The LDS Church remains one of the nation’s top four churches in membership size and growth rate, despite 2008 statistics that didn’t reach ’07 numbers but mirrored the past decade’s annual averages.
At its recent April general conference, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported a worldwide membership of 13,508,509 through Dec. 31, 2008 ”” an increase of 314,510, or 2.38 percent, over the end-of-’07 total of 13,193,999.
The year before, the church recorded an increase of 325,393, or 2.53 percent.
Over the past 10 years, the LDS Church has averaged an annual membership increase of 310,407, with a high of 348,536 from 1998 to 1999 and a low of 263,716 from 2002 to 2003.
It might be interesting to restate the article in terms familiar to Episcopalians:
“At its recent April general conference, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – regarded by most Christians as a fringe sect – reported a worldwide membership of 19 times the number of people who bother to show up at Episcopal churches each Sunday. This was an increase of 314,510, or close to 50% of the entire number of Episcopalians who bother to show up each Sunday – a number that’s declining.
Etc.
Mormons have a huge army of young guys and gals who do nothing more six days a week, 8 to 10 hours a day, than recruit folks to their church in every nation of the world that will allow them to enter and proselytize. They do this for 24 months for guys and 18 months for gals. And their parents foot the bill usually for their time away from home in the “mission field.” Their goal is to recruit entire families if possible.
It would be interesting to see how well they do today in Latin America, as opposed to the past. Until recently they would tell Latino recruits that the Book of Mormon was the story of their ancestors, descendants of Hebrews who left Israel for the New World. That has been shown to be the lie that it is with such things as the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project. When DNA results showed Latinos are not desended from Middle Easterners, but Asians, it caused quite a stir among Mormon Latinos!
Come on, folks. The Deseret News is practically the house organ for the LDS Church, a church that is expert at spinning news. It really helps when you hide all your raw statistics. The LDS church does not tell anyone about ASA figures. They count all sorts of people who have no interest in being LDS any more.
The Mormons are committed, but the negatives that come along with it aren’t worth it.
I don’t know who is included in the LDS membership rolls, I have read lists that include phrases that lead me to believe that when a member is baptised for someone else in the family, trat person is added to the rolls. If this is true, I and my four children are included because my cousin, or one of her kids, has been baptised for each of us. I went to a LDS sevice, once…. Frances Scott
Frances, Mormons are not baptized on behalf of living persons, only the dead. Your cousin could have been baptized in the LDS Temple for any of your dead relatives, but not for you or any of your living children. LDS doctrine says that is an ordinance you must normally do for yourself while living.
Mormons have baptized literally hundreds of millions of dead folks in their over 150 years of existence. These numbers are not included in their active, current membership roles.
Yes but the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey showed that between 1990 and 2008 the proportion of the US population that identified itself as LDS stayed the same at 1.4%.
See page 7 of:
http://b27.cc.trincoll.edu/weblogs/AmericanReligionSurvey-ARIS/reports/ARIS_Report_2008.pdf
And even that proportion, as we know, is largely focussed on one particular region.
[blockquote] The Mormons are committed, but the negatives that come along with it aren’t worth it. [/blockquote]
starting with the “temple garments”!
in all seriousness, there is a tremendous amount of propaganda that comes out of the LDS, much more than we are used to parsing through with the ENS.
The point about ASA is a valid one. According to the book “Mormon America”, attrition of baptized converts is around 50% worldwide. I have also seen claims that only about 10% of baptized Mormons are fully in good standing with the Church, meaning “Temple worthy”.