of the things I have found as we've moved around is that activity levels seem to vary greatly in different wards, primariloy due to demographics / socioeconomic status. One of the side effects of LDS wards being geographically determined is they tend to be farily homogenous from that standpoint, particularly in areas of lots of members.

My point is, I don't think that any of us can speak with any accuracy as to the "average activity level" of a ward since it varies so much.

I have lived in a ward with less than 25% active Elders ... and one where we had 4 inactive elders total.