Is the Mormon Church in decline in its home state: Utah? Is the Mormon church over-reporting its Utah membership? Is the Mormon church in decline worldwide?
Join us as we interview sociologist Dr. Ryan Cragan we we discuss his new article: “Mormons Are No Longer a Majority in Utah: Causes, Consequences, and Implications for the Sociology of Religion.”
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Show Notes:
- Ryan Cragun website/books
- Upcoming book: “Goodbye Religion” by Dr. Ryan Cragun
- Article by Cragun – ”Mormons are no longer a Majority in Utah”
- Thoughts on Things and Stuff
- Elder Holland clip: “New Stakes in the Double Digits”
- Bill Reel’s Reddit post
- D. Michael Quinn “I Thou vs I-It Conversions: Baseball Baptisms”
- Salt Lake Tribune – “Letter: Totals of missionaries, convert baptisms and the membership”
- “LDS Church growth is stuck at less than 1%”
- Reddit Post “TSCC is no longer announcing member statistics”
- Salt Lake Tribune: “LDS church withholds membership data from Utah for the first time in decades”
- Beyond Doubt by Ryan Cragun
Mormon Stories Related:
At about an hour and twelve minutes in, both of you speculate on the why’s as to the increase in temple building. For those who haven’t seen the Going Clear documentary on Scientology go the the 1:12:50 mark (freely available on YouTube) where you’ll find this gem of a statement:
“Churches are tax exempt because they’re supposed to provide a public good. To prove that good to the IRS churches aren’t supposed to hoard their money. They’re supposed to spend it on services for the faithful. Under this pretense the church has made massive investments in tax free real estate all over the world. And when it comes to labor costs, they’re almost free”.
For those who haven’t seen the sale and tear down of underutilized chapels go to Google Maps and type in:
3179 Highland Drive
Millcreek Utah
The December 2022 photo shows the chapel enclosed by a fence with demolition occurring on the right side of the chapel, while to the left you can see an example of the expensive townhouses and apartments that will replace it.
I downloaded the article and love that you are actively promoting your guests. As an educational researcher, I also loved the full explanation of how the statistics were collected and represented. Thank you!
Thanks Dr Cragun. Lots of things resonated with me.
1) I transitioned away from the church during Covid. I have lots of reasons why I don’t believe, but Covid was the spark to reclaim my Sundays.
2) I really loved your brief discussion of the utility of a religion. It is something I have contemplated a lot. In hearing these reports of declining numbers in religions it may be tempting for some to extrapolate to zero. But even with religion on the decline, I assume you would agree, it is not going to disappear anytime soon. It has utility in so many ways: social, moral, familial, etc. It is only downsizing. Even if science somehow proved the nonexistence of god, that would not eliminate the full utility of many religions. People don’t go to church because it is true, they go because it is useful. As I’ve stepped away from the safety net of believing in god I have felt the associated loss of community from no longer frequenting my congregation. It is hard to duplicate elsewhere.
3) I think you are right that the LDS church has to modernize slowly, not too quickly, to maximize its membership. It may be tempting for some to see certain church leaders as behaving irrationally out of misplaced religious zeal, but on the aggregate I think the church is a rational player in the game of religion and it is quite focused on maximizing membership. I am sure they expend a ton of resources to maximize membership by manipulating the factors they can control. In other words, the quirkiness of the LDS church is likely the result of necessity to self-preserve more than the revelatory dictations of any one prophet. All the things that people dislike about the LDS church are probably the very reason why it persists.