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TONS of interesting things – many positive (especially in comparison to other Christian denominations), quite a few negative (especially internal demographic composition). Seriously, as a social historian by nature and training, the overall report AND the Mormon-specific information is fascinating. Overall, compared to the other denominations, quite encouraging; overall, compared to what I would like to see internally, neutral; in some areas internally, quite disappointing.
Interesting stuff. Quote:GENDER
· The percentage of US Mormons that are men increased from 44 to 46%
· The percentage of US Mormons that are women decreased from 56% to 54%
Could we conclude that men are becoming more spiritual and women less so?? (sarcastic).
Could we also then suggest that those who thought the priesthood was given to men because women were more righteous and so men are the ones that needed it…that if this trend keeps up…women should be getting the priesthood soon??
:wtf: (also in jest)…and also…does this mean polygamy in heaven could go the other way…because there will be less women in heaven??
:shifty: (ok, I’ll stop now)
Old-Timer wrote:TONS of interesting things – many positive (especially in comparison to other Christian denominations), quite a few negative (especially internal demographic composition). Seriously, as a social historian by nature and training, the overall report AND the Mormon-specific information is fascinating.
Could you provide a few of your insights specifically? I was noticing that Mormons seem to be marrying later and migrating from the west (a Mormon diaspora). I was surprised that more Mormon’s don’t finish college given our emphasis on education. How does that stack up to other churches? 36% of those raised LDS no longer consider themselves mormon? Has that trend increased or decreased from 2007? The decrease in black membership is interesting. Does that represent blacks leaving the church or some other trend? Could the essay on Blacks and the Priesthood have been in response to this trend? If so – would we have to wait 7 more years to find out if it was effective?
One thing to remember about these numbers is that it’s not like they were able to somehow magically count every single adult in the US; these statistics are all based on a limited sample of people selected to be included in the survey that actually answered the phone calls and were willing to take the time to respond to the survey questions. For example, the Mormon numbers are based on only 664 total people that still self-identified as Mormon in the survey. It sounds like they did ask people if they had changed religious groups from the one they were raised in and a full 36% of people in the survey that were raised Mormon no longer considered themselves Mormon. I guess that helps explain how the Church could put so much effort into aggressive missionary work and have more children per family than most of these groups without showing more growth (in terms of people that still self-identify as Mormon) than they did in the seven years between these two surveys. In fact, the Church actually lost ground in terms of overall market share (1.7% to 1.6%) between the two surveys because it didn’t even keep pace with overall population growth. Of course none of that is likely to stop Church leaders from continuing to talk about new temples and “15 million strong” as if business as usual is supposedly still working just as well as it ever did.
The margin of error is +- 5% of the survey. Most of the changes were very small — far less than 5%, so that means any differences could be due to sampling error. I took a stats course (again, different courses in different programs — 5 courses now!) this year — so if they want to make trustworthy statements about changes from year to year I think they need a smaller margin of error. The confidence intervals of last year’s distribution and this year’s distribution may overlap too much to allow for any real conclusions. But taking the survey conclusions at face value, it appears that the % of the total population that are Mormons is stable, more men are in the church than previously, that the average Mormon is older than before, that Mormons are moving to the south and out of Utah.
SilentDawning wrote:The margin of error is +- 5% of the survey. Most of the changes were very small — far less than 5%, so that means any differences could be due to sampling error.I took a stats course (again, different courses in different programs — 5 courses now!) this year — so if they want to make trustworthy statements about changes from year to year I think they need a smaller margin of error. The confidence intervals of last year’s distribution and this year’s distribution may overlap too much to allow for any real conclusions…But taking the survey conclusions at face value, it appears that the % of the total population that are Mormons is stable, more men are in the church than previously, that the average Mormon is older than before, that Mormons are moving to the south and out of Utah. It sounds like this 5% margin of error only applied to the Mormon statistics based on 664 self-identified Mormons and for other groups the margin of error was different in specific cases. I definitely think the decrease in people that self-identified as Christian (78.4 versus 70.6) especially among younger generations and the increase in people that don’t identify with any specific religious group between the two surveys was significant and I don’t doubt that that this reflects the overall trends fairly well.
Another interesting development was that the number of self-identified atheists passed up the number of Mormons (3.1% versus 1.6%) in the seven years between the two surveys. In fact, I think we can already see reactions to some of these general trends by Church leaders like Oaks and Perry where now they are trying to make alliances with other religious groups with more followers and political clout as if they now feel much more threatened by secularism and increasing lack of interest in religion in general than other religious groups that it seems like they are now starting to identify with more than in past decades.
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