Introduction and Sponsor Message

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 689

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. The kindly light amid encircling gloom

Ryan Cragun [00:00:43] Lead thou me on the night is dark and I am.

Welcoming the Guests and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:49] All right, I think we're live. Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John delinquent. It is January 16th, high noon. I am. Oh, there we have Ryan joining us. That's awesome. My name is John Dehlin. I'm super excited today for our discussion. Basically, we're going to be analyzing 2016 LDS Church membership statistics with sociologists Ryan Craigen and Rick Phillips. We're streaming this discussion live. I have Rick on and Ryan, you're there, but you're muted. I don't know if you're able to unmute. Ryan's having some technical difficulties. So what we'll do is we'll give Ryan a chance to get this set up and we'll go ahead and start with Rick. But before we do, I just want to make a few announcements. First of all, I just showered, so my hair is a little bit messed up. No, so.

Rick Phillips [00:02:00] But you smell nice.

John Dehlin [00:02:01] Thanks, Rick. I appreciate that vote of confidence. Before we begin, I guess there's a few announcements that I'd like to make. The two announcements, I think maybe most important, are around a couple events that we have coming up. So if you go to mormontransitions.org, which is where we post our events, January 26th and 27th in Anaheim, California. We'll be having a workshop, Mormon Transitions Workshop, which is people's chance to meet and discuss and provide, receive support and community around any difficulties they're having navigating faith, transition within Mormonism, or leaving Mormonism. These workshops touch on healthy relationships, healthy marriage, raising healthy kids, secular spirituality, positive mental health, and they're really healing and useful for people. Normally, these events, always, they're rated 4.9 out of 5, very high customer satisfaction. So if any of you are interested in joining us in Anaheim, California, January 26th or 27th, go to mormontransitions.org events and you can check those out. And then we also have our next Mormon Transitions Retreat, which is a three day weekend scheduled for March 10th through 12th in Salt Lake City. Those retreats are even more in depth. You can make some of the best friends you'll ever make in your life. You'll learn about healthy marriages, healthy relationships, raising healthy kids, secular spirituality. They're just incredibly fun events. We do karaoke and they're outstanding. So if you're interested in either the workshop or the retreat on March 10th through 12th in Salt Lake City, please go to mormontransitions events and you can register there. Those are the main announcements. Other than that it is 2017. This is the first Mormon Stories interview of 2017. It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It would have been awesome if we had something to discuss around race and the Mormon Church. I don't know that there's anything new or interesting that we could tackle that we haven't already tackled. So if listeners have any suggestions or ideas on what we could do, I'm all ears. But I don't just want to shoot fish in a barrel, so to speak. And I just don't know what, what good news or developments we have on that front. So I'm open to your feedback. We will be taking your questions live during this discussion. So I'm monitoring chats on the group and I'm just inviting people as they're listening to provide feedback during this live broadcast. So that's enough with the announcements. Ryan, can you hear me? Ryan can't hear me. Okay, Rick, you can hear me. So I'm going to go ahead and invite Rick to introduce himself and we can hopefully get Ryan on board soon. Ryan is a Linux user and so we didn't test this stuff out with Linux. But Rick, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself?

Introducing Dr. Rick Phillips and Dr. Ryan Cragun

Rick Phillips [00:05:21] My name is Rick Phillips and my official title is Associate professor of Sociology and Religious Studies, the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida. And Jacksonville is where you want to be in the middle of January. 75 degrees here today. I have studied Mormonism for most of my academic career. Grew up in Ogden, went to Weber State and Utah State before going to Rutgers to get my Ph.D. and that's. I teach classes in the sociology of religion, sociological theory and research methods in the social sciences. That's what I do. I'm married, a couple little kids.

John Dehlin [00:06:08] And you analyze sort of these types of statistics for a living, is that right?

Rick Phillips [00:06:13] I did. I have, I had. In the earlier part of the decade, I wrote some articles on church growth and was one of the people who worked on the studies that looked at the disparity between official church statistics and self identified Latter Day Saints in the General Social Survey and in the American Religious Identification Survey. So I have analyzed these things in the past. These days I study Mormon culture more generally and I'm writing a sociology of religion textbooks. So I don't get to think about Mormonism full time these days.

John Dehlin [00:06:53] All right, well. And Rick, this isn't the first time we've had you on Mormon Stories, is it?

Rick Phillips [00:06:58] Yeah, it is.

John Dehlin [00:06:59] Yeah, it is. Oh, I'm so surprised. We've talked about it so many times that I would have just assumed you had been on, but welcome. I'm so happy that you're here for my debut. Old Mormon Stories.

Rick Phillips [00:07:11] Do I get some sort of a wreath or a funny hat for my first time or.

John Dehlin [00:07:15] You should. You should. I'm glad you're on and I hope you'll join us more often. Okay. Ryan Craigen, I think we have you now. Can you hear us?

Ryan Cragun [00:07:25] I can hear you. Can you hear me?

John Dehlin [00:07:27] We can hear you. Great. So beautiful. I'm so glad you're able to connect. I assume it was Linux, right?

Ryan Cragun [00:07:34] Of course. Of course it's Linux.

Rick Phillips [00:07:36] So you're dressed for the occasion.

Ryan Cragun [00:07:39] Well, can you see my shirt?

Rick Phillips [00:07:42] I love it.

John Dehlin [00:07:43] What does the shirt say? For those who are just listening, what does your shirt say? Ryan Picard for president. Jean Luc Picard, you're a nerd. Are you out of yourself as a complete nerd?

Ryan Cragun [00:07:53] Oh, 100%.

John Dehlin [00:07:55] Yeah.

Ryan Cragun [00:07:55] There's no question, like, I am absolutely the biggest nerd, you know.

John Dehlin [00:08:00] All right, well, Ryan, why don't you. This is not your first appearance on Mormon Stories podcast, but why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to our audience anyway? Well, you.

Ryan Cragun [00:08:10] You heard Rick's introduction, right? Mine's basically the same thing. Like, we grew up 10 miles from each other, he's a few years older than I am, but otherwise it's like the exact same story, except I think my family's bigger than his. Devout LDS family live in Morgan, Utah. Almost all of them still live up there. Let's see, I was born in 76, grew up LDS, did everything, seminary, graduated from seminary, served a mission to Costa Rica, came back convinced that I had to figure out this whole Mormonism thing. So I went to graduate school to study it and lasted about a year, thanks to people like Rick. I'm kidding. It wasn't Rick. But no, it didn't work for me and I ended up leaving. But now this is what I do, right? So I'm a college professor and research scientist and I study Mormonism and the non religious. Those are my two areas of expertise.

John Dehlin [00:09:03] Excellent. Excellent. Well, we're, we're really thrilled to have you back on. We're also thrilled that so many people are joining us live. Right now we have 71 viewers live and we want to invite our listeners to please ask questions and make comments and we will incorporate your questions and comments into the episode. I'm really excited about that. We've got people joining from all the way as far as Spain.

Rick Phillips [00:09:32] Hola.

John Dehlin [00:09:33] Yeah, hola. Absolutely. So with that, let's go ahead and jump in to today's discussion. One of the best sites in Mormonism, I think is cumorah.com, C-U-M-O-R-A h.com and it's a site that's run by a guy named Matt Martinich. And I don't exactly know how to spell that name and I think Matt's got a partner that works with him. But Matt is just this dogged tracker of Mormon statistics over the years. Rick and Ryan, do either of you have sort of your own take on what Matt does, just to give it sort of your, your best description?

Rick Phillips [00:10:17] I have never met Matt, but I have met his colleague David Stewart. David is a physician who is sort of an amateur demographer, Mormon studies, Mormon statistics watcher. These guys are devout members of the church and they are interested in seeing the church grow, but they are pretty clear eyed about how evidence works and about what good proselytizing methods are. And they're interested in actual converts instead of paper converts. And I think a lot of the stuff that David Stewart started doing that Matt sort of picked up on is this idea of how to grow the church strong rather than just grow it big and fast. And so a lot of the early stuff that David Stewart was doing was literally critiquing Mormon missionary efforts. He wrote a book that was, I think, quite critical of the rapid baptism methods that the church had been employing. And I think he's had a pretty big influence. He's an extremely smart guy.

John Dehlin [00:11:25] Beautiful. Ryan, anything to add?

Ryan Cragun [00:11:28] No. Basically I would echo what Rick said. I think they're both close watchers of the statistics, probably closer than Rick and I are these days. They don't. I mean, other than some book chapters and a book that David has published, I don't recall seeing them publishing in the same journals that Rick and I publish in Rick, have you seen them publish anything in.

Rick Phillips [00:11:50] Dave published. We published an article in the Handbook of Mormonism for Oxford University Press. And Dave contributed to that. And he has given some presentations at the meetings for the Scientific Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. And that's where I met him. So he's a good guy.

John Dehlin [00:12:14] Excellent. Okay. Well, I was really intrigued, and I agree. I think they do great work. Very credible. I was very intrigued with this article that Matt put out on December 31, 2016, that basically was entitled Top 10 Encouraging and Discouraging LDS Growth and Missionary Developments in 2016. And I think we put a link up for those who want to check that out live. Anyone can Google it as well. But what I want to do for this discussion, we're not here to. We're not here to be apologists for the church, and we're not here to bash the church. We're not here to make the church look like it's declining or look like it's growing. We want to give credit where credit is due. But as far as I'm concerned, one of the biggest questions that I get is, number one, is the church growing or is it shrinking or is it staying the same? You know, how do we make sense of the statistics? Even more importantly, I think it's important to understand, is the church healthy? Is it not healthy? And it's probably not a monolithic. It's certainly not a monolithic question, because I imagine that we're going to find out that the church is growing in some areas, declining in some areas, flat in some areas, healthy in some areas, less healthy in some areas. And so there's just a, you know, it's going to be a multifaceted discussion, but I know that people are constantly interested in it. So I imagine this is something that we have done and will continue to do on a regular basis. Now, Matt and Ryan, is there anything else you guys want to add in terms of what we are or aren't trying to accomplish in today's episode, or what you would like to accomplish?

Overview of LDS Growth Trends in 2016

Ryan Cragun [00:14:08] Rick, I think I just called you Matt.

John Dehlin [00:14:09] Oh, sorry. Sorry, Matt. Sorry, Rick.

Rick Phillips [00:14:12] That's all right. Okay, James.

Ryan Cragun [00:14:18] That sounds good to me.

John Dehlin [00:14:19] Is that all right?

Ryan Cragun [00:14:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that.

John Dehlin [00:14:23] All right, Rick, anything to add?

Rick Phillips [00:14:26] Let's do it.

John Dehlin [00:14:27] All right, so overall LDS growth trend case studies, top 10 encouraging and discouraging LDS growth and missionary developments in 2016. We're not going to go into these in depth, but I'll just read a little bit of sort of each of these points, and then we'll just have Rick and Ryan take turns responding if that's okay. So number one for encouraging growth of missionary developments, largest number of new stakes created in a single year since 1997. So Matt reports that the church organized 100 new stakes, a nice clean round number 100 new stakes. And I guess they closed eight stakes. So that gives us sort of a net increase of 92 stakes during 2016, a 2.9% annual increase. All right, Rick, let's have you respond first.

Rick Phillips [00:15:24] Well, the first thing that I want to say is that these church statistics, LDS Church statistics are incredibly noisy. They bounce around a lot. Particularly growth statistics bounce around a lot. And so whenever I analyze these things or look at these things, I don't put too much stock into any one year. And I tend to look at the five year rolling average or apply smoothing algorithms because they bounce around a lot. So a lot of stakes were created. That's interesting. But it was a year where there are very few companies, congregations created. So, you know, and there was a year where there were very few convert baptisms. So what to make of that? There are probably some possibilities that it could be that convert retention is better now than it has been and that converts in the past are progressing to the point where they're being ordained to the Manchester priesthood. And this supports state growth. But if it supports state growth, why doesn't it support congregation growth? I don't know. Another would be a policy where we now have fewer wards per stake, or we're experimenting with the idea of fewer wards in a stake. This would cause the organization of more stakes even without more membership growth or more congregations. One of the interesting things that you see is very rapid stake grow, large stake growth in the United States in 2016, even though there hasn't been a lot of membership growth in the United States. And this would lead me to believe that there might be some initiative or policy where they're thinking about stakes now with fewer wards in them. But again, I mean, it's all initial bumps in statistics or little changes in these trend lines usually don't mean that much because the data are pretty noisy. So I wouldn't know what to make of it. It could be a combination of those things.

John Dehlin [00:17:24] Okay, Ryan, what do you have to add?

Ryan Cragun [00:17:27] I think Rick's definitely headed down the right track. This looks to me, especially as we read further into this, like an organizational change that the LDS Church is instituting, where they're saying, we like the idea of having stakes even if we've got fewer wards, because there's not a concomitant increase in wards. Right. And That's a little bit strange because if this was just genuine growth, then you would get growth at multiple levels. And you're really not seeing that. You're seeing organization of new stakes. So something I. And again, I'm kind of focusing on just the primary point. Rick is absolutely right about. There's a lot of noise in the data. You never know what's going on. They're not all that clear with their numbers. But this sounds to me like some sort of policy change or organizational bureaucratic change where they're just adding.

Rick Phillips [00:18:12] I mean, unless it could be the cabinet. Haven't looked at the numbers on this to see if there's any evidence for this, but it could be that the stake organization is a lagging indicator. So I think it's too early to say what it means.

John Dehlin [00:18:26] Yeah, okay, but it's too early to sort of celebrate. If the church were to come out and say the church is growing as fast as it's ever been. Look, we had a banner year. We're organizing a stake every three or four days. What would your response be if that was sort of the claim that.

Rick Phillips [00:18:45] Well, I mean, that's. I mean, that would be a dangerous road to go down. Because if you're, if it's an organizational change and you're deciding that you're going to have fewer wards in stakes and growth in congregations and growth in membership isn't keeping pace with the growth, growth in stakes, then you're going to, you know, you're going to hit the wall. You're going to collapse. The problem with organizing a stake is that, to me, a stake, the growth in stakes, is the. One of the best indicators of church growth because you can have a branch or, you know, a war with a few members. You can, you know, baptize all kinds of people, but a stake has to have a requisite number of Melchizedek priesthood holders in order to sustain itself. So it's a good, I think, indicator of growth, and it's probably not one that you could finesse or fake. I don't think that the church is engaged in any sort of political machination to make it look like they're growing faster in an age of slowing growth. I think, you know, what Ryan is saying. I think it is, you know, somebody in the church office building is saying what might be good for retention or what might be good to relieve the pressures on local leaders or what might be good for organizational strength is to experiment with stakes that have fewer numbers of wards in them.

Ryan Cragun [00:19:59] Yeah, I mean, one way to Think about this is to look at where these wards were created, right? So yeah, there were some in Utah, but most of them are not in Utah where you have dense populations of Mormons. So what it could be kind of going off of what Rick said is this is a way to help retention. If you've got a stake that is made up of eight wards and they're spread out over a 600 square mile radius or something, right. Then bringing them all together for a stake conference is really, really difficult. Whereas if we shrink the number of wards, we shrink the geographic area included in a stake and suddenly it's much easier to bring people together for state conferences and for stake leadership meetings. Plus you've got more positions for people. Positions generally hold.

Rick Phillips [00:20:40] So you have, you have that many more opportunities for someone to be on the stake High Council, that many more opportunities for someone to hold a stake calling. It's just, that's what I think is going on.

Listener Questions on Stakes and Membership Numbers

John Dehlin [00:20:53] Okay, okay, we've got a couple comments from listeners. I just want to read a few and respond. Peter writes, elder Holland stated in 2016 that double digit growth was the church's biggest problem. How do we reconcile that statement compared to the numbers presented?

Rick Phillips [00:21:12] Yeah, he was wrong.

John Dehlin [00:21:17] Okay.

Rick Phillips [00:21:19] It's not a problem anymore.

Ryan Cragun [00:21:21] They don't have double digit growth.

Rick Phillips [00:21:23] They haven't had double digit. I don't know, you look back, there are some years with 8%, some years approaching 9%. But I haven't seen double digit growth in a very long time.

Ryan Cragun [00:21:33] Well, yeah, and you got to be really careful with numbers, right? So this is one of the things I point out in a couple of my articles is if you've got a really small base and then you add to that, you can easily get double digit growth. Right? But if you're talking about a very big base, it takes a lot of growth to get growth. And at this point they have in most countries a sizable base. So double digit growth is pretty much not going to happen.

Rick Phillips [00:21:58] Confined to Africa where there are fewer members than there. You know, there are fewer members in Africa than there are in El Salvador and Guatemala and Honduras combined. And so small base makes for rapid percentage increases.

Ryan Cragun [00:22:11] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:22:13] Okay, the next question is this is. This is a comment from Jamie. They did this to us yesterday, took two stakes and made it into three with less wards per steak stake. President said he was taught the doctrine of right sizing from the people above him. Any reactions to that?

Ryan Cragun [00:22:33] I like that. That's a great kind of buzzword, right? Sizing the stakes. Sounds exactly like what we were just describing. Right. That they've come up with a new idea. They're trying something new out that suggests that having smaller number of wards per stake is a better way to maintain kind of growth or to maintain membership numbers to give people opportunities to serve and probably to shrink that geographic area in places outside of Utah where it's huge.

John Dehlin [00:22:59] Yeah, yeah. Like maybe some Bain consultant basically said you'll do better with retention if you have less units per stake or something like that.

Ryan Cragun [00:23:09] Right.

Rick Phillips [00:23:10] I wouldn't doubt that at all.

John Dehlin [00:23:12] Okay. All right, one more. And this is from Gabe. She says we just had a new state created in Vegas with very little membership growth at the ward level. I speculated that the stakes want to get smaller to better micromanage things at the ward level. Okay. So, I mean, we're getting.

Rick Phillips [00:23:31] We have our deductive theory and all of a sudden all of our observations are coming in. So that's good.

John Dehlin [00:23:36] I love it. I love it. Okay, so listeners, we're loving your comments. Please keep them coming. A few people have said that they're having trouble with the audio. If it's choppy. If that's true, let me know and I'll fix it. Just post those comments there. Okay. And just to close out this point about largest number of new stakes created, it's a fact that the church continues, as I understand it, to have less units per stake and more members per stake. Is that true?

Rick Phillips [00:24:10] The general trend has been rising numbers of members per stake. One of the things that is interesting to do is to look at the number of convert baptisms in a year and divide by the number of stakes in a year. And that will tell you how many stakes per how many members in a given year. That number has been increasing steadily. And now it may be the case that they figured out, it could very well be that retention is improving and that number is going to start going down. But this robust state growth has been for the past couple of years yet. So I think we're gonna have to wait a while to see if it constitutes a trend.

Encouraging Growth: West Africa, Asia, and New Stakes

John Dehlin [00:24:49] Okay. All right, let's jump to the point number two. Rapid growth accelerates in West Africa. And I'm not gonna go into this in detail other than to say that convert baptisms in Africa west area was over 27,000. It's talking about growth in Nigeria, growth in Ghana, growth in Liberia, et cetera, et cetera. Any comments? Ryan, we'll start with you on this one. Any responses on that?

Ryan Cragun [00:25:24] Yeah, so that's basically exactly where we would expect the growth, based on my Research in particular. But the research that Rick and I have done, going back to a paper that I published, I don't know, I have to go back and look at the date 2010. Right. Which is called the Secular Transition. And people can find it on my website or we can put a link if people want it. But I argued that and the numbers certainly supported at the time. I had Data up through 2006 that the church grows most rapidly in rapidly developing countries, in countries that are not developing at all, and in countries that are highly developed economically, there's no growth of the LDS Church. So where do we have places that are growing? West Africa makes sense. Right. So where would we expect any growth? If there's going to be growth, it's in West Africa. And that's. Yeah, absolutely. So those numbers align perfectly with what we hypothesized six years ago as far as major drivers for LDS growth.

John Dehlin [00:26:23] Okay. Rick, do you want to add anything?

Rick Phillips [00:26:25] Yeah, that's, you know, Africa has been an area of robust growth for a while. It's still the last. I mean, if you think about it, West Africa, Africa is the sort of most recent territory that's opened up. I mean, all things being equal, missionaries have been in Africa for obvious reasons. West Africa, not as long as they have been in Europe and Central America. So there's still untapped resources there. But again, I think a caveat is useful. I mean, there are a billion people in Africa, and there are more Mormons in. If you look at Central America, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, there are more Mormons in those three Central American countries than there are in the entire continent of Africa. So again, it'll take some time to see whether this is something that is sustained or whether or not growth in Africa is going to regress to the mean, which, you know, seems likely to me.

John Dehlin [00:27:22] So there are some obvious answers that we could come up with as to why the church grows in developing countries. Why don't you guys just take your best stab at explaining why?

Rick Phillips [00:27:36] Well, one of the things that I think is that one thing the church does very well is use, is an ecclesiastical parallel to a corporate model. There's a hierarchy. You are giving a calling, and you, you, if you're a good steward in that calling, you go on to higher callings. And so I think it is a good training ground for someone who wants to understand how Western corporations work or how you know how to. It's a great model for how to succeed in business. One of the reasons why in my mission, new immigrants were attracted to the church, we saw lots of new immigrants attracted to the church is because it can help people be upwardly mobile. When I was going to graduate school in New Jersey, the ward had English classes. They had all kinds of resources to sort of help people in very practical ways. And so I think the church has some real world benefits as well as spiritual, theological benefits to great. You know, for decades we've talked about Mormonism as a quintessentially American institution. And so to the extent that people want to be in a Western economy or people want to succeed in the Western economy, it's a great complement to that kind of mindset, to that kind of change.

John Dehlin [00:29:00] Ryan, what would you add, again, going

Ryan Cragun [00:29:03] back to that paper that I published, we argue, I mean, I think Rick is right, that all of that is certainly true at a more kind of theoretical level. If we can go a little theoretical, and hopefully we don't lose all your listeners at this point, maybe they're totally into this. But one of the things that I argue is in pre developed countries or countries that have really low levels of development, they also have a sense of connectedness in their communities, so they still feel like they belong. But when you experience rapid periods of economic development, you also experience periods of dislocation and anomie. It's the French term for kind of a disconnectedness or chaos. Right. And that's when these religions that offer a sense of community, a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning in life when they seem to do really, really well. The same thing holds for Jehovah's Witnesses. Right. So if you look at their growth patterns in those types of countries, they come in in these particular situations where people feel dislocated because they've moved from a countryside or a small town, they're moving to a big city, they're working in a factory, their sense of belonging and meaning has kind of disappeared. Then you tack on everything that Rick just said, which is they give you a sense of, you know, here, here we're going to help you professionalize, but they're also adding a sense of community and meaning, and that makes them particularly appealing. So there's a very specific window in which we would expect the LDS Church to grow. And certainly the countries in West Africa are in that window right now. So it makes sense that they would be growing right now.

John Dehlin [00:30:27] Interestingly, I had a comment from a listener about the church growth in Spain. Eduardo wrote, the church growth in Spain depends on all the people coming from Ecuador and Peru that are very humble. When I spent a lot of time in Western Europe, in the uk. The feedback I got from the UK Saints is that the vast majority of baptisms in the UK are immigrants from Africa and from the Philippines, etc. So if the church were just to say these people are more humble, they're more open to the gospel, that the wealthy educated people are blinded by their money and their, their pride and their education. Do you guys have a response to that or is that not a serious

Ryan Cragun [00:31:16] point? I think you started out saying we're not going to attack the church. Right.

John Dehlin [00:31:21] I mean, I'm just trying to imagine what they would say. And what would your. If they were to say that, what would your response be? Not to criticize, just to respond. Sure.

Ryan Cragun [00:31:31] Just to respond. So it's a great point. Right. I think that language, the humility language is still used. It was used during my mission. Right. That we would talk about, oh, you know, those rich people, they're the arrogant ones. They're. They're not kind of willing to listen. And I think, and I actually argue this in one of my books, right. What you don't know about religion, but should that, in a sense, it's Orwellian doublespeak. Right? So it's not so much about humility. Humility is completely irrelevant to this discussion. It's just a way of kind of trying to build up those people who are receptive for other reasons. The humility argument, I think, is a really flawed, damaging argument for lots of other people. Right. So when they say that it's about humility, I don't think it has anything to do with humility. Yes, there may be poverty associated with that, but it's not the poverty. The immigrants fit perfectly with the model that I just described. Right. There's dislocation. They don't feel like they connect. They don't feel like they belong anywhere. And what does the Mormon Church do? Really, really well. I mean, I don't think anybody would argue about the sense of community. Mormon Church gives a sense of community. Maybe it's artificial, Certainly you could go after that. But I think there's a really compelling argument to be made that they bring people in, they help them adjust, they help them kind of assimilate into the new society. They give them a sense of community, and that's why they're so appealing to immigrants, has nothing to do with humility. Right. Humility is. It's a red herring that they use to build themselves up and say, oh, we're better than the people who aren't receptive. Right. I don't buy it for a second. And there are other reasons if we want to go down that path, Rick, take it away.

Rick Phillips [00:33:05] Well, you know, when I was a missionary, I was in New Orleans. We used to always go to the most humble parts of town because people let you in, you could teach a discussion. I mean, you know, when you tracked out million dollar houses, nobody comes to the door, nobody lets you in. You tracked out a housing project, you're teaching discussions all day long. That has spiritual benefits for the missionary and practical benefits to the missionary. When I was in graduate school, I was studying a ward. I wrote my dissertation on a ward in New Jersey. And I remember the bishop and the missionaries used to clash all the time because the bishop would say, hey, I want you to co. I want you guys tracking in my neighborhood. How come I never see you tracting in my neighborhood? And the missionaries would always say, we do track in that neighborhood sometimes, and nobody lets us in. We prefer to go. Most of the investigators came from the poor parts of town. So I don't completely dismiss the humble thing. I mean, it could be it's also power and class, probably, but it's generally the case. I mean, there are some sociologists who say at a macro level, the more existentially secure a society is, the less religious it is. The societies that are existentially insecure probably more amenable to strict religion. And that may work at the individual level could be that people who are in more humble circumstances are more receptive. I mean, if the world treats you great, you don't need a religion that's in contrast to the world. I don't know.

Ryan Cragun [00:34:41] Well, I think there may be two uses of the word humble here that we're kind of conflating.

Rick Phillips [00:34:46] Yeah, I'm making a euphemism for poor. I should just say poor.

Ryan Cragun [00:34:49] We should just say poor, Right? Because really, when you're talking about humility, it's people who are not arrogant, right. Who are building themselves up, saying, I'm better than everybody else. And I don't think that rich people necessarily do that. Right. I mean, maybe some do, right? I mean, current president elect aside, Right. But certainly some people do that. But I don't think on average people are just going, oh, well, I'm wealthier than they are, so I'm clearly better than they are. So it's conflating the two.

Rick Phillips [00:35:14] They just don't need religion.

Ryan Cragun [00:35:16] They don't need religion, right? So once you get past a certain point, it doesn't mean that you're arrogant. It Just means you don't need religion, that you have more money. So when they use that, it really is a conflation of two uses of the word humble. And we gotta be really, really careful because it's not about humility. It's about social dislocation and poverty. Those are the big factors that drive this. Not that somebody's like, oh, I, you know, respect. Blah, blah, blah. The examples that I use in my book, right? Mormons will often, and I don't mean to, like, completely stereotype all Mormons, but they will say things like, oh, you're so arrogant, right? That you don't think you need to kind of bow yourself before God and honestly, right. I mean, I don't think there's anything more. The opposite of arrogant, right? More humble than saying, you know, I don't even know if there is a God. It's an open question. And I'm open to having my mind changed about things. Things, right? That's actually the exact opposite of arrogance. It's saying, I don't know, right? When people are like, oh, no, no, that's arrogant. Well, how is that arrogant versus somebody saying, I definitively know that there is a God, where's your evidence? Right? That seems to me like an arrogant, proudful, boastful claim where you have no evidence to support it. So it's a bit pet peeve of mine.

John Dehlin [00:36:30] I struck a nerve. I struck really quickly. April writes, my friend's son is currently serving in Africa and has indicated baptisms are high, but retention is low. And that's something we know that in Latin America, retention rates around 10, 20% at best. Also, Ryan, you'll be interested to know that Matthew writes, always great to see a former fellow Mountain Green ward member.

Rick Phillips [00:36:57] The second Mountain Green heretic.

John Dehlin [00:37:02] Okay, let's go ahead and jump on to the next point. The next point in the article is that the church creates its first stakes in three nations. Benin, which I've never heard of.

Rick Phillips [00:37:12] West Africa.

John Dehlin [00:37:13] It's a West African nation. Yeah, I apologize. I haven't heard of that. Benin. He wrote Czechia. I've heard of Chechnya, but never Czechia.

Rick Phillips [00:37:22] But it's the Czech Republic.

John Dehlin [00:37:23] Czech Republic. So there's a stake there. And one in Liberia, also in West Africa. Right. So these are. All these seem to be. Is it fair to call the Czech Republic a developing country?

Rick Phillips [00:37:36] I mean, it's fully developed. I think they probably just have enough members there for a stake.

John Dehlin [00:37:40] Okay.

Rick Phillips [00:37:41] Who knows how many expats are in Prague right now that comprise the backbone of that stake, I mean.

John Dehlin [00:37:47] Okay, okay.

Ryan Cragun [00:37:48] They're also in a weird class because they're a former communist country. Right. So growth there has been recent. So they haven't had a lot of growth since. I mean, it's all been post the collapse of the Soviet Union.

John Dehlin [00:37:59] Got it. So is there anything, does there anything significant for you guys for the creation of those stakes in countries for the first time? Does that tell us anything about health, about growth, anything?

Rick Phillips [00:38:12] Well, it would be another data point to suggest that Africa is the locus of the most robust growth within the church.

John Dehlin [00:38:23] Okay, okay, right, okay. LDS growth trends improve in Central America. And, you know, I serve my mission in Guatemala. You know, retention rates have been abysmal there. They had really outrageous baptismal practices. But now they're basically saying that growth trends are improving in Guatemala. A net increase of 10 wards and branches. Highest percentage of increase in number of congregations in over 15 years. Any thoughts or reactions to that?

Rick Phillips [00:38:59] You know, one of the things that I think is interesting generally that we need to talk about is the idea of measurement, operationalization, what constitutes a member. One of the things that's interesting about the LDS Church is that if you're baptized and confirmed, you're considered to be a Mormon. And really, if you ask Latter Day Saints in their congregations, being baptized and confirmed isn't the culmination of the conversion process, it's the beginning of the conversion process. And I think that's part of the reason why retention rates are low. Also, if you think about, you know, how easy it is to be a Mormon. It's incredibly easy to become a Mormon. You should go down to your local synagogue and ask the rabbi there what the process is for converting to Judaism. Or, you know, think about converting to Catholicism, where the rite of Christian initiation for adults admits new Catholics once a year. I wonder what growth rates would be like in the LDS Church if we only admitted members once a year. Or if instead of being baptized and confirmed, you're counted as a member, you're counted as a member after a year of full tithe paying or something like that. Or think about it in terms of not the raw number of convert baptisms, but look at the LDS Church's worldwide growth outreach and think about the amount of money spent per convert or the amount of money spent per retained convert. There was a article that I read in the 90s that looked at the correlation between growth rates and the number of missionaries, and it was a very tight growth rate. I mean, if you send a massive sales force around the world knocking on doors, selling Widgets. You're going to sell some widgets. We just went through this sort of double cohort surge because the, the missionary age was changed. And I think a lot of this could be lagging, a lagging bump of baptisms that come from this. The, the huge jump in the size of the number of missionaries. So, you know, I can't see how things have changed structurally in Central America. Retention rates are absolutely. Have been absolutely abysmal. The statistics for 2016 point to lots of problems in Mexico. I don't know why things would be different in Mexico than they would be in Guatemala or El Salvador. So I'm, you know, again, and it's the kind of thing where I'm like, let's wait and see. These indicators are noisy. I think our best bet is to sit tight and see if, if things wash out long term.

Ryan Cragun [00:41:32] Ryan, I think Rick's hitting it on this one.

John Dehlin [00:41:35] Okay. I'll just say that it's hard for me to trust numbers coming out of Guatemala or Central America because it could be real growth or it could be an aggressive area presidency. Exactly. Re implementing super aggressive baptism tactics with missionaries that we've seen, you know, as early back as the baseball baptism scandals in the UK in the early 1960s, we've seen baseball baptisms in Japan. It's just hard to know what any of that really means. And it really does beg the question. I should have asked this from the very beginning. Ryan, I'll ask you. Why do you think the church doesn't just publish its activity rates? Why do you think the church isn't just fully transparent with that information? I know, I'm asking you to speculate. Do you have a theory?

Ryan Cragun [00:42:24] Well, I mean, I think Rick probably does here, but my initial thought would be, I think if we went back 40 years, which I think they did at one point, didn't they, Rick?

Rick Phillips [00:42:37] At one point they used it. At one point they used. It's funny because you can see them dropping indicators that will tell you what's going on. So at one point, they used to tabulate the number of babies blessed, and then they used to tabulate the number of baptisms of children of record. And so you could just move eight years into the future and see how many babies that were blessed never made it to the baptismal font. And once people started looking at that number, the number of babies blessed, I believe, was quietly dropped from the ledger. So, I mean, activity rates in the church. The funny thing about activity rates in the church is they have always been the elephant in the room. And it's always been sort of the secret that everybody that nobody talks about. What's funny is that in 2006 I wrote an article called Rethinking the International Expansion of Mormonism. And in that article I looked at the census data for various nations and looked at the disparity between the number of members claimed by the church and the number of self reported Latter Day Saints on census forms for the nations that took the census. And I found that it correlates closely with growth rates. The number, the degree of over reporting in a nation correlates with the nation's growth rate. And one of the things about that fairly innocuous article, but man, I have never been, you know, I said some bad things about the church and I've got some, you know, but man, I lost all my friends. You know, that was so you can, you know, talking about Joseph Smith as a money digger or the husband of teenage brides might get you in a little bit of trouble. But man, going after the growth rates really got me in big trouble.

Ryan Cragun [00:44:14] Well, and I think, I think they're in over their head is the problem. That's what I was going to say is if we had gone back 40 years and they just had those numbers and they just kept reporting them this whole time, then you probably would have seen kind of a divergence between growth and attendance that would have just continued over time. Right. But they didn't. And now if they were to suddenly release, here's how many people actually are going versus how many we claim the disparity would be so big. So big. Right. That I think it would blow a lot of people's minds and it would really upset a lot of members because Mormons love, and again, that's a bit of a stereotype, they love to tout their numbers. Right. The numbers come out regularly. We've got 15, we've got 15.7, we've got all these members. But no one wants to mention again what Rick said about elephant in the room, right. Is that most of those people aren't

Rick Phillips [00:45:02] attending, although they, I think they have been backing off touting the numbers somewhat. Partly, I think on the things that we've been doing, things that other people have been writing.

John Dehlin [00:45:16] The church has an article out of Mormon newsroom called Growth of the Church. In the last paragraph it says, according to the National Council of Churches, the LDS Church is the second fastest growing church in the United States. So it starts with that.

Rick Phillips [00:45:32] That is, first of all, that is just patently false. You know, it might be the Fastest growing denomination with over X number of members. But they're Again, the percent growth in membership has to do with your baseline numbers. And I guarantee you there are many small denominations that are growing substantially faster than the LDS Church. That's crazy.

John Dehlin [00:45:57] Yeah, but then it goes on to say, however, it's weird that it starts with that sentence. But then it goes on to say, despite its increasing numbers, the church cautions against over emphasis on growth statistics. It's basically saying we're number two, but don't, don't pay attention.

Rick Phillips [00:46:13] That's called having your cake and eating it too. Right. Because so if you could tout your growth, but if people say, hey, you're touting your growth, they can say, oh no, look at this caveat.

John Dehlin [00:46:21] Yeah. It goes on to say in this article that comparisons don't take into consideration activity rates and death rates and methodology for counting members. So at least in all fairness, it's warning people to not pay too much attention to the numbers in this article

Rick Phillips [00:46:39] that it touts the numbers.

John Dehlin [00:46:44] All right, well, I just thought it'd be journalistically fair.

Ryan Cragun [00:46:48] Well, I mean, one thing that it's worth mentioning, Rick and I hang out at least twice a year. Well, at least once a year. Right. At SSSR meetings with some of the social scientists who work for the church. They've read these articles. They know exactly what we're talking about. I mean, they have, they have the actual numbers. Right. So I'm guessing just like a lot of things that come out of the church these days, that was a two headed press release. Right. So you've got those who are saying, look how great we are. And then they've got the actual science social scientists on the back end or like, hey guys, come on.

Rick Phillips [00:47:19] Down kids, down.

Ryan Cragun [00:47:21] We know the actual numbers and they don't look anything like what you're actually saying.

John Dehlin [00:47:26] Right? Yeah.

Rick Phillips [00:47:27] There are ways using existing data sources to tease out activity. That's some of the things that Ryan and I have done in the past is sort of looked at levels of apostasy and activity rates using, you know, various data sources. And seems to me that levels of apostasy and inactivity are definitely on the rise. Now if the trend is, you know, if these new numbers herald some sort of reversal of the trend, I'll be the first to admit that that's the case. It could be, but too soon to tell.

John Dehlin [00:47:57] Okay, very cool. All right, let's continue. It goes on to talk about significant LDS growth, developments in Asia. It talks about Cambodia, talks about Hong Kong, Mongolia and I'm just going to kind of condense these because I think we're kind of making the same point. Point six talks about the Congo. Part seven talks about progress in Oceania, which includes Samoa and Australia. I don't mean to just sort of give any of those a short shrift, but tell me if I'm wrong in just saying those are all basically saying the same thing.

Rick Phillips [00:48:38] Pretty much, yeah.

Ryan Cragun [00:48:39] Pretty much. I mean, I think there's some nuance, particularly number five, Right. Where you've got growth in Cambodia, but again, the church is new in Cambodia, hasn't been around for a long time, versus growth in Hong Kong. So, yeah, you've got more growth in Cambodia than you would in Hong Kong. Hong Kong. It looks more like the realignment that we were talking about in stakes. Right. So there's some subtle nuance there, but generally, yeah, I think we're talking about the exact same thing. Same thing in OC on it. Right. I mean, Samoa has had Mormons for a very, very long time. They've got a lot of Mormons there. So when they say, you know, new congregations or new stakes organized, this sounds more like the congregational shifting stuff rather than actual growth of members.

John Dehlin [00:49:15] Okay. All right. Rick, anything to add?

Rick Phillips [00:49:20] Nope, I'm good.

John Dehlin [00:49:21] Okay. Number eight is new temples. Does that tell us anything? New temples in Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Zimbabwe.

Temple Expansion and Congregations in Conflict Regions

Rick Phillips [00:49:31] I think the Russian temple building under President Hinckley was a.

John Dehlin [00:49:38] Did you say Russian temple?

Rick Phillips [00:49:40] The rush in temple expansionist. Yeah. Was a substantial policy shift for the church. I think the idea was, you know, if you build it, if you build them, they will come. And so making temples accessible is a strategy, because the idea is that the more people we can get endowed, the better retention will be, that having a temple is important for convert retention for sustained activity. And that's why you see this explosion in temple building.

Ryan Cragun [00:50:18] I think it's worth noting usage of these temples is not anything like what most of the members in Salt Lake Valley understand, the usage. Right. So a lot of these temples are open, what, one day a week? Maybe one. You know, it's not the same as the Jordan River Temple. Right. Or the Salt Lake City Temple or the Bountiful Temple, where they're open five days a week, six days a week, and they've got lots of people going through. These are placeholders. Right. They built a lot. They built.

John Dehlin [00:50:47] You know, they bought a lot.

Ryan Cragun [00:50:48] They built a building, and they do exactly what Rick said. They bring people in. Very, very rarely. They have them open a little bit. Right. But it's really Just kind of, you

Rick Phillips [00:50:58] know, it's built there in anticipation of our need for it, which will be.

John Dehlin [00:51:04] Got it. Okay. So because they're all in developing countries and because, you know, we don't know how well attended they are, we can't really read a lot from this other than that the church has disposable income to build more temples. Is that right? Okay. So the church is doing well financially.

Rick Phillips [00:51:27] That is not in dispute.

John Dehlin [00:51:30] All right. Number nine is LDS congregations in Syria and Iraq. You know, that again, follows the developing countries sort of model. But that's interesting, right? Especially given the leaks that came out last year when that one senator from Oregon was caught saying that he voted for the Iraq war because it would lead to increased missionary effort, or at least in part because it would lead to increased missionary work in the Middle East. Do you guys remember what I'm talking about there?

Ryan Cragun [00:52:04] Oh, yeah, I remember watching the video. Yeah. So there was a. I think he was a representative, right. So a congressional representative who had been brought in to speak to. To the senator.

John Dehlin [00:52:14] He was a senator.

Ryan Cragun [00:52:15] He was a senator, yeah. And he was talking about that very issue, right. That he was trying to pull some strings and support the work of the gospel going forward. So I do remember watching that video. I mean, those two are kind of interesting, right? One, Syria, Growth in Syria right now. Right. Like, Syria's got issues, major issues. So to be talking about growth of the church in Syria is surprising. Right. But prior to the civil war, Syria was one of the more. This is going to sound awkward, right? But kind of more progressive, predominantly Muslim countries. Right. So it would make sense prior to the civil war, but right now with the civil war going on, that's really, really kind of unusual. And then Iraq, I mean, I have to wonder, are these native Iraqis or are we talking about expats?

Rick Phillips [00:53:06] Well, there, it's probably a lot of expats, and it's probably any kind of proselytizing that takes place. Place Would have to take place among Christians that are already there. Syria has a large Christian population relative to many Islamic nations. And so I suspect there's lots of. Any work that's being done is being done among Iraqi Christians. Syrian Christians against the law to convert from Islam to Christianity.

John Dehlin [00:53:33] Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's it. I would love to hear any listeners who are members of the. The church in Syria or Iraq come on Mormon stories and talk about what that's like.

Rick Phillips [00:53:43] There are probably some service members that would be able to tell you, too.

John Dehlin [00:53:47] Yeah, no, that'd be interesting. But Also, just, just, just native people. That'd be fascinating. So if there are any listeners in the Middle east, please reach out to Mormon stories. We'd love to interview you about what that's like. All right, the last, the last one is Canada. Canada reported a net increase of eight congregations in 2016, the largest increase since 2003. Now, this sort of challenges are maybe some of our assertions that it's mostly uneducated developing countries. Or does it?

Rick Phillips [00:54:21] No, because most of that growth is in Alberta. And what you have are large groups of lifelong Latter Day Saints that fled polygamy or that fled the United States to avoid polygamy prosecution that live in Lethbridge and in Alberta and they have higher birth rates than other Canadians. And so a lot of that growth is the increase in births of lifelong multi generational Latter Day Saints in the western provinces.

Ryan Cragun [00:54:57] You also have to recognize Canada is very open to immigration. Right. So partly immigration too. Right. Going back to that previous conversation we had that in highly developed countries, the only people who tend to really be interested in converting are immigrants. And Canada is certainly open to immigration.

John Dehlin [00:55:15] Got it. Okay, I'm just gonna read a couple quick comments that are on the live stream. Eduardo from Spain says the temple activity in Spain is very low. That's what he says. Joyce reminds us that it was Senator Gordon Smith, former Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon, that made that comment about missionaries missionary work benefiting from the Iraq War. Peter writes Canadian here. My small town in Alberta had a ward split into award in a branch with not really any numbers for either. They were told specifically the goal was to increase retention and proselytizing efforts to justify split. So that's. Isn't it great to get this real time anecdotal, awesome feet on the ground feedback. I love it. All right, so thanks to everyone who's been commenting on Facebook Live. Please continue to make such a rich conversation. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the lower lights.

Rick Phillips [00:56:42] Make me whole

John Dehlin [00:56:48] when with the wounded heart, anger or malice I draw myself apart searching my soul.

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 690

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under Support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. The kindly light amid the encircling gloom

Ryan Cragun [00:00:43] Lead thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home.

Top Ten Discouraging Growth and Missionary Developments

John Dehlin [00:00:53] Okay, it is now time to talk about the top 10 discouraging LDS growth and missionary developments. And he's got 10 of them. So let's jump into number one. Congregational growth slows in the United States. He writes that smallest increases in the number of wards and branches during 2016 there's appeared to have been a net increase of only 69 congregations during the year. 0.49% increase, significantly smaller increase than most recent years. And I think this is something we haven't really mentioned. In the past few years, the church doubled, practically doubled its missionary efforts. So do you guys have any initial comments both about congregational slowing of growth in the US but also in light of the fact that we just almost doubled the eligibility of missionaries that could be out there serving and as I understand it, growth per missionary? Actually overall growth didn't really happen as a result of this increased missionary.

Rick Phillips [00:02:03] That double cohort is largely home now. So we're back to fairly normal. The bump has worked its way through where you have the 18 year olds and the 19 year olds out at the same time. But you're right.

John Dehlin [00:02:16] What was the result of that?

Rick Phillips [00:02:18] It was, it was, must have been very disappointing. The number of converts per missionary has been declining steadily. That's one of those metrics where it's been happening long enough that you can see that it's a trend. Now a lot of those, when you had that surge, a lot of those missionaries were stationed in the United States because, you know, you have this sudden bump, a huge bump up in the number of missionaries. And so the missions in the United States had the infrastructure to accommodate all of these new missionaries. And there weren't the visa and, you know, visa and international hassles. And so you had a huge surge of missionaries in the United States, but it just didn't seem to bear, didn't seem to bear fruit. Now one of the things is they're saying, you know, you have you have poor congregation growth and poor membership growth and yet they add 42 stakes. So this would be more evidence that there's some sort of organizational realignment, some sort of structural change in philosophy about how they're going to run local units. But I mean, you know, the United States has been experiencing a secularizing trend and you know, I wouldn't expect that. And plus it's, you know, the United States is the burned over district. I mean, I see missionaries in my neighborhood all the time. I'm sure every door in my neighborhood has been knocked on multiple times just in the past couple of years.

Ryan Cragun [00:03:47] Yeah, yeah.

Rick Phillips [00:03:49] Inclined to join. The church has probably already joined.

Ryan Cragun [00:03:53] Yeah. And as far as sending out, you know, that double wave, I'm sure there were lots of people salivating at the potential there, but they didn't send them to the right places.

Rick Phillips [00:04:03] Yeah, they sent them where they can go to Atlanta.

Ryan Cragun [00:04:06] Yeah. I mean, where you can accommodate them is not the best use of those missionaries. And I know some people will be like, oh God, that's such a cynical approach to take. Right. But at the same time, if it's really all about growth and it was like, oh, we've got all these missionaries. Well, they should have sent them where they're growing, which is West Africa. Right. So they should have put four times the number of missionaries that they had in West Africa and just like they would have really taken off. You send them all to Europe. Right. You double the size of a mission in Europe and that means that you're going to be twice as ineffective. I mean, people just aren't interested there anymore. So why, why would you send more missionaries to places where people are just not interested? Doesn't make sense.

Rick Phillips [00:04:47] Unless missions are more for the missionary than they are for the purpose or at least as much for the missionary as they are for the purpose of finding converts.

Ryan Cragun [00:04:57] That's a valid point.

John Dehlin [00:04:58] I think it's interesting that Matt mentions that 34 of the increases of the new wards and branches are in Utah. I think he's reporting a net increase of 34 units in Utah and of one unit in Idaho. But he's saying that a 37 unit decrease in California, a nine unit decrease in Washington, a four unit decrease in Colorado. So it seems like these states, the

Rick Phillips [00:05:30] west coast places like Colorado, these are among the more secularized states. These are the states where people with no religious preference are either the largest or the second largest denominational group and

Ryan Cragun [00:05:44] are growing really, really fast. So that's not at all surprising to see those numbers going down. And when you look at where it is going up, Utah. Right. Just sheer birth rate. It's just people having kids. Right. When you've got that many Mormons that densely populated together and they have lots of kids, you're gonna have congregational growth. You will. Right. But you're not seeing that in California. They're way too spread out. Numbers are too few. And people are secularizing. People are leaving. We know those numbers.

John Dehlin [00:06:16] Yeah. And Matt writes, this increase in state growth appears primarily attributed to the organization of stakes with fewer congregations in Arizona and Texas. So he's reflecting sort of what our theory is from the beginning. Okay. Overall, he's reporting slowest annual membership growth since 1989 at a mere 1%. So he's saying the church is growing at 1% overall and you guys are saying it's birth rate.

Rick Phillips [00:06:54] Well, that's 1% would be about 65,000 members. I wonder how many children were born to Latter Day Saints in the inner Mountain West. I suspect that a lot more than that big chunk of that is natural increase.

John Dehlin [00:07:10] Yeah. So he's citing fewer convert baptisms, a reduced birth rate, and inactivity problems among young single adults as the primary reasons for slowing membership.

Rick Phillips [00:07:23] And this is not Mormon specific. So I'm in Jacksonville, Florida, in the heart of the evangelical south, and I can tell you that Southern Baptist leaders are beside themselves wondering how they're going to retain their youth. And this congregations collapsing and all kinds of problems, the same exact problems that beset Mormonism are plaguing the Southern Baptist Convention. And they propose the same kinds of reasons, the same kinds of solutions. So I think a lot of this is just a general secularizing trend that is occurring and has been occurring for the last couple decades in the United States.

John Dehlin [00:08:02] Got it. So we're saying it's not. It's basically just a national, even global trend that we're just a victim of. It's nothing. We can't necessarily really try and attribute it to anything.

Rick Phillips [00:08:16] Well, I do think there are some organizational things that matter. One of the areas in Christianity where you do see growth are in churches that are independent, that aren't affiliated with any particular denomination. Because these churches are nimble. They can sprout up in a storefront, they can morph and shape themselves ideologically or in terms of their worship style to match their local community. And that's just, you know, those churches, I think, have a competitive advantage over a huge behemoth denomination that has a parish system that has as a goal the fact that the church is the same you know, wherever you go could very well be the case that because what people in El Paso want is different than what people in Burlington, Vermont want. In addition to a general secularizing trend, the church is just not equipped to compete against these small independent congregations in the 21st century. And that's why you see growth in these independent congregations.

Ryan Cragun [00:09:18] Yeah, but don't overstate that growth, Rick.

Rick Phillips [00:09:20] I'm not. I'm just saying, like, to the extent that there are people ready to affiliate those groups.

Ryan Cragun [00:09:27] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:09:29] Okay, brilliant. So we'll, we'll go on to point number two, which is stagnant growth in Europe overall. It says no measurable LDS growth in Europe during 2016. No increase in the number of congregations. One new stake was organized. Only a handful of previously unreached cities open to missionary activity. And this, this was reflected in my conversations with saints in Europe when I was there, especially places like the United Kingdom and Scotland. The church seems to be in pretty significant decline. What do you guys think about the church in Europe? Any responses?

Decline in Europe and Challenges in Secularizing Nations

Rick Phillips [00:10:13] Ryan can probably give you the figures on the percentage of people who are atheists in various.

Ryan Cragun [00:10:20] I mean, this is exactly what we would have predicted and we even saw back in 2006. So the secularization that's occurring here in the US happens earlier in most of Western Europe. Different parts. It's varied quite a bit. But this is exactly what we'd expect, Right. That they've crossed what I call the secular transition. Other than immigrants, they're largely uninterested in what the LDS Church has to offer. So you're not going to see any growth. What you're going to see is slow, gradual decline as the long term members can't retain their kids and they just kind of ease out. Right. Occasionally get an immigrant that they're able to pull in. For the most part, this is just a slow, gradual decline into obsolescence.

John Dehlin [00:11:01] And the death of the church in Western Europe?

Rick Phillips [00:11:05] I wouldn't go that far, but I mean, I don't know about the death of the church, but I do think

Ryan Cragun [00:11:11] that's years and years and decades out. Right. But yeah, it's not going to grow. You're not going to see sizable growth

Rick Phillips [00:11:17] in Western Europe, barring cataclysmic social change.

Ryan Cragun [00:11:21] That's exactly what I would say, cataclysmic. It would have to be something huge. Right. I mean, maybe global climate change would do it. Right. And that the Netherlands is wiped out and suddenly things get all crazy. Right.

Rick Phillips [00:11:32] Massive economic collapse. I mean, there are all kinds of things that could. But yes. Given the status quo, I don't think there's anything that any missionary can do to convince someone in Helsinki to join the church.

Ryan Cragun [00:11:43] Not gonna happen.

John Dehlin [00:11:44] I have to think that what's significant about these first two points is that we all know where the heart of the Church is, where the money comes from. It comes from Utah and the United States predominantly. And if secondarily, then it's gonna come from these more affluent countries. So if the more affluent countries are in decline, that seems to spell financial trouble at some point for the church.

Rick Phillips [00:12:11] However, that's why they're buying real estate.

John Dehlin [00:12:15] Right. Yeah. Your watch going clear. And you see that Scientology increased its financial assets while the church was in decline. So I guess they're aggressively offsetting loss in possible revenue by ramping up commercial investments.

Rick Phillips [00:12:35] You know, I could take you to the Orlando area and drive you around the perimeter of the church's property in central Florida, and we would drive all day in the news. There were some recent talk of development of some of these properties. So there's enough. You know, the real estate empire alone is just beyond massive. Yeah.

Ryan Cragun [00:12:57] And nobody has a sense of what that is. Right. I mean, I was the one who actually estimated that that that ranch, just the one in Orlando. Right. Is 0.7% of the state of Florida and worth over a billion dollars. That's before they bought their other ranch up in the Panhandle. Right. As big. Right. So they've more. They own more than 1% of our state.

John Dehlin [00:13:17] I've heard it's 2%. I've heard it's 2% of Florida.

Ryan Cragun [00:13:20] It's really close. Right. They. They own a sizable percentage of our state, and that's just what we've been able to discern here in Florida. I don't know that anybody's looked at the numbers anywhere else. Right.

Rick Phillips [00:13:29] Well, that new development in Philadelphia, that was, you know, right downtown, worth a fortune. So, yeah, they'll be your landlord and your spiritual advisor.

John Dehlin [00:13:42] Yeah. But, I mean, it's pretty clear the church is being aggressive about its financial investments.

Rick Phillips [00:13:48] And that probably tells you right there that they are anticipating a decline in tithing revenue. You know, every person that they. Considering all tithe payers, every person they convert in West Africa lowers the mean receipts of tithing from, you know, the membership, because someone in West Africa, all things being equal, is going to be paying a lot less in tithing than someone in, you know, Provo.

John Dehlin [00:14:12] Is there any downside to the church for that strategy? I mean, I don't think anyone would fall to church or nonprofit for carefully managing its financial portfolio. And let's just say there's a decline in revenue because less and less educated, wealthy people are willing or able to donate to the church. But if the church can make it up with sound financial investments, does that mean it's just kind of a wash for the church?

Ryan Cragun [00:14:38] Yeah.

Rick Phillips [00:14:39] But then is your allegiance to your members or is your allegiance to your, you know, shareholders? I mean, you were more concerned about your property, or are you more concerned about your lock?

Ryan Cragun [00:14:49] Yeah, I mean, I do think it's worth noting. Right. And I think the leak that just came out about the salaries of the general authorities. Right.

John Dehlin [00:14:57] Is really talk about that leak. Right.

Ryan Cragun [00:14:59] I mean, I didn't look too much into it. Right. But the New Mormon Lake site did release a document and they said that they verified it. So, you know, take that for whatever it's worth. Those numbers may be wildly off, I don't know. But it doesn't look like they're making lots of money. Right. Are they comfortable? Clearly they're comfortable, right? They're making a very good income, but they're not making billions of dollars. And I've been saying for a long time, a lot of people, a lot of times when I. I'm a critic of the church, I left you like, oh, you just have an axe to grind. And why are you so concerned about the numbers? Right. It's not like they're putting in their pockets. And I've never said that they are putting it in their pockets. Right. I don't think that's the case. We can go right back to this issue then and saying, well, what are they doing with the money? It does look like they're investing for the future. But at some level, I think it's important to carry that logic out. If they're investing for the future, what does that really mean? Right. So if the membership numbers go down or they've got growth in Africa but declining members here in the US that means they're going to be bringing in less money. Why do they still need that other money? So I think the easiest criticism that can be leveled of the Church when you talk about their investments is why aren't they using that money to help people who physically are in need?

John Dehlin [00:16:07] Right.

Ryan Cragun [00:16:07] Why aren't they feeding poor kids in Latin America and in Africa? They could be using the money for that. But instead we go, okay, they're investing it. Investing it for what? Investing it for a future where a church has declining members. Like, what's the point? Like, why are they going to do that, is that just going to continue to prop up a church that doesn't need to be propped up and that's all the tax benefits aside, right? So let's not even go down that path. Why do they really need that if the membership is going to go down? Why do they still need the money? And that's an open question and maybe some of the listeners will have thoughts. Comments Rick John, what do you think? Why are they doing this?

Rick Phillips [00:16:46] Rick well, you know, have you in the Oneida Community with John Humphrey Noyes Oneida Community was a planned community in the 19th century and the remnant of the Oneida community is a company that makes silverware. Oneida Silverware. So they morphed from a commune to a silverware company. Maybe the LDS Church will morph from a religious denomination to global real estate conglomerate.

John Dehlin [00:17:15] No, but we're, I mean, but we still have, we're still a global church. We still have millions of members. I don't think the church is going to disappear anytime soon.

Rick Phillips [00:17:22] No, I don't either.

John Dehlin [00:17:24] It'll just have to it'll just sort of have to deal with a consistent shift away from the educated developed world and more and more towards the developing world and a shift towards sound financial investment and less towards relying on again,

Ryan Cragun [00:17:40] what is that money going to do? John so they've got 2% of the state of Florida, right. 50 years down the road when their membership is completely stagnant, they've seen virtually no growth. And it's all been in Africa. Right. Where they don't have tons and tons of money. Who knows what's going to be the case in 50 years. What are they going to do with this property?

John Dehlin [00:17:59] Well, I mean, they have to pay the taxes on all the real estate they own. They have to support the church headquarters and all the religious real estate.

Ryan Cragun [00:18:08] They pay no taxes. Yeah.

Rick Phillips [00:18:10] Well, I would say it's better to have a massive ton of money and not know what to do with it than to not have any money and not know what to do with it.

Ryan Cragun [00:18:20] Fair. I mean, that's hard to argue.

Rick Phillips [00:18:24] I don't scratch my head about why somebody wants to accumulate massive amounts of money.

John Dehlin [00:18:30] Well, I mean, I think it's probably got a billion dollar operational budget every year, right. Byu, byu, Hawaii, byu, Idaho. They're incredibly expensive. I would be surprised. Just the maintenance and upkeep on those buildings has got to be significant. Building temples, I don't know. They just, you need money, right?

Rick Phillips [00:18:54] They got it. Sure.

Ryan Cragun [00:18:56] Right.

John Dehlin [00:18:59] And again, Randy Brower writes, corporations exist to Stay alive. That's what Randy.

Rick Phillips [00:19:04] I think that's it. It's sui generis. It's a. You know, I think the corporation of the church is an entity unto itself. The idea that it's being led by 15 octogenarians doesn't make sense to me. It's being led by a huge corporate bureaucracy that makes bureaucratic organizational decisions in its own interest. I think he's right.

John Dehlin [00:19:29] Well, it'll be interesting, but I think as I'm thinking about my Utah State basketball game sort of antics that I see. Scoreboard is one of the things they say. And as long as the church is increasing members, even slow growth and is loaded with money, that's got to bode well for the church, I think.

Ryan Cragun [00:19:49] Right?

Rick Phillips [00:19:49] Yeah, I think they're doing great.

John Dehlin [00:19:51] Not going anywhere. Okay. Point number three is congregational decline in the South America Northwest area. So it's talking about Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. A net decline of 34 congregations during 2016. So not a lot of new stakes. So it looks like, you know, South America north isn't doing super well. Any thoughts or reactions about that? Any insight?

Struggles in Latin America and Member Retention

Rick Phillips [00:20:27] Well, I have an idea about. I have a question about something I wanted to think about about Latin America generally. So, you know, I think that one of the things that's interesting is we have a church that is an American church that has an image that's tied closely to the United States, and we also have within the United States, a church that is tied directly to the Republican Party. Mitt Romney. Of course, Mitt Romney's Mormonism was front and center in the 2012 presidential campaign. I think one of the reasons why Mormons generally, and Mitt Romney specifically may be acting as an agent of the hierarchy was so. Were so anti Trump when the primaries were on and when the general election was on is because I think that Trump's statements on Hispanics and Latin Americans might be bad for business. You know, I think that when I was in the mtc, there was a woman who was a missionary there from Finland, and she said that she had converted to Donnie and Marie first and Mormonism second, and that she was enamored with all things America. I think to the extent that the United States public image suffers abroad and it's certainly suffering in Mexico right now, it could be bad for a church that is seen as intimately tied to America and intimately tied, you know, to the Republican Party. I don't know what's going to happen in Latin America over the duration of a Trump presidency. Could be interesting. I wonder if we'll hear stories of missionaries in Mexico being accosted or confronted over the notion of a wall or something like that. What do you think about that?

Ryan Cragun [00:22:19] I mean, I was actually accosted for being American in Costa rica in the 1990s by Guatemalans. I actually went to an event, it was in my area at the Guatemalan embassy. And they did not like. They didn't like Americans. It wasn't that we were Mormon. They didn't like Americans. So I think that's a great point. That's a great question. Right. Insofar as the LDS Church is associated with the Republican Party, which. Yes, I mean, I think it clearly is. But how closely do people outside of the US make that association? Right. And I think that's a genuine question. Right. I've heard more stories of Mormon missionaries being assumed to be CIA than I have, that they're patsies for the Republican Party. Right. So I think that's a really good question to kind of think, and I don't know that the LDS Church, I mean, I think you're right, that they tried to distance themselves somewhat. I don't necessarily want to bring up the whole Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Rick Phillips [00:23:18] They've reversed course quickly. They know where their bread is buttered.

Ryan Cragun [00:23:22] So, you know. But even I was just out in Utah visiting family. Right. And talking to my parents. And I don't mean to bring family into this, I'll be really careful, but my parents were really, really skeptical of Donald Trump. And I was kind of delighted to see. I don't know what way they voted. Right. Who knows what they did. They may have voted for. What's his name, Mormon Evan McMuffin. Yeah. McMullen. They had their reasons for being skeptical of Trump. And I wonder how pervasive that is among Mormons in Utah, in the Intermountain west, whether there's still some skepticism. But you gotta go with, you know, is he's pushing the Republican Party in a certain direction. And the Republican Party now controls the House, you know, and they control everything, the Senate and the presidency. In a sense, that's a win for them and their politics. Right.

Rick Phillips [00:24:11] But, you know, but I think one of the things that you see is that the church has been well to the left of the Republican Party on immigration.

Ryan Cragun [00:24:19] Yes.

Rick Phillips [00:24:20] Actually been well to the, you know, Utah has actually been pretty immigrant friendly overall. And I think that the bureaucrats in the church are not fond of build a wall rhetoric because you are threatening some of their most fertile fields.

John Dehlin [00:24:40] Yeah.

Ryan Cragun [00:24:41] But I wonder if the members are getting the Nuance. Right. I mean, I don't know if the

Rick Phillips [00:24:46] members are, but, you know, I don't know, you know, what kind of communication you have between the tail and the dog. But I mean, I think that the, the brain trust in the church office

Ryan Cragun [00:24:56] building, I think they get it. Yeah. Because I was just thinking that conversation we just had on my Facebook page, right. There were several devout Mormons who were delighted at what Trump was doing, including, because we had raised the issue. And I don't mean to go off on much of a tangent, but it ties to the immigration. I was sitting in a meeting at my university where they were talking about international students are more likely to not want to come to the US Under Trump administration. And we had several devout members, right, who were delighted by that. They had no problem with that. So I wonder if there is a disconnect between the bureaucrats sitting in Salt Lake City and the members on the ground were like, Trump, Trump, Trump. Well, caveats.

Rick Phillips [00:25:37] One of the things that I have noticed in Utah is that there is definitely sort of an elite Mormonism and a rank and file or a grassroots Mormonism. There's a, you know, there's a, there's a East, there's a benches Mormonism and a valley Mormonism.

Ryan Cragun [00:25:55] I think that's true. John, are we looking at questions, comments, what do we got?

John Dehlin [00:26:00] Yeah, yeah. Hector writes, you gentlemen are missing it. We learned from the Leah Remini interviews, which are fabulous, by the way.

Rick Phillips [00:26:09] Those are great.

John Dehlin [00:26:10] That these churches have to spend the money in order to maintain their tax exempt status. They're not allowed to exceed a certain percentage of liquid assets. Responses to Hector, I think you should

Rick Phillips [00:26:24] have invited an accountant on the show along with two sociologists.

Ryan Cragun [00:26:30] Yeah. I mean, it's certainly doable that if they've just got to put their money into hardcore assets and they can't have huge cash reserves, then that would help explain, right. Why they're doing massive temple building. Yeah, because I mean, I think we mentioned this earlier, the temples are not being built because there's huge, huge demand to go through the temple. Right. Those temples sit largely empty most of the places around the world. Right. They're not open most days. Even when I lived in Ohio and was still active and going to the temple, it was not open every day of the week. I mean, obviously Sundays not, but it was. You had to target specific days when the temple was going to be open in specific hours. So those are placeholders. Right. They're doing something there. Kind of reminds me of when I went to Dubai. Most of the buildings in Dubai were sitting empty. But that's how the Russians were laundering their money. Right. And I'm not comparing Russian oligarch mafia to the Mormon Church. I guess maybe I am. But in a sense, that's where they're placing their money. Right. They're putting their money in these beautiful buildings. They are beautiful, but they're not being used to the extent that you would think it would be.

John Dehlin [00:27:35] And that's something that came out in the Leah Romini interview. One of the people interviewed talked about how many buildings just were sitting empty. Randy writes something very interesting. As international tax laws slowly but surely pull away from church tax exemption or tax breaks, having poor congregations fill large portions of Africa and South America will continue to become a financial burden on the corporation. Not enough tithing base and no tax shelter equals corporate pullout. Just a thought. Hence Florida property and church desire to keep immigration open. It's all about tithing money, baby, says Randy.

Rick Phillips [00:28:16] Yeah, I'm way outside my area of expertise when I start speculating on, you know, church finances and business. So I think Randy probably knows more about that than I would.

Ryan Cragun [00:28:30] As far as changing tax policy. Right. We have. Admittedly, there was some stuff going on in Australia that I was just made aware of in Australia, New Zealand. There have been some changes in tax policy, but for the most part, religion is still largely privileged around the world, including in Western Europe, where people are not particularly religious. So they still have many of the same tax breaks and tax policies for religions, even though, you know, a lot of people aren't religious. So until I start to see a dramatic wave of massive changes in tax policy, I think the church is kind of just playing it. Right. Right. And it's not going to affect them in any real way.

John Dehlin [00:29:09] Got it. I'll just, I'll just. As we move on to the next point, I'll just say. And it kind of segues because point four is lack of progress in Mexico. I just want to. I want to sort of echo, Rick, what you said about wondering how if Trump really makes a mess of things internationally or domestically, how will that affect missionary efforts both domestic and abroad? Especially as we build a wall between us and Mexico if we end up doing that. But that leads to point number four that Matt writes home to the second largest population of LDS members, according to the church. The church in Mexico continues to experience essentially stagnant growth. No net change in the number of wards or branches in 2016, no new stakes and serious concerns around retention, missionary activity and leadership development. Yeah, Mexico was Often kind of the star outside of the United States. I think it was the first country outside the US to boast like a hundred stakes, if I'm right. Any responses to you guys about the church in Mexico?

Rick Phillips [00:30:23] I'm trying to look up the figures here. I believe the last time so on the rolls, the church boasts 1.3 million members in Mexico. And I believe the last time the Mexican census came out, it was overstated by almost a million members. I mean, I think the last time we calculated the numbers, we determined that about 1 in 20 Latter Day Saints is a Mexican person who is on the church rolls, but who doesn't claim to be a Latter Day Saint. So, you know, the numbers were massively overstated. There was something like. So of that 1.3 million on the books, probably, you know, there's probably closer to, you know, 300,000. 300,000, yeah. 300,000 members. It's just, you know, it's incredible the degree of over reporting in Mexico.

John Dehlin [00:31:20] And that's true in Brazil as well, right?

Rick Phillips [00:31:23] It is less true. It is true in Brazil, but it is less true in Brazil. If you look at the number of members per stake in Brazil and you look at state growth in Brazil, Brazil is a little bit better off than Mexico. You can't retain, you know, there's difficulty retaining anybody in, in Mexico.

Ryan Cragun [00:31:44] So, you know, I kind of wonder at some level if there is a little bit of continued growth in Mexico. Maybe there is. Right. And rather than report that maybe they've, maybe they've finally decided to start cleaning their roles a little bit so they're just gonna not do that. I mean, I would love to see them do that. To slowly start to bring the numbers that we know are there. Right. Closer in line to the numbers that they've been reporting. Whether they're doing that or not, I, I have no idea. But I mean, nothing happening in Mexico is not at all surprising. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:19] All right, as we. As. Oh, someone wrote figures from the last Census suggest around 300,000 people in Mexico who state they're Mormon.

Rick Phillips [00:32:30] Right.

John Dehlin [00:32:31] Ali says

Rick Phillips [00:32:35] okay, like 25%. I mean, and that's not even. And that's just people who say I'm a Mormon. Now, of the people who say I'm a Mormon, some percentage of those people are inactive, right?

John Dehlin [00:32:48] Absolutely. Okay. I'm going to combine a few of these for the sake of time. Point five, Matt writes, is sole LDS stake in Armenia discontinued. It looks like we had a stake in Armenia and now it is no more stake discontinuations. And Congregational decline in South Korea. So South Korea is looking bad. Congregational decline and stagnant growth in Ethiopia, which is curious because you would think that Ethiopia would follow Africa's trend towards growth. Any quick comments about Armenia or South Korea, or is this kind of the same dynamic?

Ryan Cragun [00:33:29] Yeah, that's growing secularization, people less interested. Not surprising there at all.

John Dehlin [00:33:36] Okay, what do we make of Ethiopia, though?

Ryan Cragun [00:33:41] Could be any number of things. Right. I mean, that one, Rick, as Rick pointed out right at the beginning, the numbers are noisy. It's hard to say exactly what's going on in any given country in any given year. Right. So this could have been something weird happened. Right. They didn't get the number of Melchizedek priesthood holders that they needed to maintain something. You know, it could be any number of things that happened there. Matt has mentioned throughout this. Right. There are situations where a stake opens and then a few years later they close it because they're trying to build up the base with the stake and it doesn't work. So that may very well have been what happened in Ethiopia as they thought, hey, things look promising, let's get it set up. And then retention was terrible and they couldn't get the people to really staff it, so they closed it. We don't know. I don't think we really know.

John Dehlin [00:34:30] We don't know.

Ryan Cragun [00:34:31] Rick, comments.

Resignations, Inactivity, and Measuring Real Membership

John Dehlin [00:34:33] Okay, the final three points. I'll just lump them all together. The final three points are LDS growth in the Philippines decelerates. So we've got declining growth in the Philippines. And I know that's the same kind

Rick Phillips [00:34:46] of situation as Mexico. It has always been a dumpster fire. The retention rates have always been incredibly low.

John Dehlin [00:34:54] Yeah. One of my favorite Mormon Stories episodes is where I interviewed Dr. Ted Lyon, who was the temple president in Chile, the interpreter for Elder Holland when Elder Holland was in Chile, and a former mission president in Chile, personal friend of mine, he talked about how during the. During sort of his time in Chile, an apostle was sent to Chile, which was Elder Holland, and then another apostle was sent to the Philippines. And I think that was Elder Oaks because of just the abysmal. Those were sort of the two poster children for abysmal, for sort of grotesquely inappropriate baptismal tactics and abysmal activity rates. And so because that was all fake, largely fake growth anyway, or fraudulent growth even, you know, it doesn't surprise me to see.

Ryan Cragun [00:35:47] Right.

Rick Phillips [00:35:48] So the outcome of that in the 90s was a massive consolidation of stakes in Chile. And, you know, and so, yeah, I think the Philippines is. Same way.

Ryan Cragun [00:35:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:59] Yeah. And Then we have. This is interesting. The last two points he makes are around lack of outreach. We talks about lack of national outreach, expansion in India. He's basically saying we're not really doing anything in India, which is a big country, second largest population in the world, as I understand it, if that hasn't changed. And then lack of outreach, expansion into Africa, southeast. So for some reason we're gangbusters in Africa, but not in the southeast.

Rick Phillips [00:36:32] Tanzania, Uganda.

Ryan Cragun [00:36:34] I don't know.

Rick Phillips [00:36:36] I don't know what sort of legal issues might prevail or what kind of visa issues or, you know, what sorts of. I don't know. It would seem to me that India, if it were legal to proselytize wholesale in India, there's a billion people there, that would be fertile ground. If you could get in, maybe.

John Dehlin [00:36:54] Yeah. Yeah. It's curious. Any theories on why we're not going gangbusters in India?

Ryan Cragun [00:37:01] It's got to be a legal issue.

Rick Phillips [00:37:03] Yeah. There's something about the law.

Ryan Cragun [00:37:06] As much as the LDS Church does genuinely try to obey the law on this. Right. Jehovah's Witnesses don't really care so much about this. They will go in regardless. Right. They don't really recognize governments to that extent, but certainly the LDS Church tries really hard to make sure that they're doing the right thing. And if they had, you know, if they suddenly had a huge expansion where the Indian government was like, send everybody, I think they would have, you know, that that surge would have all gone to India. Right. They can't. So there's gotta be something going on that's, that's really restricting.

John Dehlin [00:37:41] All right, well, if any, any of our listeners know what's going on in India, we would love to hear. Okay, so I think, I think we've done a good job of covering these 20 points. Let me just ask you guys if you have any info on resignations? I think you would think from the stuff we know about Cubs Gato, which is the name of an ex Mormon Redditor who processes resignations, you would think that we've had more resignations in sort of 2015, 2016 than ever. The church declines to admit that we've had an increase in resignations. In fact, they say resignations have been relatively flat and that lots of people rejoined the church. Do you guys have any thoughts or reflections on resignations?

Rick Phillips [00:38:33] So I don't know that actual resignations are that common among people who leave the church. I mean, I'm technically still on the rolls. I've never sent in a letter, resigned from the church. I know Ryan has, but there are ways to look at the rate of apostasy in the General Social Survey. The survey asks respondents, what religion are you now? And it asks respondents, what religion were you when you were 16? And so you can look at people who have left the church by comparing people who say they were Mormon when they were 16 and who say they're something else now. And Ryan and I wrote an article, the title of which evades me. Do you remember the title of that article?

Ryan Cragun [00:39:16] It's Over Religious Contemporary Mormon Religiosity and the Legacy of Gathering.

Rick Phillips [00:39:21] That's right. That shows that the rate of apostasy, the rate of disaffiliation has clearly accelerated rapidly. But the rate of apostasy was much faster, much more rapid in Utah and the Intermountain West. That disaffiliation has remained fairly flat outside the Intermountain West. But there was a huge boom in apostasy starting around the 19. Now it's at a point where literally at least a third of people who say they were raised LDS no longer self identify as Latter Day Saints. And before, retention rates were something around 90%. So it is objectively the case that in the last 20 years, the apostasy from the church has increased. But I don't know about resignations. Like, most people who leave the church just decide that they have a more profitable way to spend their Sunday, or it just doesn't make sense to the world for them, and they just, you know, they just drift away. They're the people who are, who are traumatized by their leaving, which are disproportionately represented by the people who are probably, you know, in our universe. They're, you know, they're, they're, they're not the typical case.

John Dehlin [00:40:36] Got it.

Ryan Cragun [00:40:37] Yeah. The majority of Mormons do, in fact, leave the church and then leave it alone. I mean, it's just worth pointing that out, right? So often Mormons be like, why can't you just leave it alone? Why can't you leave and leave it alone? Majority of people who leave do exactly that. Right. They just don't care. They drift away. It's not something for them. They move on. It's not a big deal to actually resign. Like, it takes time. It's not a lot of time. But you have to care, right? You have to care whether the church is counting you and you want to make a statement. Most of the people who leave don't care. They are leaving the church alone. They left the church and they don't want to take that extra step. It doesn't matter to them. Just not a meaningful thing. So. Doesn't matter.

John Dehlin [00:41:23] And I know for people at least in, let's just say Western Europe or the United States, a lot of their parents or grandparents or siblings are still active and they don't want to make mom and dad or grandma and grandpa sad by resigning, which is why my

Rick Phillips [00:41:38] name is still on the rolls.

John Dehlin [00:41:41] Well, you're doing a podcast, so I know what's going on.

Ryan Cragun [00:41:46] Well, his family all knows. Right. And mine does.

John Dehlin [00:41:50] It's an extra blow. It's almost like an insult to just. It's like a stick in the eye to say I'm going to resign. Some may interpret it that way.

Rick Phillips [00:41:57] Well, it's also, for me, it's like, you know, being a Latter Day Saint is as much my ethnicity as it is, you know, as it was my religion. I'm descended from pioneer stock. I grew up in Utah. I love Utah. My extended family on both sides are, you know, Mormons. I mean, it's, you know, I think the church left me.

Ryan Cragun [00:42:20] Right?

John Dehlin [00:42:21] Yeah.

Ryan Cragun [00:42:22] Like Armand Moss. Armand Moss statement. Yeah. I mean, there was when we left initially in 2002, we didn't initially resign. We resigned like four or five years later for a variety of complicated reasons. It was mostly my wife who was actually spurring that it was complicated and it wasn't specifically like a political statement. It wasn't anything to do with that. It had to do with self identification. But otherwise we would have done the exact same thing that Rick did, which is just leave our name on. Right. Like why? It doesn't really matter. I don't identify as Mormon. I don't see myself in any way that way. And what ended up happening is once we resigned, that's when my wife's parents in particular found out. Right. We don't know exactly the mechanism that did this, whether it was some tithing settlement at the end of the year, whether it was genealogy and doing temple work. Whatever it was, they found out that we weren't on the rolls anymore. And that really, really upset them. Like really, really upset them. So I can absolutely see why people would say, you know what, it's just not worth it to me. I don't want to cause angst in the family. We'll just leave our names on even though we're not going to go.

John Dehlin [00:43:31] Right. That makes sense. All right, Steve writes an interesting point I'd like to get your guys comment on this. Church appears to want to manage the optics around statistical growth or lack thereof. Without causing dismay or concern. But what's more telling to me, meaning Steve, is the increased number of General Conference talks and Ensign articles dealing with how to deal with doubt and how to deal with loved ones who are leaving the church. You certainly know better than anyone how big an issue this is. Any. Any responses, Steve?

Rick Phillips [00:44:09] Yeah, that's the qualitative research, right? The hierarchy is privy to data that scholars are not privy to, secular scholars are not privy to. They would know better than anybody else what activity rates are and what apostasy rates are. I think it is very clear that in the heart of Mormonism, the Intermountain west, apostasy has been increasing, activity rates have been declining, and I think these talks definitely, definitely reflect this. Part of the problem also, I think, is the change that has been wrought by demographic influx of people into Utah. As the percentage of Utah that is LDS declines, the religious climate in Utah comes to resemble the religious climate of the other Western states ever so slightly. And Utah's neighbors, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, these are pretty secular places. So there's all kinds of secular influence and pressures from, you know, family members that moved to Phoenix, someone that moved into the neighborhood from Phoenix, that type of thing. So I think Utah Mormon culture is definitely feeling the heat. That culture has always been able to sustain religious activity among marginally affiliated people by conflating church norms and social norms, you know, that it's, you know, it's socially expected that you behave according to Latter Day Saint standards. And to the extent that demography erodes the salience of that subculture, then you'll see people who are marginally affiliated being free to say, nah, I'm gonna have a cup of coffee. I'm gonna mow my lawn on Sunday. Yeah.

Ryan Cragun [00:45:56] The other thing that I think I would add is I have to wonder how many questions. Right. Reflecting this idea are coming to the leadership.

Rick Phillips [00:46:06] Right.

Ryan Cragun [00:46:07] Of My daughter just left the church. My son just left the church. How do I continue to communicate with them? I'm guessing that this is happening more and more and more. And so that's why it's filtering its way up to the general authority where they're trying to find ways to say, we still need to communicate with our loved ones. A bit of an aside, but tied to this, right. I had an idea for a book that I thought, oh, it'd be perfect to write with one of my brothers. Right. You know, something. Something titled like, a Loved one left the Church. How do we maintain a good interpersonal relationship with someone who's left the church? Right. And it would be co authored by the two of us and we would figure out a way to have both of our voices of what we need. And it turns out while I was in Utah, I approached this with my brother. I won't mention which brother. I've got many, so people can guess. Turns out he didn't feel comfortable writing the book because of what I do, my job right. And how I'm perceived as being the staunch critic of the church, even though, you know, I'm just reporting numbers most of the time. He didn't feel comfortable doing it. And that nothing to him, nothing against him. I totally get that. I love my brother. I love him dearly. But I think that's a really interesting situation where it's so hard to communicate with people who have left versus those who have stayed because that divide is so big. But I think this is a real genuine issue that's dividing families, that's tearing families apart. I mean, Rick, you can use your own life history to illustrate this. Right. Which I don't want. That's really under the bus. But Rick has had this happen. Personally, I've had weakened relationships with my family as a result of this. Clearly, that's a big part of what's going on.

John Dehlin [00:47:53] Absolutely. We've got a lot of really good comments from our listeners. I'm gonna ask you guys, Rick, I know that you had mentioned pre show you wanted to talk about Utah. Did you feel like you talked about the things you wanted to talk about or.

Rick Phillips [00:48:09] Yeah, that's. That's kind of the thing. You know, I, you know, I write about more than church growth statistics. I write about Utah. We live in Utah in the summer, and I am a careful Utah watcher. And because I'm there just in the summer, I get a chance to observe, you know, how things are evolving and changing in Utah. A lot of this has to do with demographic change in Utah.

John Dehlin [00:48:30] Right. So as goes Utah in many ways, so goes the church kind of thing. Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna read a few more comments and then what I'll ask you guys to do is maybe to prepare, just each of you to prepare kind of a closing statement on where you see the church, what you want to say about where you see the church being at the beginning of 2017 in terms of growth, in terms of health, in terms of what's good, what's bad, what's ugly, et cetera. I'll just read a few. As you're preparing your closing statements, I'll just read a few comments. Amy Rich, theorizes that the India caste system and its culture is a big barrier to the church's growth in India. Austin writes, missionaries will only proselyte in English in India. They do not proselyte in other languages. Converting from Hinduism to Islam are more difficult than from other Christian religions. Those are just some theories on why India is not growing. Molly writes, I'm on the rolls for fear of being treated poorly once I resign. So that sort of shadows or reflects.

Rick Phillips [00:49:37] See, that's a Utah thing. Right? If I was in Jacksonville, Florida, I wouldn't care what my neighbors thought about me. If I just. They wouldn't care. My co workers wouldn't look at me funny if I started wearing normal underwear.

John Dehlin [00:49:49] Know, right. Martha writes, my daughter had an attorney send in a resignation letter. The only result of this was her being contacted by two wards trying to locate her. They just ignore resignation, so why bother?

Rick Phillips [00:50:05] I have heard that anecdotally. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:07] Yeah. So Martha says, why bother? Shauna says, it's just paperwork. I'm assuming she's referring to why. Why not resign or why resignation. Let's see. Shauna says, they just stop attending. Seth writes, my dad left the church 30 years ago and they still consider him a member even though it's not true. The church isn't growing. That's a lie. Okay. Katie writes, My fam last 5 years ago. My fam of 5 left 3 years ago. Not one person has stopped by, asked us, or bothered us. So that's different experiences in terms of being sort of, let's just say, molested or annoyed by existing members. And Ricardo writes, I only haven't resigned because my wife is a tbm. Okay, so this has been a great discussion. We've covered a lot of good topics, and we're left sort of wondering what to make of it all. I'll just say that my understanding going into 2016 was that the church had a very modest growth rate. It was driven largely by international baptisms in developed countries and the birth rate in the United States. That was my assumption going into 2016, but that overall the growth rate was slowing in developed countries. Rick, why don't you begin by giving us your kind of closing thoughts.

Rick Phillips [00:51:34] I think that's on the nose, and I don't see any reason to think. Think that that's not the case. I don't think the church is in danger of extinction, but I think we are entering an era of slow growth. I think that, you know, the thing that the church needs to do is get a second generation raised in the church. That's not in the United States. I mean, second generation, Central American, central generation South Americans that rise up through the ranks and assume the leadership so that these churches don't rely on subsidies from the United States, both in terms of Melchizedek priesthood holders and in terms of money. And it remains to be seen if that. If that will happen. But I, you know, I think Mormonism will continue its progress and grow slowly and remain pretty much as it is. You would think foreseeable future.

John Dehlin [00:52:33] Yeah. You would think that adding some people of color, some people from developed countries into the Quorum of the twelve in some ways could help the church develop a more leadership, a stronger leadership team in those countries.

Rick Phillips [00:52:49] And yet look at the two apostles that were just, that were just named. You can say that there's perhaps some tension between the people who have always owned the franchise and are not going to hand it over. Or you could say that the consequences of an apostle falling away are catastrophic so that only someone who is bound to the church through generations and geography can be trusted with the mantle. I don't know. Diversifying the hierarchy has been something people have talked about for a long time and you know, at least at the top echelons, there's not much diversifying going on.

John Dehlin [00:53:26] Right. All right, Ryan, what are your thoughts?

Growth Challenges in India and the US Secularization Trend

Ryan Cragun [00:53:31] Real quick thought on India. I think what those people who commented said is absolutely right. I'm just reminded of a story. One of my co authors and co researchers I work with, Ron Lawson, who has done a lot of work on Mormon growth, but he particularly looks at Seventh Day Adventists. He pointed out this very issue about the caste system, that they had a little bit of growth there among a certain caste was one of the lower castes and there was a lot of interest in continued growth among a different caste. But when the leaders of the Seventh Day Adventist Church said, well, you're gonna have to meet together, the members of the hired caste just lost all interest. They said, no, we are not interested in this. Unless you can separate the two congregations, we're absolutely not going to do it. So I think that's a really interesting point, a bit of anecdotal evidence to suggest maybe that is playing into it. As far as the growth overall, both of you are saying that there is growth. I would go so far as to say that the growth is almost, almost stagnant. Right. That there's so little growth that it's really not that meaningful. You actually have some growth in some places, decline in other places. Right. And I don't think the church is going Anywhere anytime soon. Right. I think it's going to be stable. It's basically just treading water. It's obviously not growing gangbusters like anybody would. You know, nobody really thinks that. But the part that really interests me is the growing secularization in the U.S. the fastest growing group in the U.S. is the non religious. We're seeing pretty rapid increases in non religious populations throughout the US And I just wonder that if we kind of turn a curve and we see this really, really take off faster than it already is, and that hits the Mormon homeland, right. The heartland of Mormonism in Utah and the intermountain west, then I think you're gonna start to see some real, real angst. Right. And that, that could happen. I'm not saying it's going to happen. I'm certainly not gonna prophesy. I don't do that. I'm not in that business. But it, I think it's happening.

Rick Phillips [00:55:39] Yeah, I mean, I think it's happening.

Ryan Cragun [00:55:41] And if that does, then this shit just got real. Things are gonna, they're gonna change pretty dramatically. And you're gonna see some, some sizable kind of seismic shifts in the LDS Church. And that could be 10, 15, 20 years down the road that you've got. You know, 50% of the state of Utah is non religious and have no interest in Mormonism or maybe higher. That's not that far away. So I think be aware of it. Right. Again, I'm not prognosticating, I'm not saying this is what's going to happen. All the trends are suggesting that the growth of the non religious is going to continue. And if that really does make inroads into the heartland, it's going to get really interesting.

John Dehlin [00:56:25] And the data we have around millennials sort of reinforces that. Right, Millennials. If America is secularizing, Millennials are really secularizing, right?

Rick Phillips [00:56:36] Yeah, they are. And if it's a generational change, then each successive generation will be less religious than the one before it. So you have a wave coming through. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:56:49] Brilliant. All right, well, I just want to thank you, Rick Phillips. It's so nice to have you finally on Mormon Stories. Thanks for joining us. I hope we don't get you in any trouble with your family.

Rick Phillips [00:57:04] They would never watch Mormon stories.

John Dehlin [00:57:10] Rick, is there anything you want to plug? Any book or website or project you're working on?

Rick Phillips [00:57:16] Nope, I'm not doing anything interesting. I'm writing a textbook in the sociology of religion. So if anybody wants to take a class in sociology of religion, maybe you'll encounter me again.

John Dehlin [00:57:26] Rick. You're always doing interesting stuff. So thanks for joining us. Ryan, tell us about your books. Book or books and plug anything you want to to close.

Closing Thoughts, Books, and Thank You

Ryan Cragun [00:57:35] I mean I've been on for most of my other books. Right. So Rick and I do have a book together. Can I vote for a More for President? But I don't think that's gonna interest most. Most of your audience. And then I have the others, what you don't know about religion but should and how to defeat religion in 10 easy steps, which are both out and been out for a little while now. I have another, it's not really a lay audience friendly book. It's a technical volume, edited volume on organized secularism which should be out this year where I'm an editor on that one and other stuff that's in the works, but I'm not gonna plug anything else. The articles that we mentioned, both Rick's articles, my articles, anything that we're co authors on, those are all available on my website.

Rick Phillips [00:58:16] Everything I've ever written is on Academia Edu. If you Google Rick Phillips Mormon, you can see everything I've ever written.

Ryan Cragun [00:58:23] So we're trying to make sure our publications are available for people. So just go ahead and, and head to either Rick's page or mine. Ryantcragan.com and you can find all of those articles, copyright be damned. Right. So they're all there.

John Dehlin [00:58:37] If you guys are willing, please send me links and I'll post those on the after show notes. Is that all right?

Ryan Cragun [00:58:42] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:58:43] All right, Brian, thank you again for joining us back. And I'll just close by just thanking our listeners, thanking those who were able to financially support Mormon Stories. We're only able to do this because of your donations. As I've mentioned recently, our number of donors numbers in the hundreds, but our number of listeners numbers in the tens, thousands. And so if any of you would be willing to go to MormonStories.org and just click on that donate button, not donate. And donations, as little as $10 a month if they're recurring, could really help us support the Open Storage foundation, the staff and the efforts that we do. And it can help us reach more people. So please support us if you can. It makes all the difference in the world. And for those who do support us, thank you so much again. All right, Ryan and Rick, it's been great to join you. Thanks to all our listeners, those of us who tuned in. You guys really contributed to the conversation. Thanks. For those of you who commented, please comment again. Please join us again on Mormon Stories Live and check us out on our feed. But we're just really grateful to all of you who tuned in. Thanks a lot guys. Bye bye again soon. All right, take care. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights. When with the wounded heart, anger or

Rick Phillips [01:00:34] malice,

John Dehlin [01:00:37] I draw myself apart, searching my soul.

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