According to a Peggy Fletcher Stack article in the Salt Lake Tribune, the LDS Church has grown by 45% in the last decade or about 4.5% per year. What an utterly amazing growth rate! But it is completely false.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/54026798-78/lds-religious-church-largest.html.csp

The once-a-decade U.S. Religion Census, assembled by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies uses the self-reported numbers from 17 of the country’s largest religious groups to calculate growth rates. According to Peggy’s story the number of US members in 2000 was 4,224,026 and by 2010 it had grown to 6,144,582, an increase of 45%.

The trouble is that the 2000 figure is plain wrong. The 2001 LDS church almanac reports that there were 5,113,409 members in the US on December 31, 1999. According to Cumorah.com there were 4,336,000 US members in 1992. The figure the church provided must have been from about 1990.

The correct growth rate is about 20% during the last 10 years not 45%. The growth in church congregations during that period is also about 20%.

How could the statistical and membership department of the church get it so wrong? They have all the facts and they must know that the church is tanking in the US. It’s hard not to believe that there is deliberate falsifying of data to make the church look good.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2012 09:14AM by Simon in Oz.

From the article...

"Campbell does offer a caution about LDS membership numbers: It includes everyone who has ever been a member — even babies — and hasn’t been excommunicated or asked to have their names removed from the rolls.

Even Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who spent a few years as a Mormon during his childhood, is likely still on the list, Campbell quipped."

'xactly...

Peggy's headline

"Mormonism leading the way in US"

The truth in the article

''In the latter category, researchers estimated that Muslims outpaced even Mormons between 2000 and 2010, adding 66.7 percent more adherents. During that time frame, the nation’s overall Muslim tally shot up from 1,559,294 to 2,600,082.''

Sounds like Peggy is...let's be generous...overstating things a tad...

Which is why Rubio is going to be Romney's running mate. It is the only way Rubio's EQ president can figure out how to get his home teaching down.

Simon in Oz Wrote:
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> How could the statistical and membership
> department of the church get it so wrong?


Yes, they could be feeding bogus numbers, but there's also the possibility of ineptitude -- from either the church or Ms. Stack or both.

I think the whole "house of order" thing is just more church BS. The church doesn't have the brightest, most competent people working for it. They have the ones who have temple recommends and are willing to subject themselves to the church's employment practices. That filters the applicants by something other than ability.

Please feel free to make comments on the story on the Deseret News website.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765572841/Religion-census-reveals-substantial-LDS-growth.html

I have brought it to Peggy Stack's attention and she said "she will look into it".

Peggy didn't make a mistake. She reported exactly what the researchers told her. It is clear the researchers were fed incorrect information by the church membership department.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2012 09:41AM by Simon in Oz.

Do you think Peggy is capable of being a bit more than a Church cheerleader?

Stumbling Wrote:
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> Do you think Peggy is capable of being a bit more
> than a Church cheerleader?

I doubt it. I would be very surprised if she was to openly challenge the report. But I think we should put pressure on her to give some balance.

Simon in Oz Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Stumbling Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Do you think Peggy is capable of being a bit
> more
> > than a Church cheerleader?
>
> I doubt it. I would be very surprised if she was
> to openly challenge the report. But I think we
> should put pressure on her to give some balance.

In all fairness, Peggy has a tough job, and does nail it fairly regularly. Lest we forget, she was one of the founders of _Sunstone_Magazine_.

She was the first to break nationally the dark skin/light skin Lamanite dolls that Mrs. Tall Man brought to her attention.

That said, I am disappointed in her recent article. It would have been nice to include just a snipped from the ARIS survey that notes ARIS researchers consistently find LDS self-reported numbers never match those on the ground.

For well over a year. It was only when the AP carried it nationally that she let it out...

The dark skin/light Lamanite dolls story fits her paradigms. Stuff that doesn't is often conveniently overlooked.

A number of years ago Will Bagley told an audience of how the editor of Signature Books had "fed" a number of leads about the church and its revisionist tendencies to Stack and the Tribune, and none of them saw print.

I particuarly recall one of her stories about a story from the Tribune's early days, and she noted "The Tribune was anti-Mormon back then."

Her analysis suggested the journal had somehow been "baptized."

This all means that her articles, instead of being journalism, are just powder puff advertorials for the Church.

I admit to being a tad disappointed that she hasn't got...well...the balls for it.

Does anyone have a link to the lds church numbers from 2000 and 1992 Simon is referencing? Can't find them. Thanks.

People like Peggy Fletcher Stack should report estimates of real growth whenever they report the gross membership numbers put out by LDS Inc.

LDS Inc would no doubt sputter and fume about that, but if the media would do it consistently, LDS Inc would eventually have to put out meaningful "participating membership" numbers, or live with the estimates put out by the media.

If a corporate report only listing gross income, but listed almost none of the expenses and losses that reduced that income, someone would go to jail. LDS Inc trumpets their gross membership increase. The number of membership losses they report each year does not even come close to covering the number of expected deaths, much less resignations and informal walking away from Mormonism.

This is so deceptive that if it were a corporation, it would be illegal. Since it is a church, they get a pass, since churches are expected to promulgate unverifiable BS (OK, that's my editorial comment! :) )

Support and defend the Bruthern.

This is the study that the article is based upon:

http://www.thearda.com/Denoms/D_1117.asp

thank you!

How could ChurchCo be manipulating it?

Here was my post:


Peggy you must be throwing the mormons a bone because we both know that this is a completely *accurate* article, but it is hardly truthful.

All you have to know about the *accuracy* of this information is in paragraph three: "The study was assembled by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies and included SELF-REPORTED NUMBERS from 17 of the country’s largest religious groups."

The data came from the mormons and is not independently verified in any way.

This is like reporting *accurate* information released about the Iraqi war from Tariq Assiz, or about reporting *accurate* information released from the North Koreans about domestic population tranquility. It's *accurate* because it was released by a group and relied upon, but is there a basis to believe the numbers at all in the first place? Hardly.

Any independent inquiry can discover the evidence of true mormon membership easily online (even in the Trib archives). But a quick and easy exercise is all you need to figure out what the real number of mormons really is.

Merely take the number of congregational units and multiply it by the average attendance for wards and branches. As independent analysis has already determined, mormon membership is perhaps five million worldwide. The mormon church continues to play this game of stating their *accurate* fourteen million member number and misleading people to believe that it implies that there are really 14 million members. If it is willing to lie about something so inconsequential to the so-called "only true and living church" what else would it be willing to lie about?


I agree with the Tall Man that Peggy is no shill for TSCC.

So I would argue that Peggy has opened the door for someone to publish a much more comprehensive disclosure of membership analysis. Particularly compelling is the comparison between self-identified numbers and claimed numbers. Most groups claim X, self-identified number is X+ (sometimes 2X). This result seems completely intuitively accurate, since there are usually many more adherents than actually attend.

However the mormons claim X and the self-identified number is 1/2 X. (in the U.S., claimed 6.1 MM members, self-identified 3.1 MM members).

And since as Simon noted their most recent publicly released numbers were such a huge disappointment, Peggy may be smarter than we all think.

Could be the next big thing in Mormoland reporting is the emerging scandal of Mormon lies about church membership in the face of growing apostasy.

So, they really want ownership of these stats? Okay, feed them the rope, boys.

What am I missing here? Wouldn't this be easy to prove? The link provided by tallmanshorthair above states that in 2000, the US church numbers were 5.2 million, not 4.2. It was 1990 was 4.2. If this is correct, the growth rate was only about 19%, not 45% Does anyone have a link to the actual reported 2000 number by tscc, and 1990 also if possible? If those numbers agree with the link's numbers, tscc has totally lied their as&$s off on this one, and it can easily be exposed.

I know Simon contacted Peggy, I did also, she told me she is aware of the discrepancy and has asked the church for an explanation. Not sure what they'll tell her, but hopefully she'll research this through. This could be big, folks.

This is my question: Has the church ever reported/recorded their US membership for 2000 or 1990 in the past, either in their church almanac or on their website? I would think they have. If so, we can clear this up right away---they either totally lied, or they didn't. No gray area. Anyone have a link? Please???

As we all know, Peggy writes for the Tribune not the DNews. She is for getting things right. Over the years, she has written numerous articles that have shown the church in an unfavorable light. She is not a defender of the church. Trust me, if she verifies the discrepancy, it will be in a future article.

Here's a sample where she treats two "fringe scientists" as if they were anything but so far outside of maintstream views on several subjects involving LDS lore that it's difficult to get legitimate scholars and scientists to comment.

http://uscmediareligion.org/?theStory&sID=349

>On top of that, Stephens [LDS Biologist Trent Stephens] doesn't believe every group arrived via the Bering Strait.

>"To think that over a 30,000 year history, every hominid came in one single migration over a few year period is ridiculous," he said. "There's an arrogant naiveté about how accessible the Americas were before Columbus."

No, there's a biologist who's utterly naive about the challenges of transoceanic travel, and then there's the small matter of missing DNA...

And lets not forget that the only reason the mormon church is growing at all is because they deliberately deceive their investigators. If their investigators were for example told about JS marrying 14 yr olds, their baptism rate would plummet.

"Self-reported numbers" ?? "Accurate information" ???


We all know how accurate the information is when the Mormons talk about church history, the BoM, or Joseph Smith. The Mormons are all about being "accurate". ;-)

Nice! http://mormonthink.com/

I should have read the board before posting, I should have known there was no way something that disingenuous would slide by RfM. I just read the Tribune and posted because the article irritated me so much. It is so patently dishonest.

It was a mistake by the original reporter. Read my new topic:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,491496,491496#msg-491496