The Mormons are Not the Fastest Growing Religion

Ex-Mormons have long suspected the number of members the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints claims have long been doctored. Unlike the type of accounting used by Enron where dollars were involved, the Mormon church’s accounting of members seldom harms anyone, unless names are mistakenly added to the membership rolls of the church by accident. (The Mormons adding names by accident is relatively rare, but it does happen.)

The problem with the number of members the church claims is that many of them have not set inside a church for many years. From my own experience, I had been listed on the membership roles of the local ward for a period of ten years. This is not unusual, it is common Mormon practice to keep a member’s name on file until he or she asks to be removed. During this period of inactivity, the inactive member may receive visits from the new missionaries, active members of the Ward, the inactive member’s visiting and home teachers may visit the member from time to time or drop in for an unannounced visit. While this sort of behavior may be good for people who are advanced in years, it generally shows a lack of concern for privacy and respect for the individual of the former Member not to be a practicing Mormon.

Numbers of how many active members there are provide a more accurate picture of how many Mormons there are in the world today, but estimates of this may be difficult. The person you runs the Hill Cummorah site speculates there are roughly about 4 million Mormons in the world, rather than the 12 million the church claims. (However, this speculation relies on the assumption that 1/3rd of people listed as members attend church regularly. )

The number of converts coming into the Mormon fold has been steadily on decline for the last decade or so in the United States and what growth the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has shown has been largely in foreign countries where the rates of inactivity among the members are even higher. If the Mormon leaders did not feel that there were a problem with retention of new converts, an issue of the Ensign, one of the official Mormon publications would not have been dedicated to new members and understanding their faith.

One of the many reasons for the lack of retention of members is the milk before meat idea when obtaining new converts. When Mormon missionaries find someone they feel might be a candidate for Baptism they are rushed through the six discussions and dunked in the waters. The new member may be active for a while, but those who maintain a genuine interest often find out later about doctrines that may be heretical to their actual belief system or somewhat strange like the Mormon temple garments.

Mormon membership numbers are not to be believed and viewed with suspicion until several practices of the church change such as keeping inactive members with no interest in the Mormon church on the membership rolls and keeping the names of dead members on for 110 years or more. Children born to inactive members are often given proxy membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints without their knowledge.

So be careful, the Mormons may have added you to their church membership roles before you got posthumously baptized in one of their temples.