Happy Independence Day. The post image is the flag of Deseret, the state proposed by Mormon settlers of Utah in 1849. The Church grew for the next 150 years, then sort of leveled off, and now seems to be in decline, at least in America. That’s the conclusion of the must-read opinion piece at the Washington Post, “The GOP has a glaring Mormon problem.”
The piece ties together data supporting three claims: (1) The Mormon vote has been a solidly reliable if minor slice of Republican vote; (2) as the LDS leadership has embraced (if not formally endorsed) the Republican Party and more recently leaned into the extremist side of the party (anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, anti-science), some members have pulled away from both the GOP and the LDS, particularly the younger LDS cohort; and (3) LDS growth in America is now in decline, shrinking this reliable Republican voting demographic. The article also notes the Trump-Romney rift, but my sense is that has resulted in LDS pulling away from Romney toward Trump, not the opposite as suggested in the article. Conservative Mormons have booed Romney, not Trump.
The author of the piece isn’t (or doesn’t appear to be) LDS. This isn’t an LDS journalist getting in a dig at LDS or a cynical LDS blogger who gets the usual set of gripes printed as an editorial. This is a data guy, a “data columnist focusing on elections, polling, demographics, and statistics.” He’s just reading the data. My focus here is the commentary on LDS growth, not the political consequences he notes in the article. Here are a few quotations.
Republicans often find themselves on the losing end of demographic shifts as the United States grows more racially diverse, better-educated and less religious. Only one long-term trend — the rapid growth of the reliably conservative Mormon Church — has consistently provided the GOP with good news.
That’s the first paragraph. The rest of the article is a “not anymore” response to that view.
Mormonism is in decline, and Democrats are gaining traction with younger church members. There are no easy solutions for the church or the GOP.
There’s a nice graph showing the percentage of US adults who identify as Mormon falling from about 1.75% to about 1.2% over the last fifteen years. That is a significant decline. That’s based on reliable survey data, not LDS statistics. It gives a realistic view of LDS activity and membership, which is harder to discern in the not-so-credible data released publicly by the Church. Even the official LDS membership data, presented in another graph, shows LDS membership annual growth rate falling from 2.0% to 0.5% over the last forty years. As the author notes, this is bad news for the GOP and for the Church.
Here’s the last quote:
Meanwhile, the church’s close alliance with the GOP might be costing it members. As Notre Dame political science professor David Campbell, who was raised Mormon, told me, “There’s an allergic reaction among many Americans — particularly those who lean to the left politically — when religion and politics mix. We see it among Catholics. We see it among evangelicals. And we’re seeing it among Mormons.”
So the Church’s mixing of religion and politics is costing it members. Surprise, surprise. I don’t think LDS leaders intended to mix conservative politics with LDS religion. It’s not like they had a five-year plan to do so. But they let it happen, initially by letting Ezra Taft Benson do his political extremism thing with little or no pushback or public rebuke. Mormons are still living in the political wreckage of Hurricane Ezra. The small steps the leadership has been taking recently to move away from the conservative fringe toward the middle aren’t going to have much of an effect. There are indications most politically conservative Mormons (that is, most Mormons) are more inclined to listen to their political prophets than to their religious ones. Not that the members are generally aware of this. I think many are hearing and following President Trump and MAGA rhetoric when they think they are hearing and following President Nelson and LDS guidance.
So go read the article. What do you think? Is LDS growth in America in decline? Is that decline reversible? Has the mixing of politics and religion hurt LDS growth or led to increased LDS defection? Is the present status of the LDS Church as political religion or religious politics reversible?
Wheat & Tares 
Yes. Mormon Republicans are more faithful to their Republican tribe than to their Mormonism.
Fascinating. The article had graphs showing the decline in Christian church membership in general, both Protestant and Catholic. The LDS statistics are following those general trends. I can’t imagine a situation in which the LDS decline could be reversed while Protestant and Catholic continue to decline. In other words, the only way to increase LDS Church membership and activity would also increase Protestant and Catholic membership and activity.
I was raised Republican, and oddly enough, it was Christian values that drove me out of the party. I was in my 20s, and really paying attention to the news for the first time. The first year I read about Utah’s Republican Legislature passing laws that hurt poor people, I thought it was a fluke, or maybe the newspaper was biased against Republicans (I was reading the Deseret News at this point in my life; SL Trib was apostate). After a couple more years of reading about Utah’s Republican Legislature making life harder for the working poor and the disabled, I officially quit being a Republican and registered as an Independent. It was a couple decades after that, while still attending Church, before I officially became a Democrat.
If only Christian churches had mixed politics and religion in a way that helped the poor and the sick! Biggest missed opportunity on the planet. Can you imagine the moral dilemma it would be if the No Bodily Autonomy caucus was also the political party most invested in making life better for the lower income classes and the sick/disabled? Wow.
I can’t imagine the LDS Church doing anything visible to break with its Republican values. It may want Democrats in the pews; it may talk about all political parties having good values, but it’s positions on sexual issues simply won’t allow it to stray from Republicanism.
LDS is in decline in developing countries, closing down many wards, and consolidating. It’s a highly legalistic religion with black and white prescribed behaviors and practices in a rigid structure supported by rigid systems. People want their inner authority and are exhausted from the codependent relationship with external authority and implied (and expressed) threats for non-compliance. This is not the gospel of grace with a focus on Christ and His sacrifice/victory. Only relationships with Christ and leaders who come out from behind their formal positions and have authentic, caring relationships to earn trust will generate internal motivation to freely use inner authority. Forcing, imposing, manipulating, and threatening to kick members out for not ‘obeying’ authoritarian leaders is just not freedom. Of course I will ‘choose’ to do what you want if you threaten me with my life (eternal life) to do what’s ‘commanded’ (demanded by leaders, not God). Freedom must be based on self-awareness and not smothered by endless doctrines and ‘inspiration’ of leaders, many who are just speaking their own biases and learning.
It’s time for Mormons to embrace grace and stop giving it lip service. It’s time to experience Christ and healing during the worst of times, not reducing people to behaviors but helping the sick to find the hospital that will not misdiagnose or miss the diagnosis by only seeing everything as sin (behaviors) and start seeing patients in a holistic way. Grace, love, people, trust, and respect in real relationships must replace the cold OT hierarchical structures and corporate reporting arrangements (these are not relationships). Honor one’s authority to change instead of misusing formal authority to demand immediate conformity. This doesn’t heal or save a soul. Only the person can decide to change and this happens through natural consequences, not social consequences and scare tactics. The higher brain must choose instead of the lower brain reacting to a fearful culture of legalism.
My dad cedes power to 2 sources to do his thinking for him: The LDS church and Fox News. If it ever came to having to choose between those 2, I think he’d go with the church, but I’m not 100% certain.
Interesting article. You can tell the author isn’t LDS because he says: “It also recently told members to consider each candidate’s character and positions rather than vote straight-ticket,” and we all know that yes, the last half of this was a recent statement, but telling members to consider the candidate’s characters was *always* said for decades until 2016 when suddenly *poof* we weren’t told to do that, as you & I have both blogged about. They are struggling to land on the right “political neutrality” statements quite a lot throughout the last several election cycles with an eroding neutrality on their part, then a bizarre Americanization of the statement, then trying to get back to the original. One wonders why they deviated, but I have theories.
There’s an essay that was published about the lack of Church growth, and I’ve been planning to do a post on it, so look forward to that. There are many reasons for the stalled growth, quite a few of which are alluded to in the article (e.g. family size is a big one). It seems to me that since the mid-2010s families with queer children have been an almost foregone conclusion that they will leave. Very few have successfully threaded that needle for long in the hostile culture of the Church, that becomes more hostile with each departure.
I’ve been saying for well over a decade that people interpret their religion through their political lens, not the other way around. For the polarized conservatives who dominate in Church culture, they don’t recognize the water they are swimming in. To them it feels perfectly normal and comfortable, but it is increasingly gross to those of us who don’t agree with their political (and authoritarian) stances.
I’m a bit skeptical of some of the claims made by the article. Yes there’s been a decline in both church and republican affiliation but newer generations still need to translate these into a democratic votes sufficient and interspersed enough to overcome the (extremely) American problem of gerrymandering.
Young adults however DO tend to grow more politically engaged as they get older, and it’s true that millennial and succeeding generations are for once not becoming much more conservative (so far) with age.
The question is what manner of engagement are we anticipating here? While I condemn the more violent outcomes occurring rn now in France, I cannot deny that the fury and the outrage is but the manifestations
of the frustration felt by mid- to economically disadvantaged classes and ethic minorities that are routinely marginalized by conventional institutions.
The gap between rich and poor in many liberal democratic countries is increasing, and this disparity is felt by many members even within their own stakes and wards. Leaders continue to be called from their locality’s middle to upper classes, and I think it’s this disjunction between haves and the have-nots that will create the strongest points of tension within local congregations. This break may or may not always translate into a clear liberal and conservative partisanship across liberal-democratic, politico-geographic regions where the church exists. It certainly isn’t a guarantee of a slow and obvious switch among younger members for greater participation within center-left parties within conventional institutions. Many might just opt to tune out.
@moovusgroovus, yeah my dad too.
In fact the only times I can recall his expression of doubt in the church and its leaders were in reference to hot-button controversies where the major or official narratives held by his political, and religious centres of authority became conflicted.
He still believes in the legitimacy of Jan 6th. He still distrusts vaccination and disagrees with the church’s stance on the matter. He has never liked the church’s distancing itself from the mythicized ‘reasons’ behind the Ordinance & Priesthood ban. He still reads McConkie and Ezra Taft Benson just as much (if not more) than he reads from current Latter-Day Saint scholars and leaders.
I love him. I cannot save him. This is a true principle regardless of one’s church affiliation and/or position therewith . Truth-seeking is an agentive affair.
Utah only became a reliable Republican state following the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Prior to the Democratic party siding with the “Free Love / Pro Abortion” argument, Utah followed the national mood in its presidential vote. Two notable anomalies. In 1896 Utah voted for the Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan (McKinley won) and in 1960 Utah voted for Nixon (JFK won). Observe that in 1964 Utah voted for Johnson over Goldwater!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_Utah
I puzzle over those who argue there is a difference in the morality of the major political parties. They both compromise principles in pursuit of power. Both 2020 presidential candidates were terribly flawed individuals. You may disagree with this assessment, but please respect that others have strong reasons to disagree with you.
The strength of America is not in its politicians but in its Constitution and the love Americans have for the promise of self-government. Every four years we get to play the game of picking our class president. No matter who wins, half of the country and sometimes more than half preferred someone else. But the Constitution of the country reigns supreme. Let’s be grateful for that!
Jana Riess gave a presentation at MHA last month and said Gen Z is not that much different than older voters and that the much ballyhooed saying they are devices is mostly overblown. Yes they are more D than R, but the drop off not very significant.
For me, trumpism was another catalyst to recently leaving the church after being born into it 50 years ago. I changed to Democrat around 2018. My wife and kids (two oldest daughters are gay) dropped out before 2020. I hung on to the iron rod as best as I could until the start of this year. However, It’s hard to hang on to an iron rod that really wasn’t there to begin with. The value clash between church leadership, relatives, members, etc. and me has been a gut wrenching, traumatizing affair over many years and the political division became another step towards searching out the real history of the church and eventually leaving. So yes, the GOP rhetoric has been a factor in leaving the church for my 6 member family.
I’m with PawWingsArt in that Trumpism was a real catalyst when it came to my interest in church just plummeting. There were many people in my ward who had clearly transferred their worship of church leaders to Trump. That was frightening. There are two reasons (am0ng many others, obviously) that I believe church membership will continue to shrink:
1) As the OP points out, the church’s small (miniscule?) steps away from hardline Republican stances will do nothing to keep people in, in large part because a number of members, both younger and older, I think, have already voted with their feet. Once folks realize the misogyny, homophobia, and racism at the heart of Mormonism, hearing an LDS apostle say “hey, we denounce racism” isn’t nearly enough to keep most people in the church. There’s just too much stuff wrong with Mormonism for these small course corrections to matter very much. And now that we’re getting a better sense of things like gaslighting, etc., a lot of the excuses that Mormon leaders make for the church’s exclusionary and harmful beliefs are much more readily recognized for the bullsh*t that they are.
2) IMHO, Mormonism as a belief system is lagging further and further behind the ways in which the world is changing. And I don’t mean that in the whole “we’re in the world, not of the world” way; I mean that the world is changing faster and in more ways than the church with its fundamentally 19th century American dogma can keep up. No offense to folks who are true believers, but every day that passes, the Book of Mormon looks less and less sustainable as an “inspired” sacred text. When I first read it when I was 20, I found it mysterious and compelling; now, after 35 years spent reading and teaching a number of fictional and scholarly texts, it just sounds ridiculous and fake. And racist. And anachronistic. We send young missionaries out into the world and convince them to challenge others to read the Book of Mormon, but I have to think that if people actually did read it, they’d think Mormons were even more weird than they realized. There’s so much stuff in that book that simply isn’t sustainable or defensible in today’s world, which means that even positive things in the B of M can’t outweigh all of the clearly dated and harmful things in it.
You guys think you’re on to something but am I (and one other un-named reader) the only one who noticed this?:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/joey-chestnut-wins-hot-dog-eating-contest-s-men-s-competition/ar-AA1dpO8A?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=45413f07a23f4e87911978f356aa19be&ei=47
There was a time not so long ago in the USA when one’s religion was a primary factor in determining political affiliation. Now it’s become the other way around, with political beliefs more and more as primary in selecting religious affiliation. To draw on an overused metaphor: Which is the dog and which is the tail? Eventually, leaders of religious institutions realize what’s happening, but by the time they do it may be too late to reassert control. And the institution ends up being something entirely different, even if it goes by the same name.
Is Mormonism in decline? It is. And from all appearances, that appears to be the design. That in turn, has led to misplaced political allegiances.
The campaign of modern church leaders to eradicate the word “Mormon” has been an abject failure outside of the church, but has largely succeeded inside the church. And that has not been a good thing. It has destroyed the sense of the Mormon Community—a community in which members worked, played, and served together. There were regular activities such as ward plays, ward camp outs, and ward service projects. Members felt as if they were part of the Mormon family. The Church gave them a sense of belonging.
Now, members sit home watching zoom church in sweatpants and crocs. There are very few ward activities of any kind. Certainly not enough to create a sense of family. The Church has become just a bunch of individuals who have little interaction.
This has allowed political parties, and Republicans in particular, to fill the vacuum for those who want a feeling of belonging. With no Mormon sense of family, members have gone looking for a replacement and the only thing that is widely available is politics.
Sadly, the Republican Party is not what it once was and it certainly cannot fill the moral vacuum. As noted by my learned colleague above, the average party caucus operates at the same intellectual level as a hot dog eating contest. The party consistently panders to the lowest common denominator.
So what is to be done? If church leaders what to reclaim members from the clutches of hot dog eating celebrity-based politics, they must abandon the anti-Mormon campaign and its laziness-based zoom system. They must re-establish a Mormon Family in which members gain a sense of belonging. That is irrefutable fact.
The official church site says “there are 155,383 members in 309 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.”
The Australian census says there are 57,865 self declared members down 3000 from the previous census (5%), and probably 45,000 are active. But this does not tell the whole story because on the east coast of Aus the numbers have appeared to remain the same whereas in the rest of Aus the numbers are down 11 to 14%. But the east coast most congregations are now 50% pacific islander. The Anglo Australians that go inactive are replaced by islanders. So loss of Anglo Australians is in the 11 to 14% range like the rest of the country.
As for politics. Voting is compulsory, and elections and electoral boundaries and counting are run by our electoral commision, and votes are on Saturday. We do not have a republican party or any equivalent. Our conservative political party (called the LNP (liberal and national party coalition) was recently voted out after 10 years in which the legalised gay marriage. They were voted out because of inaction on climate change, and having so few (women mps 25%), and disrespecting women. The new Labor government has 53% of politicians women, and in cabinet. Our foreign minister Penny Wong is a married, gay, Asian heritage, woman.
Some members have attempted to infiltrate the LNP, and where they have succeeded in raising culture wars issues, such as trans sport, have made the LNP unelectable. We now have Labor governments federally and in all state governments except Tasmania. Trump is not respected, so a large proportion of members voting for him is not a positive, and as republicans are so much more extreme than anything electable, we are just dumbfounded at his support, from members, and especially leaders.
The Premier of Western Australia just resigned saying he was exhausted. He is 55. His government always ran a surplus. At the last election his Labor party won 52 seats(28 are women), the Liberals 2 and nationals 4. Most members did not vote for him, although he was overwhelmingly popular.
I understand 48% of Bidens cabinet are women v 26% of trumps, and 27% of Utah governments.
In case you are interested, the area of the mainland USA is 8 million square kilometres, the area of Western Australia is 2.65 million k2, about a third of USA. It has a population of 2.7 million mostly in the south west corner. I live in Queensland which is 1.85 million k2 (only 23% of US), and a population of 5.2 million. We have had a Labor government for 11 years with a woman as premier named Annastacia_Palaszczuk.
I was raised Mormon, but had to develop my political understanding by my own study. I will always be grateful for my friend’s mother who suggested, in a Sunday lesson, that we read a daily local newspaper, and a weekly news magazines. That has been up at the top of my list of good life skills I ever learned anywhere.
(Side note, as more local news outlets become owned by national news services, and report less on local issues, corruption becomes more prevalent. And it goes unchecked.)
Like Janey, my parents subscribed to the Deseret News, and so did my husband and I. My parents didn’t verbalize contradictory political opinions, but we knew they both tended to vote oppositely. And went to different caucuses.
I listened to Rush Limbaugh some when he was novel. His angry, mocking rhetoric didn’t sit well with me. NPR, with its even handed, information-based discussions did.
Also, kind of like Janey, as I became more informed on policies, and especially, the effect the policies had on the economy and on people’s lives, I was sure that our church leaders would support things that benefit families. In part, I thought they would support things that help families because more families that were financially stable would translate into higher tithing donations over all, and fewer people that needed church assistance.
A Disciple said:
“The strength of America is not in its politicians but in its Constitution and the love Americans have for the promise of self-government. Every four years we get to play the game of picking our class president. No matter who wins, half of the country and sometimes more than half preferred someone else. But the Constitution of the country reigns supreme. Let’s be grateful for that!”
What you’ve carefully ignored in your ridiculous both-sidesism is that Trump and his cronies absolutely don’t believe this. They don’t want to be subject to the Constitution and they don’t want their ability to hold office to be subject to anything so unreliable as voters. Witness also the GOP’s constant and ongoing attempts to ensure that people they don’t like don’t get to vote.
President Benson’s administration experienced the highest rate of growth. The decline started in 1991 after he became incapacitated and President Hinckley took over running the Church. The decline had nothing to do with Trump nor Romney.
The decline was a result of the Church, under President Hinckley’s direction (because of the professional advice of Public Affairs, reinforced later by Edelman Public Relations), setting out to prove we are Christian to the Christian right which had been attacking the Church relentlessly. This strategy resulted in the Church downplaying Joseph, gold plates, and our distinctive doctrine. It also meant we jumped into the culture war with both feet, relying on political podiums to be aligned with the Christian right (conservative Catholics and evangelicals).
Paul Mero, I think there may have been some larger “social” wheels turning than the ones you mention. Let’s not forget the fall of the Soviet Union–nor the peak of divorce and violent crime rates cresting at about the same time (in the U.S.) because of the shredding of the family. There’s also the inception of cellphones and the internet happening right about the same time. So the early nineties changed the world in huge ways that we sometimes take for granted nowadays.
That’s not to say that there’s no truth in what you propose–but my guess is that the church was influenced more heavily by making necessary adjustments to cope with a changing world than its strategies to placate the Christian right.
Paul / Jack
President Benson had been a controversial apostle due to his open promotion of the John Birch Society and feuding with Hugh B Brown. As church president, ETB was a straight shooter, saying nothing that wasn’t core doctrine and supported by the scriptures.
I have no quibble with Presidents Hinckley or Monson. Both embraced and taught the “Mormon” restoration story, which I think Gordon B Hinckley published as a book several times!
I think church leadership was caught flat footed by the impact of social media. They understood the opportunity of social media to promote the church brand. They realized the Internet increased awareness of church warts and embarrassments. What church leadership failed to appreciate was the power of social media to destroy faith. Faith destroyed not by awareness of church problems, but by turning people’s minds to be overly concerned with the thoughts and cares of the world . The great and spacious building is manifest in the social media, ecosystem.
The church identity has been altered from desiring to be a peculiar people to being a people praised and admired by others. Social media has done this by impressing there is nothing worse than being cancelled and the safe road is to follow the crowd. Much repentance is needed. The church leadership and membership from the top down to the very bottom needs course correction. Seeking the praise of the world leads to spiritual destruction. Standing with and defending the truth of God will draw fire. But it is in the furnace of affliction that faith is proved and righteousness prevails.