Last year NPR did a report on people moving to places that align with their politics, like conservative people moving from California to Texas. Or liberals moving from Wyoming to Oregon. Since most Mormons lean conservatives, this could help explain the shrinkage of the church in liberal states, and the growth in the jello belt (Idaho/Utah/Arizona).
Anecdotal information from my own stake in southern California: When I moved here in 1982, my town had 4 wards, and the stake had 8 including a nearby town. It grew to 6 wards in my town, four english, two Spanish, and a Samoan branch in the early 2000s. Today we are down to 2 wards in my town, and 7 total for the stake, which includes a Spanish ward that covers the whole stake, and a YSA ward that is shared with a neighboring stake. So less members today than in 1982 live in my stake.
For the moving part, two of the last three Stake Presedents moved to Utah when they were relased.
From the LDS Growth Blog, the states having the most increase in members in the last 3 years was Utah, Idaho, Texas, Florida and Arizona, all red (republican leaning) states. Those states that lost the most members are California, Washington and Oregon (all blue states). This tracks exactly with the NPR article about the movement of people for political reason. Add politics and religion for a reason to move, and you have a recipe for Utah membership growth, and California shrinkage (Maybe the pool was cold???). When confronted with the slow growth in the US, Elder Bednar admitted some movement of members, but “didn’t have the numbers”.
What is your experience with members moving? Are they coming or going from your ward? Where are they coming from/moving to?
Wheat & Tares 
We spent decades in a fast growth and conservative part of the country. That area is on your list.
Church growth through migration into that area? Absolutely. New neighborhoods sprung up, young LDS families moved in and new meetinghouses appeared.
OTOH, there was rarely a convert baptism and the monthly baptisms for 8 year olds often had only 1-2 kids for an entire stake.
Additionally, none of the older established areas are holding members. Established areas with excellent housing stock have a normal turnover of housing but the number of LDS families does not remain even. Statistically, the number of active members in such areas continues to decrease.
Imagine 100 young LDS couples graduate from BYU, they all move to a growing area in Texas for economic reasons and buy homes.
Upon arrival, only 50 of them actually show up at church. A year later, only 25 of them are still active. 25 young families are attending and the local wards do grow — but not the kind of growth of 100 young families.
People continue to leave and there are very few converts.
Members in my ward have commented on how the church is growing because look how big our ward is getting! What they don’t seem to acknowledge is that the ward is in a growth corridor of the city where houses and schools are popping up at a faster rate than ward growth. Also, some are completely unaware that while yes, our ward is growing, within our stake and neighboring stakes in more urban parts of the city, wards have shrunk and some completely disbanded. So if wards in high growth areas get bigger, but the stake in general stays the same size or shrinks, what does that mean for overall growth? It’s the church growth question in a nutshell, isn’t it?
Our stake in the UK has gone from 7 wards and 3 branches to 5 wards and 1 branch. Some of this got discussed in my post:
More recently in various boundary realignments, the UK has lost 4 stakes and some of the associated wards have been merged, Nemo gives a rapid overview here:
One of the stakes mentioned is my previous stake. We moved out over 15 years ago, having been there for 11 years. We moved there just after the Stake had been created. Saw what was two wards in the Stake become three wards, and which is now just one ward.
Have people moved away? Well obviously my family moved from one stake to another. But I am not sure there’s any real growth anywhere in the UK. Data suggests otherwise. There are wards with an aging demographic. There’s been the phenomenon where youth have attended BYU, married and then stayed in the US. There’s a couple in my ward where both sons did this. And the phenomenon where couples meet whilst serving a mission, marry and choose to live in the US, one partner being a US citizen. Both sons of a family in my previous ward / Stake did this. As did one of my nephews. I also have a niece who married the brother of her favourite mission companion, who now lives in the US as well.
If the church wants to stop this kind of migration they’d perhaps be best served subsidising university tuition locally, and keep missionaries local.
Except for my years at BYU, I’ve lived in California my entire adult life and most of my childhood. In the mid 2000s I lived out in the Inland Empire where housing was still affordable, and it felt like the church was growing. I have since been through two stake reorganizations that resulted in combining units (and disbanding others), and it’s looking to me like my current stake is going to need to do it again soon or possibly combine with a neighboring stake. Oh, and last year the church sold our meetinghouse. I had not lived in the area that long, but it was a real wrench for many who had. Especially since 15 or so years ago, when the area was still growing, they -built- a meetinghouse in my stake.
What happened? The Great Recession. Lots of people left. And since then the prices have skyrocketed. And, yes, boomers have retired, cashed out their equity, and relocated to Southern Utah or the Wasatch Front. So many. And more planning to do so.
Our unit continues to have a reasonable number of convert baptisms, and to retain them. They tend to be older, single folks. So we aren’t replacing Brother and Sister Smith whose five now-grown kids all live in Utah, Nevada, and Arizona, where the Smiths have just moved to be close to grandkids. I am sure the politics help. I am not sure they are the driving factor.
For the USA, much of the growth is a shuffling of the cards and a LDS diaspora, as mentioned. But then jello belt members see superficial stats and think…wow the .church is growing in North Carolina and North Dakota people are accepting the gospel. I am on the winning team!
The politics is the deciding factor for many families of transgender people. In places like Florida they are all planning moves right now to protect the lives of their loved ones
No reasonable person can deny that California is under direct attack by Gavin Newsom and a cadre of left-wing extremists who seek to turn it into just another European-style, post-Christian, socialist state. It is no surprise that vast hordes of residents, including church members, are fleeing as fast as they can. The Church is better off abandoning that State to the earthquakes and mudslides and focusing its efforts elsewhere.
As a life-long member of the Church as well as a life-long conservative Republican, I (we)moved to Utah in the early 2000s. But the Gospel Topics essays got published and Trump got elected and you can imagine the rest of the story. My wife and I wonder: is it time to leave Utah?
Were you prescribing an antidote or giving an anecdote?
Yes Romni, I failed to use ChatGTP to review my post as I have been doing for the past several months. I’ll correct it right now just for you!
Hedgehog, fellow brit and my ward has just been shut, which will leave me and many others unable to attend church. I guess my inability to attend church due to health issues was going to happen at some point but I do feel abandoned by my community, something that I never could have imagined.
Many will become inactive due both to the pressure of long distances for youth and other activities, and also the pressure this puts on families who have learnt, due to lockdown, to live without it. And it kills any local community efforts, whatever the sheep and goats reasoning here. Crazy.
I moved from Ohio as a Republican/Mormon 45 years ago to Utah. As I’ve lived here, I’ve grown more liberal because I started to notice a few demographic things that I find hard to reconcile with the gospel. 1. Older more established neighborhoods have lost LDS members as they have moved to the bright new shiny suburbs. 2. As the state has become more conservative, it’s harder to say anything at church that even hints at being liberal. 3. California is used as an example of everything that has gone wrong with society without any real understanding of any of the issues. 4. Real problems in Utah like suicide or drug abuse are glossed over with “We love you” types of campaigns instead of dealing directly with LGBTQ youth being accepted in their communities/families or glossing over any type of physical or mental health issues with the typical Mormon “yes/but” statements. and 5. There is the Oblivious Smugness of many LDS members who have no clue about anything outside their immediate community and live in a state of denial about problems in other areas of the state, let alone other areas of the county, and rely on overly generalized politically right wing explanations as justifications for other people’s problems/pain/misfortune.
So I believe LDS members wherever they live, would much rather be with their own rather than learn about and be involved in solving any problems where they live.
I’ve bounced around the Wasatch Front my whole life; four different counties. I’ve lived in a high-growth area because farmland was turning into houses and many LDS families were moving in to new homes. I’ve lived in an older neighborhood with no room for growth that had a ward with very few youth – instead, most of the ward were the empty-nesters who had raised their families here. I’ve attended singles wards and family wards and BYU wards.
One thing I’ve never seen in any ward I’ve lived in here in Utah is the convert baptism of an entire family. Baptisms are nearly always just the children of member families. I can remember about three times in my 40+ years of weekly Church attendance hearing the bishop say that a new adult had been baptized into the ward and we should extend the hand of fellowship. Church growth around here is baptizing 8-year-olds and activation efforts.
Our area—central part of CA— has decreased by at least 1 ward (I honestly can’t remember how many wards and stakes there were when we moved here). I haven’t see our numbers increase by (any)convert numbers either.
The reasons people in our ward have moved out (primarily UT, ID) are: a).retiring and moving to be closer to their adult children and b) change in employment.
I’ve heard from one elderly move out that they really miss living here.
I live in California and yes people keep moving to Utah. The reasons I hear most are (1) cost of living; (2) family network; (3) avoid California sex ed (where you cannot opt out of the discussion about LGBTQ without opting out of the whole thing), and (4) the COVID response.
Interestingly, this ties in well with Angela’s recent post about the Latter-day struggles podcast. The call to Zion was real, and while it’s no longer emphasized, it’s never really stopped. Other high demand religions like Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t have a gathering place like we do. And so people stay local, grow local, and have a much more sustainable growth model. The retreat to Utah has and will continue to hamper growth.
“No reasonable person can deny that California is under direct attack by Gavin Newsom and a cadre of left-wing extremists who seek to turn it into just another European-style, post-Christian, socialist state.” I know JCS writing style is based on a stereotype. But count me as one who is very happy living in California. Weather aside, it’s becoming increasingly amazing to live in a society where women have control of their bodies, minorities have protected access to social programs, books aren’t being burned, and diversity is celebrated. If that makes me part of a European-style, post-Christian, socialist state, so be it. I recognize California is a huge state both in terms of geography and population, so the 40 million who live here will experience it differently. I love it here.
The only thing I pine for is a more sizable post-Mormon community. Utah wins in that regard.
The only people missionaries find in my area who are remotely interested in the church are street people & the mentally challenged. This is not a recipe for healthy growth. Without large families we would shrink to sect size very quickly.
The only people missionaries find in my area who are remotely interested in the church are street people & the mentally challenged. This is not a recipe for healthy growth. Without large families we would shrink to sect size very quickly.
Sounds like we are from the same Stake in So Cal, as those were right around (if not exactly) the ward and demographics of the Stake I grew up in. My Mom still attends the same ward which was combined with another ward a few years back that used to exist in the same building due to a numbers drop. I heard further South in Newport Beach they have combined wards as well. I think a lot of it has to do with the general age of members and younger members moving out of the State.
I will say however that where I live now in Northern California, we are experiencing an increase in numbers. Our current stake was pretty big and has experienced a surge in membership. Same for the area to our East with two other stake’s. A lot of new building of homes and a more conservative lifestyle.
Most people I know who have moved out of California, member or not note the cost of living and the politics as the main reason. Id leave if I could but my job pays me too well. LOL
I would say that a good rule of thumb is this: if it’s not a convert baptism, it’s not growth.
I live in Utah and while a lot of members have moved to here from blue states, which looks like membership growth, here’s the story behind that story:
1. While there has been membership growth, Sacrament Meeting attendance continues to decrease.
2. When Sacrament Meeting is over there’s an accelerating number of members, who are perceived to be active, that head for the parking lot and skip the second hour. My spouse and I are among them.
3. We have two homes and attend wards in both locations. Both wards have multiple members who are ideal candidates for the high demand leadership callings of Bishop and Relief Society President but when a reorganization occurs, the new leaders are typically people I wouldn’t have expected. My conclusion is that the people best suited for leadership callings often won’t accept them, so less than ideal members are called to these positions. One of our wards has a Bishop who is an absolute buffoon, and most of the congregants (especially the few remaining youth) can’t connect with him.
4. In both of our wards, the Elders and High Priests now fill the majority of positions needed to prepare, bless, and pass the sacrament.
Church Leaders may be technically correct when they talk about membership growth in Utah but functionally speaking, it’s shrinking. My spouse and I are on our last leg, and I expect we’ll fade away in the near future.
The membership numbers for the Church will be more interesting to look at in 20, 35, and 50 years. Just as there was exponential growth during the middle part of the 20th century, we may well see not-quite-exponential-but-significant contraction with the combined loss of the Boomer and Generation X cohorts dying off (those are the most active groups in the Church) and the current (and escalating) attrition with the younger generations. The lack of multi-generational LDS families with large numbers of offspring that expand through each successive generation will be quite telling for the overall membership numbers in the United States.
JCS: reasonable people can disagree about your conclusions (I think that is actually baked into the definition of “reasonable”).
Any time we can work the Seinfeld shrinkage episode into a discussion, that is a win.
Our stake is down 4 wards in the past +/-10 years. Too expensive for families to stay. Our ward is largely military, so we have members moving in and out year round. Attendance is still down 50% pre-pandemic. I’d estimate that the stake membership is significantly more conservative than the general population of the area (California central coast). Where do members move to? Military families to their next duty station. Many civilians move to Utah to be near extended family.
A few observations…..
“ Last year NPR did a report on people moving to places that align with their politics, ”
So, the way I read this is that it isn’t saying most people are necessarily moving for political reasons—but that the NPR report singled out those who reported politics was a/ the reason. I’m guessing the main drivers of moving are economics and family connections.
I find it interesting that the NPR article reports that the greater number of people moving to Texas are from #1 California and #2 Florida. How does population size factor in? (California is the most populous state with 40 million residents—10 million in LA county alone, Texas is 2nd with 30 million, Florida has 22 million).
Utah population is 3 million.
In migration into Utah (population of Utah is also coming from Arizona and Nevada)— but Gov. Cox felt the need to disinvite (even Mormon) Californians.
(Never mind that both the past and current Speakers of the House, Pelosi(D) and McCarthy(R) represent California.
It is safe to say that everywhere I’ve lived LDS, UT, east and west coasts) congregants are largely conservative).
Locally where I live in CA, beginning in Nov 2020 we’ve had MAGA protestors with. flags and banners on our nearest freeway overpass every Sunday afternoon—(until this past month).
I do remember an incident while living on the east coast where a ward member spoke to a member of the Bishopric about what should be done regarding the car in the church parking lot with pro Democratic candidate bumper stickers. Little did the complainer know that the bishopric member’s father ( also living in the ward) happened to be active in the local Democratic Party leadership.
“ I know JCS writing style is based on a stereotype. But count me as one who is very happy living in California. Weather aside, it’s becoming increasingly amazing to live in a society where women have control of their bodies, minorities have protected access to social programs, books aren’t being burned, and diversity is celebrated. If that makes me part of a European-style, post-Christian, socialist state, so be it. I recognize California is a huge state both in terms of geography and population, so the 40 million who live here will experience it differently. I love it here.”
Well said, Chadwick!
And as a Southern Californian who has lived in 5 states and 4 countries and always chooses to come back to California I couldn’t agree more on every point.
Ditto, Alice. Loved our time in CA. Would go back in a heartbeat.
p.s.
Lol
Love the picture accompanying this article!
The affordability of family formation is a huge factor that is increasing political polarization in the USA. So called “Red States” tend to be more attractive to young families as they provide more affordable housing. Urban areas are known to be particularly unfriendly to families due to high housing costs as well as the additional education expense due to the unattractiveness of many urban public schools.
The LDS church relies heavily on family formation as this helps keep young adults active in the faith and families produce children who are raised in the faith.
I live in a high income suburb in Maryland. There is no such thing as a “starter home” in my community. Rent begins at $2500 / month and escalates from there. Over the years many young couples have come into our ward after having accepted a government job out of college. A few years later they would move out, having realized they could not start a family in a “safe” neighborhood in Maryland on the income they earned.
Now Utah has become expensive. Where will young couples move now? This cost of family formation and the obstacles young couples have in affording children is a concern for the country and a huge issue for the church.
As for politics, I am glad to have raised my children in Maryland where they experienced much greater religious and political diversity than they would have in the “Mormon Corridor”. However, Maryland has become less political diverse – it is now almost purely progressive – and the public schools have suffered as “equity” has gained priority over “excellence”.
In recent years some LDS families who could afford our community have chosen to leave for “Red states”. They chose to leave because they did not care for the “wokeness” of the public schools or for how these priorities were influencing the LDS youth and its leadership. Frankly, I would do the same if I still had kids that were school age. It is very unfortunate this political polarization has happened. It is a recent phenomenon. Ten years ago my county schools still emphasized excellence. Now the promotion of ideologies and political agendas is their core mission. I do not expect any of my children to return to Maryland to raise their families.
I expect the pattern of LDS activity to follow the trends already established. Growth in “conservative” suburban areas will be more from families moving in and children born to those familes. In “progressive” areas the church will find success more from converts and immigrants.
prompted by the comment above from Dave F –
It feels like a dystopian movie where folks are waking up to a possibility that there is life outside the true and living church. If you want to steal my idea and write this allegorical novel, go ahead because I can’t/won’t (not just yet) risk being excommunicated or whatever the euphemism is these days.
I live in a booming corner of the Salt Lake valley, it’s a major news event when a family moves OUT of the ward, and there aren’t any starter homes in the ward where the boundaries are obviously small. Like any ward, it’s probably a short matter of time before I get asked to speak in Sac Mtg again because it’s been about two years and it fees like the Bishopric is cycling through everyone.
We live in a moderately conservative state with few LDS. Each of our stake presidents have moved to Utah upon retirement.
Why? To move up the church ladder. They’ve been big fish in a small pond and feel they have a chance. As SPs they forged relationships and connections w GAs and participated in local temple openings. Now, they have moved to UT with aspirations to climb the ladder. None have, I think they find themselves little fish in a big pond.
Migration to UT has always been connected with the idea of Zion and living in the heart of the church. Converts (international and stateside) move to UT, people who want to be GAs, and people who want to move back among their family.
The “gathering” itch is stronger than the political itch. Always has been.
I am so sorry handlewithcare, that doesn’t sound good. Merging wards within one town or city is one thing, but when merges happen which require members to travel over to a neighbouring town or city that’s really tough. How can they not expect attrition. It might be better to take a leaf from the Anglican playbook and maintain the local congregation with travelling leadership.. much easier to do with paid clergy of course.
According to my dad, who was just released as Bishop in my home ward back in Northern CA, my home stake could easily go from 5 wards to 3 wards, and the 3 remaining wards would still be smaller than my home ward was when I was a child.
The main reasons why they have experienced the shrinkage appears to be:
1. Members moving out. Old members are cashing out on their homes and retiring to be closer to their kids.
2. Potential move-ins scared away by housing prices. Very few of my age group have moved back home after college (at BYU and BYU-I) and the high housing costs appear to be the main reason
3. Declining family sizes. The younger families that are there appear to have 2-3 kids, in contrast to my parents age group which had 4-5.
We used to joke that 1 of the wards in our stake was the “old folks home” since it was all empty nesters with hardly any children. Now it appears that description describes 4 out of the 5 wards.
We’re losing young families to areas with much HIGHER costs of living. They prefer big-city, LDS culture. As in Target less than 50 miles away. Temples less than three hours away. They want to be nearer their LDS families. They can’t deal with Mormon minority.
Young families have left for Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC. A large family left for Arkansas. Two families moved from our ward to the next ward east.
We gained one family from BYU for a first job after grad school, one established family from Tennessee for a job transfer, and one out of grad school after growing up one ward north. It’s absolutely a net loss, and getting worse by the year as the youth of the strong families grow up and move away without new babies filling in behind.
In ten years, only one of the youth has returned to the broader area (none stayed local and stayed active). That young man moved his family to the adjacent ward 30 miles away. No one between 20 and 50 grew up in this area.
I don’t really know. My last stake has done a lot of reshuffling in the last 5 years, and I know some who’ve left the Church, others who moved out, and still others who just got too old to attend (our last ward in that stake was definitely headed to the graveyard). Ward sizes seem to be smaller now.
I was talking to a friend from my home stake in PA, and he said that the pandemic had really brought the crazies out of the woodwork in the pews–people he grew up reverring and respecting were spouting the most ridiculous nonsense at Church, and it was making it really hard to continue to participate, but he also pitied them because a lot of them were old and frightened and isolated. He only knows this because he’s basically the only one from my age group who still goes to church who lives in that area again, having moved back to help his aging parents. When I was growing up there, I would have pegged the ward at 50/50 between political parties, with many of the ward leaders being very vocal democrats (liberals, not progressives). Now, who knows?
I honestly can’t stand this current ward, and I didn’t like the last one either. The parking lot is full of “first responder” license plates which gives me “All Lives Matter” vibes, and the commentary is as authoritarian / leader worship / right wing dog whistles as you can imagine. It’s like hell. There are a few superficially nice people, and I’m sure people honestly do not recognize how toxic their views are, even when they seem nice enough on the surface. I just don’t know how adults make friends once your kids are grown. It’s hard to want to befriend people whose views are so repellant to me. What they want from church is the opposite of what I want.
I don’t know how much my Canadian anecdote applies for the US, but my province in Canada has been among the main ‘gathering’ regions for the church in this country, and even then, the church is either shrinking or growing more slowly here as it is elsewhere.
The US, like Canada, cannot coherently practice liberalism but avoid the societal, cultural, and political changes that come from the free pursuit of ‘human flourishing’ as one best understands it. Social conservatives may of course try to impose themselves as seen in Roe vs. Wade and current, childhood education moral panics- but all this will do create additional resentment, pressure, and relic trauma among the majority who aren’t all that religious nor even partisan to these ‘cultural wars’.
~
My province just elected perhaps the narrowest, conservative majority in parliament we’ve ever had, and the provincial election suggests that conservatives will now have to fight amidst a political environment that no longer assumes their having political legitimacy. The ‘Orange Wave’ of several years ago was a sign of a much more competitive province that (throughout mine and my parents’ lives) was essentially seen as single party system provincially. But the demographic shift is here, as is secularism, and though such tides are perhaps still farther away for ya’ll in (many places of) the US compared to Canada- It. Will. Come.
My province too was once where many a bullish conservative moved to “get away” from Ottawa, and all that “leftist stuff”.
Now, perhaps it’s where that brand of conservatism goes to ‘die’.
Come what may and love it.
As always- My autocorrect hates me.
Fine post and discussion. The Church exercises a fair degree of control over members in a given area, telling them where to go to church (which ward), what to do in church (callings), and so forth.
But it can’t tell people where to live. Members use that power. Sometimes they may ward shop in a given town or city when buying a house or finding an apartment. Other times they move to a different state, which is how bishops can engineer their own release. The only meaningful vote Mormons have in the Church is voting with their feet. And they do.
The lds church investments are projected to reach $1,000,0000,0000,000.00 (1 trillion dollars), within 25 years on the current trajectory.
THEN will church leadership stop telling new converts living a subsistence existence to pay 1/10th of their income to the lds church?
Link to Widow’s Mite Report will be sent separately.
Scroll down to “Path to $1 Trillion (2023)”
Widow’s Mite is doing important work.
In my Canadian stake, it split about 18 ish months ago and I am in the new ward here. there is talk of creating another branch in the city. I have no idea about the other Stake and what goes on. We are bursting at the seams. I don’t buy into the naysayers, no matter how slick their youtube or podcasts are, we have no idea how long the Church will be here so what does it matter if a stake closes or 3 stakes close down if in 200 years the membership triples the amount they have now. Plus people seem to forget the amount of temple work being done. the Church doesn’t just exist here, it’s over on the other side of the veil too. In a August 1988 Church News article the church said there were 100 million endowments done to that point. If you take England for example, if 1 percent of the 100 million were British that is still 1 million people if half accepted the Gospel, that is 500,000 members, which is more that they have now for sure. To say nothing about the British members that have died over the years, all over the world. That is a lot of people. That also says nothing about the temple work for the British since 1988, which is a few more people I’d say. That is just the British. Could the Church do things better or different? certainly, but I just don’t buy into this the Church is collapsing idea when you factor in these other things.
@james
I’m in a ward in Canada that has a lot of growth but it’s all from move-ins of large families from more dense parts of the major city near where I live. They are mostly all dentists with larger families. The most central stake in the area saw shrinkage and realignments of wards a few years ago. I think they went from 7 wards down to about 5 if I’m correct? There is definitely shrinkage. The stake a daughter’s family moved from a year or so back was also experiencing shrinkage and a drop in units. A lot of the wards with very little youth.
@Di-We get baptisms here, as I am sure you get there and we get move ins from other countries. It’s funny we got tons of members from Brazil and one of them coined the phrase “million brazilian” plus members from all over South and Central America plus reactivations, it’s a real variety!
In the Denver area, I know of 3 buildings that were sold off in recent years, with no new buildings to replace them. Another building has been sitting vacant for over a year, and no more wards or meetings are scheduled there. It’s one thing to shuffle the ward members around, but to discard building space with no replacement is something I regard as a more sure measure of member loss. These are just the ones I have personal knowledge of; there may be others and I am watching Meetinghouse Locator for clues.