During the Q&A of Elder Bednar’s National Press Club appearance, he was asked about the recent Salt Lake Tribune article that shows a a very small increase of members in the United States outside of Utah. His answer was a masterclass in doublespeak
I’ll try to be an apostle, and not an academic and a statistician. I would just highlight one feature and talk about the very complicated nature of what we are discussing. If you take a look at the church in the aggregate, it is growing, which in the climate we find ourselves in today, is rather newsworthy in and of itself. Secondly, if you take the westerly part of the United States, we have had a huge out migration of members in that part of the country, we’ve also had a huge migration from Mexico and Central America. I have no idea what the real numbers are. So we have numbers, and I believe the numbers, but there is some uncertainty in the numbers. So I guess what I’m suggesting is at the aggregate I have confidence in the growth, if you want to break it down state by state that is a rapidly moving target. I’m just not in a position to comment because I’m not sure what is happening.
Bednar, time 39:17
Let me interpret this for you. If he answered as a statistician, which is what he is trained as, he would have to admit that the numbers are going down, and it does not look good for the church. So he answers as an Apostle which gives him great latitude in obfuscating real numbers. He then answers what he wishes she would have asked him, and not what was asked. The question was not the overall growth of the church, the questions was about many states in the USA having a decrease in members. He answers that the church is growing worldwide.
Now the doublespeak. Yes, there is a huge migration out of the western United States, and they have the number on exactly how many people are leaving, and he believes the numbers! But he said there is uncertainty in the numbers, even if he believes them. He is not sure what is happening. That is the Apostle speaking, who believes the Church with roll forth like a stone cut from a mountain, so he can’t imagine what is happening. The statistician would have had to say that the number show a downturn in members in several US states.
Three years ago I wrote about all the Church members moving out of California. Recently NPR did a story about people moving to places where political views match their own. My last post on the moving I came to the conclusion that most the members that were moving out of California were doing it for economic reasons. Is this still true?
I now wonder if members might be moving out of liberal states like California, and moving to more conservative states like Utah and Texas. How many people do you know that have moved to Utah so they can be around church members?
The SLTrib article that was the impetus for the question to Bednar has some great charts. [1]
One was a list of absolute growth/shrinkage of the states, sorted by growth, rather than an alphabetic list. The 15 fastest growing states for Mormonism, in absolute numbers (not percentage relative to state population change), from largest to smallest:
SD, AR, TN, MO, SC, KY, OK, AL, NC, FL, TX, ID, WI, UT, MT.
And here are the 15 states that are shrinking in absolute numbers of Mormons, starting with the most loss:
CA, ND, WA, CT, OR, MN, NV, CO, AK, DE, IL, NM, NY, WY, MA.
If you compare an election map from the 2020 election, every single one of the states where Mormonism grew, the state voted Red in 2020.
In the states where Mormonism shrank, 12 of the 15 voted Blue. The other three states that that voted Red but still shrank have something in common. They are all oil producing states. When the oil market collapsed in 2020, a lot of oil field workers were laid off and went back home. In ND and WY in particular, there were a lot of Utah families that went to work in the oil fields.
So it is no surprise that the Church that is known for being very conservative and right wing, is against same sex marriage, and has a history of racism is growing in these states. On the other hand, Mormonism is a poor fit for more liberal states. The statistics just confirm the obvious.
There is another graph listing the states in order of growth/shrinkage of Mormonism as a percentage of overall state population change. This really gives you a better idea of what is happening. For example, ND population took a big hit in 2020 because of the collapse of their oil economy. The number of Mormons shrank, but so did the overall population, so it is still possible that Mormons held their own or even grew in ND as a percentage of the state population.
Similarly, in UT, the number of Mormons increased pretty substantially, but so did the overall state population. Did the relative percentage of Mormons in UT go up or down?
So here are the top 15 states by percentage increase of Mormons relative to state population change:
SD, DC, AR, MO, SC, TN, OK, KY, MS, NC, FL, WV, TX, LA, AZ.
And the 15 states in order of greatest shrinkage as a percentage of state population:
NJ, ID, ND, WA, DE, CT, RI, NV, VT, UT, MN, NY, CA, OR, MD.
Of the percentage growth states, 13 of 15 did vote Red in 2020. AZ was at the tail end of the list, and it just barely voted Blue, so not much an anomaly there. The only real outlier is DC. There are lots of Mormons in the DC area in government jobs, and with a new administration there was probably an influx. Plus with COVID, a federal job was sometimes the only game in town. These could be the cause of this anomaly.
On the shrinkage side, there were a number of big surprises. First of all, the percentage shrinkage list is considerably different than the shrinkage in the first list of absolute percentage growth.
Twelve of the fastest percentage shrinkage states still voted Blue in 2020, though it is a significantly different 12 than in the first list. Of the three Red states that shrank, ND still made that list, so the collapse of the oil industry in ND put a serious dent in the number of Mormons in the state, who apparently returned to Utah or wherever else they had moved from to work the oil fields.
The big surprise is the other two states with major percentage shrinkage: Utah and Idaho.
That answers the question about whether the people moving into UT and ID are mostly Mormons selling out in places like California and moving back to Zion as I thought in my first post three years ago. Apparently no, the people moving into Utah are lower percentage Mormon than the people already there. They are lowering the overall percentage of Mormons in the state.
Well, I answered the reporters question as a nerdy engineer, not as an apostle (or former bishop).
Your thoughts?
[1] Lots of the analysis of these charts that follows in this post was taken directly from a post I saw on Reddit several months ago and saved for a later date. I now can’t find the post, or I would give credit to the excellent write-up this person did. If that person happens to read this, please make it known in the comments so you can get credit.
Wheat & Tares 
I live in the fastest growing area in the whole US, the area around St George in southern Utah. Yes, there are a lot of people moving in, especially from California. The most common reason I have heard from those escaping Cali, is they want to escape the liberal government and live somewhere with good ol’ conservative values. They hate what California has become with its liberal politics and increased population over the past 20 years, so they are bringing all of the problems of Southern California to Southern Utah. None that I personally know of about 10 move in retired couples coming from California are Mormon. The only Mormons moving into the area are retired couples from Northern Utah, just like my husband and I.
Idaho, well I live there half the year when it is just too hot in Southern Utah (most years. We stayed in S. U. this year because of medical problems) Again, we are having a lot of people moving in. But it is the same pattern. People moving in from anywhere that is not the jello belt are not Mormon and they are looking for conservative politics. People moving from one place in the jello belt to another are the only Mormons and they are looking for a summer home, not a permanent residence.
When I was active, I served for several years as a ward clerk and in other leadership positions. The Church has the numbers; after all it believes the records are essential to the salvation of people (see D&C 128). It tracks attendance, baptisms, blessings, deaths, and resignations, among other things. For most of the world, the records are maintained electronically and are updated in real time. Of course the data on active members is better for obvious reasons. I have firsthand experience maintaining the records and submitting the reports. While there is a statistical element to this, basic questions about membership in a city, state, or country is available in real-time. There is a lag, and probably more inaccuracy, in attendance numbers because the Church relies on individual units to accurately count and submit reports. I’d imagine covid and online church has complicated tracking attendance data and to a lesser extent general membership numbers . Church leaders have the numbers and my gut tells me the data are not as favorable as they claim—hence Bednar’s evasive response. The numbers I am more interested in are these because I think they are better indicators of the health of the Church: number of live temple ordinances, number of individual patrons attending temple, number of members submitting names to temple, number of households led by a full tithe payer, number of endowed members with recommends, number of missions completed in 18 or 24 months, early morning seminary attendance, etc.
I believe that everyone knows that Church membership statistics are grossly inflated. The reluctance of Church leaders to acknowledge this is caused, I believe by a characteristic of all bureaucracies: to hunker down defensively when a problem is made known.
I hope that the Church will someday adopt a more honest method of deriving membership statistics. When I served in Ward leadership positions in Maryland, everyone knew the inflated numbers problem was real. It made our efforts to care for the members of our Stake much harder, but we were stuck with it. It is very hard for general leadership to be acknowledge numbers that aren’t so wonderful. Hopefully it will change, someday.
We as a Church have long had what I call the Amway meeting problem (I date myself here; Amway was a big National multi-marketing scheme in the 1980s), in which there is a relentless push to report ever-higher numbers.
I now live in Sandy. Fortunately, our Stake Presidency honestly and forthrightly dealt with declining membership, and recommended and got approval for downsizing our Stake from 7 to 5 wards.
I think that our Church’s central leadership IS dealing with membership number problems, but, depressingly, is loathe to publicly acknowledge the issue. Maybe someday …….
Anyone who has been to Church since Covid restrictions have been listed know that the numbers are bad. Very bad. Much worse than anyone at 50 East South Temple is willing to publicly concede.
I don’t know if this is reflected in official numbers, which count everyone who has ever been baptized even if they haven’t set foot in a church for 50 years. But the hard reality is that oodles of people got used to not going, and they aren’t coming back.
Wasn’t it N. Eldon Tanner the Church brought in to right their financial ship half a century ago when the building program got out of control? They need to bring in, or designate, someone to do the same thing with the reported membership data. They just need to stand up in conference once and say “Hey, we messed up. We’ve been pretending that anyone who’s ever been baptized is still a member until they’re 110 even if we’ve never heard from them again. From now on, we’re only counting people who have been to church, or had some active contact with their local ward or branch, at least once in the past year [or whatever other criterion].” Once they did that once, they could revise whatever the current notional number is (17 million?) down to 5 million or whatever, and just go forward with a cleaner slate.
I kind of wondered if a no-nonsense person like Dallin H. Oaks might not do something like this, but it seems like in his age, his mind only has space for fighting LGBT rights, so now I doubt he’d be the one. Still, though, given that Russell M. Nelson has shown that the top man can do pretty much whatever he wants, and the other 14 will rubber stamp it, we only need one man to make it to the top spot who believes in cleaning up the public perception of the data and boom! It will be done. There will be no going back, even if later Church presidents didn’t like it. You can’t reinflate the numbers without looking like you’re openly lying.
Statistics show that all people tell on average at least 2 lies/day (many studies show greater frequency, up to 100x, and adults lie more than children)……but they are mostly “white lies” and generally do not cause harm; until they do cause harm.
This is a good list of common lies we state every day : https://bestlifeonline.com/the-40-things-people-lie-about-most-often/
Dan Ariely has a series of books and research papers that details honesty in the business and religious world.
Some of his thoughts are highlighted in this article. https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/behavior/what-strengthens-and-weakens-our-integrity-part-iv-the-power-of-moral-reminders/. Of interest are about the moral reminders and how they can help. LDS culture has garments, CTR rings, wedding rings, pictures, and the sacrament. Do these remind us to be truly 100% honest? Would a cross help? When was the last time you heard a talk on honesty in a LDS setting?
A quick web search shows only 3 GC talks in the past 10 years about honesty; (and 12 on charity). But there are 42 talks on obedience, 37 on following the prophet, and 69 on the covenant path. Do we value honesty, or it just assumed it is entailed with other gospel topics?
As Billy Joel sang….”Honesty is such a lonely word.” Maybe the press needs to give Bednar a Bible/BOM prior to a news conference or at least hang the 10 commandments on the wall.
So, what’s the problem if the Q15 say “little white lies?” Should not we give them a break ? Do not we all lie ?
Most of us that contribute to this site could list the lies and deceits of past and current LDS leaders, mas o menos.
Just in the past 5 years Holland, Oaks, Nelson, Ballard alone have been deceitful in their comments. We know of the MLM, sexual abuse and coverups, emotional abuse, etc that persists in the LDS church.
Michael Quinn called their tactics……Theocratic ethics. Also known as lying for the Lord.
Basically, lying is a way to control people and get them behave how you want them to.
Maybe the Q15 and their families could move to California to help the CA member church attendance and they could do their own head count.
I am amazed in this information age, how little most LDS members know about the church.
The Q15 is doing amazing work of keeping the truth away from its’ members. The business world and world governments could take a few pages out of their tactics and keep their own populaces suppressed with misinformation. If Bednar is not sure what is happening and is not lying, then he needs to be replaced with some one who can figure out and admit what is really happening.
For years LDS membership has constituted roughly 2/1000 of the world population. And since membership is at least 50% inactive, at best we have 1 of every 1000 inhabitants on the earth on the “covenant path”. Think of that for a minute: the LDS Lord has a plan in place that excludes 999/1000. Pardon my English but that sucks.
We have 70k full-time missionaries
We have jet airplanes.
We have the Internet and satellites.
Yet we are 1/1000.
My son just returned from a study abroad this summer in England, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. And he took a side trip to Monaco. He told my wife that he didn’t see a single sign of the Church all summer. No buildings. No missionaries. Nothing. That’s anecdotal but representative of most of the population of the world. Just a rounding error.
The Australian census of 2021 says;
Christianity is the most common religion in Australia, with over 40 per cent (43.9 per cent) identifying as Christian. This has reduced from over 50 per cent (52.1 per cent) in 2016 and from over 60 per cent (61.1 per cent) in 2011. As in earlier Censuses, the largest Christian denominations are Catholic (20.0 per cent of the population) and Anglican (9.8 per cent).
Census said self reported lds membership 57,868 down 3800 since 2016, with 58% of members Australian born, and 30% from Oceania. Most of our deacons are polynesians. Half our professional rugby union and rugby league teams are polynesians. When there is football training on sunday our deacons are not at church.
The official church site says As of 31 December 2019, the LDS Church reported 154,595 members in 308 Congregations in Australia which is the largest body of members and congregations in Oceania. This is an increase of 30,945 members since 2009 which is the largest increase of members in Oceania.
Reality 37% of the numbers claimed by the church admit to it, and the growth they claim is a lie.
Agree with you Josh that the success rate is very poor, and so? And in Australia we can’t get to 40% active.
Lol the doublespeak there. Good grief.
Anecdotally a lot of my friends from SoCal moved to Utah during Covid so they could send their kids to school instead of homeschool. So yes, it was kind of related to their politics, but really more that the Covid restrictions in California were totally unpalatable to their families so they moved to a state that was more open.
Some of them were maybe Covid-deniars but most weren’t – they realized Covid was a thing, but they also wanted to send their four-to-six kids to school and to parks. I mean even I thought California’s Covid response was bonkers.
I will have to check out the NPR article. I am tethered to Utah for a while yet but also tempted to move to a blue state because living in a theocracy is not my favorite.
“ My last post on the moving I came to the conclusion that most the members that were moving out of California were doing it for economic reasons. Is this still true?”
CA resident here, (but not living in one of the big cities).
Our stake has declined by at least 2 wards. Those that I personally know who’ve relocated to UT, ID, and AZ, did so to be closer to family members.
There were also some, fewer in number, who relocated for a particular job.
I also know some who stopped attending due to the church involvement in the Prop 8 campaign.
Thanks for the breakdown.
Bednar’s reflects the culture of toxic positivity among the leadership. You’re nor allowed to admit any sort of defeat. You’re always a victim of the “world” but things are always going swimmingly for the organization. Like Jeffery Holland said, the problem the church has is too much growth.
While it is disingenuous to believe that the church is not having any growth problems, I’ll pull a little bothsidesism (which I normally hate) and proclaim that it is similarly disingenuous to believe that the church is in drastic decline as was a common belief in the ex-Mormon community for a while. The church is still there. It still has an active membership and this active membership cannot and will not be deterred by the arguments of the CES Letter, john Dehlin, and the likes.
In my Wasatch Front ward attendance is down to about 30 percent. It was over 40 percent consistently before the pandemic. The pandemic had a huge effect.
My wife and I are thinking about moving away from Utah upon her retirement. Reasons: politics, drought, lifestyle
LDS migration from CA to UT is not a new story, My in-laws moved from the Central Valley in ‘80s because they wanted to be in Zion for the Last Days which were right around the corner My God The Hippies! Tons of ammo & food storage, hunker down in ‘ol St George. Eventually of course another move north to SLC the safe center of Zion where one of them died of brain disease and the lone survivor is now old as rocks and so far as I can tell not at all concerned w/ the Last Days.
Elder Bednar was more correct than he cryptically acknowledged. In my view, there may well be 3 churches within the church: the international church, the American church, and the Utah church, the latter two being the tail that wags the dog. While the church’s global numbers tick upward, and while American mobility may indicate net loss, the declining numbers may telegraph that the church could be facing at least one existential crisis, perhaps more than one depending on how one parses it. At Oct 2019 conference Pres Nelson outlined the church’s grand plans for the first vision bicentennial; and four months later, the entire church was shut down due to covid and the grand plans came to nought. Some may face existential peril in Pres Nelson, as a seer, didn’t see that coming. In addition, some will see mask mandates and other mitigation efforts as limits on religious freedom, another potential flashpoint in a crisis of faith. Both of these may help account for membership number reduction. And mobility data may illustrate how the numbers decline. Parallel data from Australia may be further instructive: according to SL Tribune, recently released Australian census data show that only 44% of Australians consider themselves Christian, down from 87% 20 years before. And 57,000 self-identified as LDS, while the church carries 155,000 Australian members on its books. And the next largest census category of faith were “nones”. Which is the long way round to say, as Tamil Ansary writes in his book, The Invention of Yesterday, the loss of faith that was evidenced in the Reformation actually was precipitated by the Catholic Church’s inadequate response to the Black Death—devout Catholics went to Mass every day, repeated the Rosary hourly, went to confession daily, and were otherwise devout, and they still died, and en mass. The Reformation was the consequence of the existential crisis the plague forced up the church. Elder Bednar is correct in the international numbers, but the current crises of faith covid presented may well be foundational to the US migration numbers, and non-migratory members just dropping out of the church.
My ward in California has lost a number of members due to a variety of reasons..This ward has had a large population of senior members (baby boomers) including my husband and myself. Some have moved away to be near family as a result of five deaths of spouses. One of those deaths was covid related. A few have moved to Idaho and Utah to be in the conservative culture of those states. There is also illness that keeps others home, cancer, strokes, etc. My husband and I no longer attend because we no longer believe the truth claims of the church. I think if we went back to visit we would find the population of the ward greatly depleted. These people have been the driving force of the ward, but no more. We often point out the decline in numbers of the millennials, but I think the elderly population has taken a pretty bit hit in attendance. When so many of the “boomers” having carried the load for years, while millennials seem unwilling to embrace the gospel as fully as we once did, less willing to participate, the decline in numbers has further ramifications in the functioning of the wards, where there is no longer the strength to keep the ward a strong community. This is exacerbated by the changes the Church has made since President Nelson became President. The community spirit is gone.
This entire press conference made me want to smash something with a hammer.
Southern California resident here. As noted above, the migration of saints from California to Utah is not new. But here is what seems new to me:
1. Core California native families finally giving up on the golden state and moving to Utah. We are used to members moving all the time, especially young couples and retirees. But the core native families always stayed. That has changed. For most, it wasn’t economics; it was keeping their kids in school and giving up on California’s stubborn COVID response which has finally ended.
2. Non-LDS members with no ties to the mountain west moving to Utah, Colorado, and Idaho. Many of them asked me loads of questions in making this decision since I’m originally from SLC. It seemed their motivation was a combination of politics, economics, and fleeing COVID protocols.
Even my family considered moving in with my mom for one year in 2020 and then return to California when it reopened. We ultimately stuck it out here.
I feel bad for the Utah locals. Californians bring with them a lot if spending power that is truly ruining the locals ability to buy a home. And the mountains are now overrun every weekend.
But now with the cuckoo bananas Supreme Court, I’m so glad to be in California where minority rights are being prioritized.
SFBay Californian here. I agree with what other Californians have said about the migration. I’ve seen tons of non-Mormons move to Idaho especially. Members were going to Utah pre-Covid but now it seems like they’re headed to Texas, Arkansas, and Tennesse.
Although politics are a part of it, traffic, congestion, commute times, lack-of-water, etc. are huge factors as well. And of course the biggest of the factors in our area is house prices. When I see core CA native families leaves it’s almost always one of two reasons: (1) Selling of the 1.5 mil modest family home from the 1980s so Gma and Gpa can fund a nice retirement closer to family elsewhere. (2) Younger families with kids who won’t ever be able to afford to buy even a starter home here and even though they love the area, feel they have no choice but to look elsewhere.
With that though, there is one other element to consider when it comes to CA migration. And that is that even the core natives are Utah transplants. Very, very few people over the age of 30 were actually born here. Let alone, their parents or grandparents. And the vast majority of people who leave, arrived within the last 20 years to make money. Having made the money (and watched their house prices increase), they head the other direction.
I wish the Church would report its real membership numbers. They could do that by cleaning up its membership rolls, by reporting SM attendance, by reporting number of active TRs, reporting number of tithe payers, by reporting number of members officially leaving the Church, etc. Leadership probably already have these numbers. They need to share them with the membership.
@Chadwick, the “core” piece of your comment is insightful. That’s what I’ve observed too.
In my SoCal ward there was always a chunk that was transitory – they were in California for school or residency or a first job but you kind of knew they’d head back to Utah. But there were others who were the long-timers and had no intent to relocate. And what was crazy during Covid was that a good chunk of the long-timers moved.
@Roger Hansen – I agree completely. The numbers they provide—membership, wards and stakes, and temples—create a facade that all is well. These numbers are virtually meaningless because they are devoid of context. There are other measures that provide far more insight into the actual state of things.
@John W – you’re probably right, the exmormon community thinks the decline is worse than it actually is.
It depends on what your definition of the word “numbers” is.
Did anyone ask DAB about the true need for temples in Rome or Paris?
Let’s face it. There’s probably a fair bit of truth to that old saying: Numbers don’t lie, but liars love numbers.
It’s unfortunate that we can’t do more than share our own anecdotes to try to slowly paint a bigger picture of what church membership looks like around the world. I would love to look through more meaningful data, but the church chooses not to share it, and I doubt they will in the future. This got me thinking: what would it take to start a cooperative, freelance church statistical project? Anyone can count the number of people in sacrament meeting. It’s interesting to know that there were about 210 people in my ward last week, but not terribly interesting or meaningful. But if 100 people are all reporting attendance numbers, we could start to build our own attendance tracking system. Even a few hundred people that wanted to participate could start to paint an informative picture of trends across the country. Of course, it would be better if someone had started this ten years ago!
There is an independent website that tracks Church growth found here http://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/ If I remember correctly the Church has gone after them in the past for reporting on some Church growth, so they no longer publish stuff about ward closures/consolidations, but they still report on stake level closures/disclosures
As can be seen on that website, the Church has consolidated two stakes this year in the East Bay. This lines up with my experience growing up in Northern California, the Church is thinning out there, and a whole of unit consolidations need to happen around the state. Anecdotally, it is mostly a consequence of high housing prices, all the kids I grew up with moved out of state, and all of our parents when they hit retirement cash out and move somewhere cheaper
There’s some leaked data for the UK out there somewhere. It was discussed on recent podcasts hosted by Priesthood Dispatches discussing the closure of Lichfield Stake here.
A family member mentioned five stakes in Japan have been reduced to two.
S said: ” The numbers I am more interested in are these because I think they are better indicators of the health of the Church: number of live temple ordinances, number of individual patrons attending temple, number of members submitting names to temple, number of households led by a full tithe payer, number of endowed members with recommends, number of missions completed in 18 or 24 months, early morning seminary attendance, etc.” I suspect that if Bednar had good numbers in any of these categories, as a statistician OR an apostle, he would have whipped them out as evidence that his hunch is right, that there’s nothing bad to see here, that *all is well in Zion.*
No matter where you live in the western US, CA transplants will drive up housing prices. We sold our Scottsdale house and moved across town in late 2020. The house we bought is now worth 150% of the price we paid, and the house we sold is now listed at 200% of what we sold it for. (Irksome, obviously). I’m sure the CA commenters are right, but I would just add my thumb to the scale of the economic upside they find in moving, and I’m not at all convinced it’s just conservatives fleeing a very blue state for a purplish/reddish one. I think it’s getting bigger, better houses for much less money when working from home is much more possible, and yes, Covid restrictions here are much more relaxed and always have been.
As to the Church’s decline during Covid, I think that’s pretty real, but there has been soft decline in the metrics S mentioned as well. I said on another thread that someone on reddit claiming to have insider COB info said there was a huge concern about the decline in TR holders since Covid. To paraphrase a tweet I saw that describes the decline in organizations: When things go bad, good people leave. Next are the people who stayed because they thought they could change things, but found that they couldn’t because the good people had already left. What’s left are the hostages and the bad people.
Now, depending on where you are sitting, you could say that quote is about people leaving the Church or people leaving CA, but it seems an apt description. I wonder what % of our congregations are the hostages (kids, mixed belief marriages) and which are the bad people. The “bad” ones don’t have to be full on agents of evil. They just have to be ruining Christianity for the rest of us, or as the tee shirts say, “Jesus, save us from your followers.”
I go every week to SM (unless I’m in Vegas or Wendover). Or Disneyland, which semi counts as church, lol. So I attend church, pay tithing, and participate in some boring church get-togethers. I do all of this to keep the spouse happy.
I often wonder, as I sit in SM in my ward, how many are there for various reasons like me.
And fyi, our ward is definitely shrinking. I’m blaming it on summer travel?
From my earlier comment at 1.40. From the census 30% of self identifying members are pacific islanders. Most of these are economic migrants in the last 20 years.
So the number of locals is dropping drastically. The census says 3800 less in 4 years but pacific islanders that came as members, are 120% of the new members here. So of the church claim of 155000 members; about 40,000 are locals. The core members.
Some amusing political things our conservatives are called Lberals, and are blue, and were just voted out federally. We do not have blue and red states, there are 2 conservative and 5 labor states. All support abortion, gay marriage, universal healthcare, and voluntary assisted dying. Climate change has been resisted by the conservatives. The conservatives tend to be more pro business. So if there was stimulus money to be spent the conservative parties give it to business, labor would give it to the poorest individuals. Labor also are concerned about economic inequality.