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John Dehlin has some good research on why people leave, but I am curious if anyone has some numbers on how many people are leaving, or becoming NOMish and the ages of these groups. On the continuum, there are quite a number of ex-mormon sites and a few NOM sites and then there is StayLDS. Any links or even suppositions would be appreciated. I have no data, but I think it’s a fairly low number. About 2/3rds of the members of record are not active. Most of those (and this is only from experience) are not active because they just lost interest and often because they were never fully ‘in’ to start off with. Most less actives left as youth, as kids of parents leaving, as relatively new members who just found something else to do. Dehlin’s research is a useful insight into those who engage in MoStories/staylds/NOM etc. And the research would suggest most of those people are/were more established TBM adult members.
It’s like a pendulum. If you’re only a little swung in, it only takes a little swing to be out. If you’re swung a long way in, it takes a bigger swing out and the momentum usually carries you as far out as you were in.
One of the two benefits of staylds is it provides two outcomes by slowing down the swing ‘out’:
It might catch someone enough to stop them swinging out at all.
Or at the very least I think it helps to slow and cushion the swing out to avoid having to go the full way out and burn bridges/hurt relationships or take people with you.
It doesn’t really answer your question though.
My guess is that less than 10% of less actives are there for ‘history’ reasons. Of that there are probably only about 5% actively involved in the ‘bloggernacle.’
My best guess:
Members: 14,500,000
Less active: 9,000,000
For history: 1,000,000
On forums etc: 50,000-100,000
Having said that, I think there’s more of an issue with the youth. Those who would have left anyway may be digging online (because it’s so easy these days) as they leave.
I don’t know, but, unknown to most people who are struggling, the activity rate actually is higher now than it was for most of the Church’s history – and by a significant gap. Old-Timer wrote:I don’t know, but, unknown to most people who are struggling,
the activity rate actually is higher now than it was for most of the Church’s history– and by a significant gap. I’m curious how this conclusion was reached. Do the individual wards and branches calculate their activity level based on those they know are members in their boundaries? How often do you have to attend the meetings to be considered active? On NOM there was a rumor supposedly based on inside information from the COB that the number of active members could actually be as low as 18% worldwide and one poster there looked at the official statistics the Church reports and saw that the number of members per ward or branch was increasing each year so that also makes it look like the number of inactive members is increasing faster than the the number of truly active members. There are literally millions in Latin America that were baptized in the Church but no longer self-identified as LDS in the census of various countries. Also the Church will continue to count members they have lost contact with until they would have been 110 years old. So that’s why I have a hard time believing that activity rates are better than ever in addition to seeing all the people that I know are officially Church members but haven’t been to church in years and in many cases not since they were children/youth.
Martha wrote:John Dehlin has some good research on why people leave, but I am curious if anyone has some numbers on how many people are leaving, or becoming NOMish and the ages of these groups. On the continuum, there are quite a number of ex-mormon sites and a few NOM sites and then there is StayLDS. Any links or even suppositions would be appreciated.
On some ex-Mormon site they were claiming there have been over 100,000 official resignations every year recently. So if that’s true my guess is that there are even more that are disaffected or inactive for similar reasons that don’t ever bother to resign. At the same time, I wouldn’t underestimate the ability of many if not the majority of active members to ignore or not care that much about some of these historical and doctrinal issues that we talk about here. Personally I think what is more significant about the NOM types and ex-Mormons than their relative numbers is the type of members many of them were before losing faith in the Church. The Church has always expected some members to fall away mostly because of apathy and/or not wanting to conform to the LDS lifestyle but it used to be that once Church members served a mission and/or got married in the temple they were fairly likely to remain active in the Church year after year and successfully pass these same traditions on to many if not all of their children. But now a significant number of these RM/temple married members are finding serious problems with the Church on the internet and end up losing their testimony. I’m sure the internet has made it harder to convert new members than it was before as well so I don’t see how the Church can just continue with business as usual and expect it to work nearly as well as it used to.
I don’t believe that 100,000 figure, too high although Prop8 could be a factor. I think McKay’s guesstimate is on the money.
Most fall away without a song and dance. They’re pressed too hard, and drift away. They don’t come here or exmoland.
I think I’ve said elsewhere that history is probably fairly insignificant as an issue for most of them in my experience. The church is wrong to assume personal offense is the big factor too.
A few probabilities:
* Family/spouse LDS. Many.
* Too intellectual for their own good, but with strong Utah etc heritage. Some but not many.
* Living in strong Mormon areas. Many.
* People who love the gospel but not everything about the church. Some.
* Folk who like the social side. Not a huge number but significant.
* Practising but struggling. Vast numbers.
There are a lot of closeted members out there, I don’t mean gay (plenty of them too), but holding unorthdox ideas. I have my suspicions in my ward. One American guy is sympathetic, I’ve talked to him about various stuff, he’s even mentioned to me about JS smoking etc.
DA, I’ve looked at activity rate estimates throughout our history, measured by attendance at least once a month on Sunday, and the numbers have been higher over the last 20 years than at many points previously. That doesn’t meany they are sky high now; it means they were lower in the past than most people assume. This isn’t an easy religion to live, and it never has been. In fact, it’s been much harder to live at various points in the past. Overall, it’s cyclical – and the numbers tend to swing back and forth from times of relative peace and quiet to times of relative turmoil and controversy.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:At the same time, I wouldn’t underestimate the ability of many if not the majority of active members to ignore or not care that much about some of these historical and doctrinal issues that we talk about here.
I’d been a member for several decades and knew nothing at all about it history/doctrine issues. Most leave the church because it’s simply not ‘doing it’ for them any more. Most of these are members who were not long-term established members. Maybe they join and leave after 12-18 months. Maybe they move to a new city and just skip church. I asked around at conference and no-one I spoke to knew that a woman had prayed for the first time. The vast majority of members (active or not) just live their life and get on with it.
Dehlin’s survey is lauded as getting 3,000 disaffected members. I think some claim around 20,000 follow Mormon Stories and I think he’s probably the most popular site in the ‘mormon fringe’. But many of those are active members. I’m not sure how many members the ex-mo website has.
First, I think you have to define ‘us’. How many of ‘us’ are there? If you are talking about people who have left the LDS faith behind, encompassing all reasons from deep soul searching to rebellion against authority to disinterest in religion to a simple desire to golf on Sundays, I think the number is pretty high.
If you are talking about active or semi-active church members who no longer believe the whole story, but who continue in the church because it is a framework for doing good and for a form of worship in a God who is less-knowable than the LDS God, or just to be involved with the family spirituality, then I’d say the number is low… perhaps by the final judgment, there will only be 144,000
On Own Now wrote:then I’d say the number is low… perhaps by the final judgment, there will only be 144,000
:lolno: HeheThanks everyone for your estimates and suppositions. Very interesting.
The real indicator of growth and activity in the church is stakes/congregations rather than membership numbers. Congregational growth last year was 0.9%. Dividing total membership by number of congregations gives you about 500 members per congregation, so activity in the church as a whole is well under 50%. Activity rates in the UK are around 30%. One of the wards in Scotland where i served had an average sacrament meeting attendance that was 9% of the number on roll. That wasn’t uncommon in Scotland either, and that doesn’t take in to account all those who have no known address.
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Depends whether the ward is rural or urban, a lot of urban wards have better attendance due to public transport. On Own Now wrote:If you are talking about active or semi-active church members who no longer believe the whole story, but who continue in the church because it is a framework for doing good and for a form of worship in a God who is less-knowable than the LDS God, or just to be involved with the family spirituality, then I’d say the number is low… perhaps by the final judgment, there will only be 144,000
Love it!!!
😆 In my experience a lot of people between mid twenties and mid thirties seem to leave for historical reasons and loss of faith. I have quite a few friends who partied in their early twenties then came back only to leave again once they found out more if the history. I also have quite a few friends who are young moms and really worried about raising their kids in something that they don’t fully believe in. HSAB, that is a common issue in every reasonably large religion. Post high school graduation to children being about 10-12 is the time period of greatest alienation from organized religion and, more particularly, heritage religion. It’s interesting how many people return to religion (and, again, more particularly, heritage religion) once their children reach an age of struggle and the parents remember the benefits of their own religious upbringing at that age. Suddenly, for many of them, the more individual issues of doubt become less important than the communal benefits of sociality from which they benefited.
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