Pew Survey on Mormons Reveals Interesting Fact

SD, 3 things strike me as I read these findings of the survey:

1) Numbers believing the bible to be the Word of God, yet not believing it is to be taken literally:

Mormons also are united in their belief that the Bible is the word of God. More than nine-in-ten Mormons (91%) say the Bible is the word of God, with just 4% saying it was written by men and is not the word of God. This high level of belief in the Bible as the word of God, however, is tempered by the belief that it should not be taken literally, word for word. A majority of Mormons (57%) say it should not be taken literally, with a significantly smaller proportion (35%) saying it should be taken literally, word for word.

2) 88% believe in an afterlife, and 80% believe in miracles.

3) 8 out of 10 believe in the importance of the religion in their lives, and the high statistics participating (attendance).

What strikes me, is that while these numbers are high, indeed among the highest of the religions included in the study, they do not overshadow others and are not at the top of any categories. In most cases, JWs are ranked above mormons.

The point I take from this…others in the world and in their religion are active in their faith, it isn’t like Mormons are the only church and all others are of no consequence to people. Its good to remember that.

The other point is, while the Mormon numbers are high, there are still lots of people in the church that don’t believe in miracles, or an afterlife, or the bible should be taken literally.

Sometimes we may think us on this forum are the only ones that have such views, but the survey would indicate we are not alone, even if we are a minority in the church.

It also is important to note that those who self-identify for purposes of a survery like this tend to be the ones who are the most “faithful” within any religion and denomination.

If a majority of those who self-identified as LDS for this survey say the Bible should not be taken literally, I think it’s very safe to say that a large majority of LDS members have that view.

Perhaps the issue is that most of the piccolos in most wards are part of the 35% that are literalists. That’s worth considering, especially when someone starts feeling all alone with regard to some viewpoints. Maybe the guitars and oboes and bagpipes and kazoos in the ward or branch who agree with you are feeling just as alone and just don’t speak up as a result.

…the survey below of 500+ Mormons (doesn’t say if they are active or not, or randomly sampled) reveals interesting facts about their life in America. The survey is from 2009…The most interesting fact for me was that the older Mormons get, the less likely they are to believe their faith is the only true faith.

This article makes it sound like Mormons are some of the most strongly committed and faithful religious followers in the US which I actually believe in the case of active members. However, I think some of these statements sound somewhat misleading because they don’t necessarily apply to all 6 million members the Church counts in the US (out of 14 million worldwide) as much as simply a small subset that actually took the time to answer these survey questions. For example, it said that over three-quarters of Mormons supposedly attend church at least once a week but I really doubt the real activity level is anywhere near that high because it is actually possibly as low as 18% now based on some recent estimates.

My guess is that what’s really going on here is that many inactive members would be even less likely to answer these survey questions than Catholics, Evangelicals, mainline Protestants, etc. that rarely attend church anymore because many of them have a negative impression of religion in general based on their experience and they basically don’t want to be bothered about it anymore. So maybe the Church is promoting relatively high levels of conviction and commitment but they often accomplish this by basically separating extremely loyal members like this from all the Jack Mormons and ex-Mormons. So for all the super religious followers the Church develops it also results in even more people that are mostly non-religious for practical purposes and the overall success of this general approach is debatable if “the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.”

DA — my thoughts exactly. In fact the PBS.org special a while back on the Mormons said that we have a really hard time retaining our new converts compared to other religions, so I would think our inactivity rates would be rather high compared to other religions. Plus it’s not an easy religion to live by any means.

When I taught gospel essentials class for four years, I often attended baptisms of new converts. I would always bring them a special card and flowers. It seemed like most of these new members were never seen again after that. I do think it is hard to retain new converts. I wonder why that is?

I’ve actually looked at various activity rates among denominations, and the LDS rate is no lower than pretty much any other group…That actually is quite impressive when the level of time commitments are compared…The 18% activity rate is bogus, based on every report I’ve ever seen. It is accurate in some areas, especially given the times of baseball baptisms and other anomalies…but it is nowhere close to the overall activity rate. The activity rate for Young Single Adults is lower than 18%, but it jumps dramatically after those YSA years.

DA — my thoughts exactly. In fact the PBS.org special a while back on the Mormons said that we have a really hard time retaining our new converts compared to other religions, so I would think our inactivity rates would be rather high compared to other religions. Plus it’s not an easy religion to live by any means.

When I taught gospel essentials class for four years, I often attended baptisms of new converts. I would always bring them a special card and flowers. It seemed like most of these new members were never seen again after that. I do think it is hard to retain new converts. I wonder why that is?

In addition to the Church’s relatively high demands and difficulties with some of the inflexible doctrines I think another reason many converts aren’t typically retained for very long as well as in some other churches is simply because it looks like the LDS Church currently relies heavily on family ties and peer pressure to promote continued loyalty to the Church. My guess is that the LDS Church is probably not as attractive by itself to many independent individuals as other options would be without this outside influence to support it.

If some converts don’t know very many members and aren’t married to a long-time member then this group-dependent approach is not going to work quite as well. This is another interesting thing about this survey, it showed that Mormons are more likely than any of the other groups besides Hindus to be married to someone of the same exact faith and that married Mormons are more likely to attend church frequently and think that religion and preserving the traditions of their faith are very important than those that aren’t married.

You can really see the overall effects of some of the doctrines like temple marriage and testimony in the results of this survey. Even the prevailing opinions of the Mormons polled about the Bible were almost verbatim from the Articles of Faith that the Bible is supposedly the word of God but not necessarily to be taken literally at the same time. It looks like a significant number of Christians don’t necessarily believe what their church ministers are preaching in many cases but active Mormons are much more likely to profess their belief in exactly what they have been told with a high level of certainty about it.

it looks like the LDS Church currently relies heavily on family ties and peer pressure to promote continued loyalty to the Church.

Thre is no difference whatsoever in this regard between any religion and almost any denomination within any religion. If anyone doubts that, ask someone who comes from a strongly believing faith tradition and converts to the LDS Church. I’ve know too many people in that siutation from lots of very different faith traditions to think otherwise…how we word things generally is a reflection of how we see things – and looking at how we word things that could be worded just as “legitimately” in very different ways can be eye-opening. What we take from things like this survey says just as much about, if not more than, ourselves as it does about those in the survey.

I’m not trying to say there isn’t any family/peer pressure going on in other churches. People are only human no matter where you go so I don’t doubt that many Catholics, Evangelicals, Baptists, etc. are likely to express strong disapproval if any of their family or friends seriously consider joining another church they don’t like. However, I think the difference is simply that these churches don’t necessarily depend quite so heavily on this pressure to retain followers the same way that the LDS Church currently does.

For example, the tradition and style of the Catholic Church appeals to some people in a way that the LDS Church doesn’t to the point that many of them can still worship on their own without really needing someone to hold their hand every step of the way and make sure they are living up to expectations. In the case of many Protestant/Evangelical church services it seems like there is more focus on the presentation and entertainment value in the music and/or sermons than in the LDS Church so this could possibly attract many followers in a way that doesn’t really depend on them having to worry too much about what everyone else thinks of them.

Where the LDS Church competes favorably with some of these other churches is simply in the sheer level of conviction and effort to maintain a relatively determined subculture and go out and knock on doors to recruit enough new members to replace all the ones that have left and then some similar to the JWs. As well as this approach has worked so far, I guess it looks to me like the Church has put all of their eggs in one basket with the cradle-to-grave plan for success of expecting active members to serve full-time missions and then get married in the temple ASAP and have lots of children and everyone will supposedly live happily ever after. This model is starting to break down and fail in an increasing number of cases and too many things have to work out exactly the way they expect to really count on it anymore.

Personally, I’d like to see hard and fast numbers derived through a rigorous measurement system before drawing any conclusions. Some data suggests we have a much higher activity rate than many other Churches. Yet others say we are lower. As Ray says, there’s a lot of ways of defining “active” so unless each Church uses the same methodology, then we can’t draw any real conclusions.