Study: Utah is no longer majority Mormon

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

A paper published this month in the Journal of Religion and Demography estimates that the percentage of Utahns who identify as members of the LDS church, otherwise known as Mormons, is about 42%.

That’s markedly lower than previous media reports citing the church’s numbers, which put the percentage of Mormons in Utah at around 60% as recently as 2020.

“We’re not trying to say that the LDS church is wrong, it’s just we’re using very different approaches to get to gather this information,” said Ryan T. Cragun, lead author on the study, who teaches sociology at the University of Tampa.

To get their numbers, Cragun and his fellow researchers contracted a survey of roughly 1,900 Utahns, with quotas for age, sex and ethnicity aligning with official census data for Utah. This method is called “quota sampling.”

Michael Wood, assistant professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, who was not connected to the study, said quota sampling is commonly used in the field with accepted limitations, which he noted that Cragun and his co-authors acknowledged.

“It is a provocative study with compelling arguments,” Wood told ABC4 in an email, adding that “further research with a more robust sampling method is needed to confirm the findings.”

According to the paper, the figures released by the LDS church are not reliable for the purposes of determining the percentage of Utahns who actively identify as Mormon.

This is because, so the researchers say, the church basically counts members as anyone who’s been baptized.

“Aside from a few who are excommunicated or formally ask to have their name removed, members remain on church rolls until they die, or until their 110th birthday if their whereabouts are unknown,” the paper states.

Salt Lake City KTVX via MSN

The three major reasons listed for why Utah is no longer majority Mormon are migration (particularly from California), secularization that we've already seen across the board (one-third of children raised LDS eventually leaving the church), and fertility (Utah no longer has the highest birth rate in the nation).

I believe it's been mentioned here before that Salt Lake City is the least Mormon part of the state, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a regional breakdown that pegs the SLC number below 40%.

[Upper Canada Tory]

A little bit sad, IMO. I have always been fond of Utah's Mormon culture.

[PSOL]

It’s very difficult to proselytize in the modern era to a society which knows too much about what your religion truly is.

I’m happy about these changes, but it could have happened to a more dogmatic sect like Jehovah’s Witnesses.

[LabourJersey]

The stat about one-third of Mormon children leaving the faith eventually is especially fascinating. That's significantly higher than I would have thought.

[Mr. Smith]

The stat about one-third of Mormon children leaving the faith eventually is especially fascinating. That's significantly higher than I would have thought.

Given how absurdly corrupt and tone-deaf the General Authorities are and far far worse at hiding it or smoothing it over than they used to be, and that's not even considering all the other factors from all the information at the finger tips.

There's also both the general death of community for individualization and at the same time other sorts of niches and communities popping up to supplant the increasingly sterilized, impersonal, artificial, and sometimes even tedious Church to account for.

Even the Temples have arguably gotten more and more cookie-cutter and thoughtless.

[PSOL]

The stat about one-third of Mormon children leaving the faith eventually is especially fascinating. That's significantly higher than I would have thought.

Given how absurdly corrupt and tone-deaf the General Authorities are and far far worse at hiding it or smoothing it over than they used to be, and that's not even considering all the other factors from all the information at the finger tips.

There's also both the general death of community for individualization and at the same time other sorts of niches and communities popping up to supplant the increasingly sterilized, impersonal, artificial, and sometimes even tedious Church to account for.

Even the Temples have arguably gotten more and more cookie-cutter and thoughtless.

If you may give massive context on all three paragraphs that would be nice. What has been going down?

[Mr. Smith]

The stat about one-third of Mormon children leaving the faith eventually is especially fascinating. That's significantly higher than I would have thought.

Given how absurdly corrupt and tone-deaf the General Authorities are and far far worse at hiding it or smoothing it over than they used to be, and that's not even considering all the other factors from all the information at the finger tips.

There's also both the general death of community for individualization and at the same time other sorts of niches and communities popping up to supplant the increasingly sterilized, impersonal, artificial, and sometimes even tedious Church to account for.

Even the Temples have arguably gotten more and more cookie-cutter and thoughtless.

If you may give massive context on all three paragraphs that would be nice. What has been going down?

I'll do what I can, but tbh, that South Park episode covers a lot of the basics by itself [at least for the origins, which itself can be rather alienating to the modern and educated world].

If any of you remember the old The Sound of Freedom hubbub back in July, that ended up being even more of rabbit hole.

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2023/11/04/lds-apostle-accused-sharing-church/   

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkaqvn/tim-ballards-departure-from-operation-underground-railroad-followed-sexual-misconduct-investigation

This regarding tithing. Some already find the idea dodgy on principle, personally I don't, with the caveat it ought be a surplus rather than income extraction and it should be explicitly earmarked. Anyway, one General Authority may have leaked tithing records over to Tim Ballard's foundation, and ofc that foundation under Ballard has truly hit peak hypocrisy.

That's the tip of the iceberg for tithing abuse. One other sort of thing...

https://www.fox5vegas.com/2023/11/01/mormon-church-sued-again-over-how-it-uses-tithing-contributions-members/

There's also, and this is something far far more vast, a similar problem in The Church going on like The Catholic one, but in some ways, it might actually be worse...though I admit beyond the whole "bad father gets moved elsewhere" policy, I don't know that much about that beyond Spotlight. I'd still like to think they'd more for victims than this:

https://www.hurley-law.com/chicago-injury-lawyers/why-the-mormon-church-abuse-hotline-hasnt-helped-victims/

https://apnews.com/article/mormon-church-sexual-abuse-takeaways-f01fba7521ddddffa89622668b54ac10


I mean with all of that going on, besides the classic things like racism or homophobia, it's not that much of a wonder why children might want to leave when they can.