The Assoc. of Statisticians of American Religious Bodie's census, taken once every 10 years allowed TSCC to count every person who was ever baptised in TSCC (minus resignations and members who became polygamists), regardless of how long a person may have been inactive.

The problem with this approach is that what if all churches used this method for counting their member numbers. A person could have originally been baptised a Catholic as an infant, later been baptised Methodist and then a Mormon later in life.

Do all three denominations get to count that person as member in this census? TSCC, by using this slight of hand, has made this census a complete farce.

This little canard has enabled TSCC to mask how really bad things are, as far as actual member participation, currently is.

Fortunately though, it's a real "red flag" that all is not well in Zion.

You are right. Truth means nothing to the Mormons....just rack up those numbers any way you can. At least a Christian denomination that has lost numbers is truthful about it.

I understand what you are saying, but one thing to mention is that Methodists, (and many other Protestant religions) recognize baptims done by Catholics or other Protestant religions. In fact in the Methodist Church (I don't know about other Protestant religions) if a person has been baptized either Catholic or Protestant they **WILL NOT** rebaptize the person in their church, because its viewed as saying (to God) the first baptism didn't take. Of course a person could lie and say they were never baptized, in which case the Methodist Church would do it. If they say they have been baptized, though, they will not "redo" it, even if the person wants to "redo" it because they were an infant when it was done.

"Officially," if a person was baptized Mormon, and they wanted to be baptized in a Methodist Church (by national church regulations), they would do it, as they "officially" don't recognize mormon baptims. I know at what time of a Methodist pastor in UT would ask former mormons if they considered themselves baptized, and if so, they didn't have to be rebaptize Methodist, although they could be if they wanted.

Your clarification is appreciated.

Maybe I should have said TSCC should have been required to use the same stantdard for reporting members as the other religions used.

That standard being only counting members who have maintained a specific amount of activity in their church.