1 Million Members Have Left Over Gay Marriage????

[JLHPROF]

I counted it up once, and I think I did at least 220 endowments in my time. But I stand by my statement: technically speaking, the marriage happened before any of the covenants. If I've said too much, I invite the mods to delete my post.

 

So did many of Joseph Smith's sealings.

[bluebell]

I would take his/her assertion with a grain of salt. That said, there are plenty of countries in which the number the church has on its records is much larger than the number of people claiming to be members in national censuses (censi?). For example, in 2012, the church said there were 182,964 members in Bolivia. According to the 2012 census, the population of Bolivia in 2012 was 10,027,254, so if we accept the church’s numbers, Mormons made up 1.82% of the population.

However, in the 2012 Bolivian census, only .3% of the population, or 30,082 people, self-identified as Mormon. That is only 16% of the number of members the church claims. Dividing the total by the number of wards and branches indicates that there are, on average, 117 self-identified Mormons in each unit. Of course, I would assume that not all self-identified Mormons are active in the church, so the number of active members per unit is probably a bit lower. Similar discrepancies between the number on church records and self-identification have been seen in Mexico, Brazil, and Chile.

However, in the US and Canada, the church's numbers compare pretty well to self-identification. So, I don't think half the church's members don't consider themselves to be LDS, but clearly a pretty good chunk do.

I do take it with a grain of salt as it's obvious he was just throwing that out there with nothing backing it up. But I think it's always good to realize that people are going to hold you accountable for the things you post and that you can't just make stuff up and present it as fact.

It's one of the things I like most about this board. We are all held to a standard. It makes us all better communicators.

[jkwilliams]

So did many of Joseph Smith's sealings.

 

Hmmm. Do we know when Joseph was endowed? By my count, Joseph married ten women, not counting Emma, before the endowment was given to others. Is there evidence that these marriages were sealings? I don't think so, but I could be wrong.

[jkwilliams]

I do take it with a grain of salt as it's obvious he was just throwing that out there with nothing backing it up. But I think it's always good to realize that people are going to hold you accountable for the things you post and that you can't just make stuff up and present it as fact.

It's one of the things I like most about this board. We are all held to a standard. It makes us all better communicators.

 

I agree. One of the most frustrating experiences I've had here was a recent discussion in which I issued a CFR and waited several days with no response. I was glad that the mods finally called the poster on it. 

[stemelbow]

Technically speaking, Adam and Eve did not receive their endowment until later, so it couldn't have been a sealing, which would require endowment and priesthood.

to be fair, relying on the events as recounted in Genesis is like relying on the account of my six year old's baseball game told by my 4 year old. Not only is it largely metaphor, it is also problematic in chronology.

if there were an Adam and Eve, and events transpired in a garden and they were cast out of that garden, then it really wasn't written down until some millennia later.

[jkwilliams]

to be fair, relying on the events as recounted in Genesis is like relying on the account of my six year old's baseball game told by my 4 year old. Not only is it largely metaphor, it is also problematic in chronology.

if there were an Adam and Eve, and events transpired in a garden and they were cast out of that garden, then it really wasn't written down until some millennia later.

 

That's why I said "technically speaking." 

[JLHPROF]

to be fair, relying on the events as recounted in Genesis is like relying on the account of my six year old's baseball game told by my 4 year old. Not only is it largely metaphor, it is also problematic in chronology.

if there were an Adam and Eve, and events transpired in a garden and they were cast out of that garden, then it really wasn't written down until some millennia later.

 

It was written by Moses, who as the PoGP tells us saw the whole thing happen real time in vision.  Moses 1:1-4 (Moses received his endowment directly from God).  But he saw the same things presented - creation, fall, Adam praying, etc.

Edited October 21, 2015 by JLHPROF

[Gray]

to be fair, relying on the events as recounted in Genesis is like relying on the account of my six year old's baseball game told by my 4 year old. Not only is it largely metaphor, it is also problematic in chronology.

if there were an Adam and Eve, and events transpired in a garden and they were cast out of that garden, then it really wasn't written down until some millennia later.

 

It seems pretty clear to me that it's a story, albeit one with some depth. Not a recitation of real events. 

[Gray]

It was written by Moses, who as the PoGP tells us saw the whole thing happen real time in vision.  Moses 1:1-4 (Moses received his endowment directly from God).  But he saw the same things presented - creation, fall, Adam praying, etc.

 

Moses didn't author any books, if indeed he ever existed. But it would have been quite a feat to come back and finish the Pentateuch after he was dead!

Edited October 21, 2015 by Gray

[KevinG]

[jkwilliams]

[stemelbow]

I do take it with a grain of salt as it's obvious he was just throwing that out there with nothing backing it up. But I think it's always good to realize that people are going to hold you accountable for the things you post and that you can't just make stuff up and present it as fact.

It's one of the things I like most about this board. We are all held to a standard. It makes us all better communicators.

Additionally, to help support the half figure, if it really is anything near that worldwide:

Brazil had in 2010, according to the Church, 1,138,740. But the census of that year reported only 225,695 people claiming to be LDS. So we have 775,822

In 2000. In 2000 Mexico, according to the Church, there were 850,000 members. But the census of that year only found 205,229. That's another 644,771.

In 2002 Chile, the Church reported 520,202. The census reported 103,735. A difference of 416,467.

Of course there are many factors to consider:

The cohort of children under 15 excluded from religious reporting on the Chilean census constitutes 25.7 percent of the population; we can therefore estimate (ignoring potential differences in religious preferences among cohorts of various ages, which we have no way to calculate for young children) that the 103,735 individuals who identified themselves as Latter-day Saints represent 74.3% of the true LDS cohort, and that 139,600 individuals would have identified themselves as Latter-day Saints if younger children had been included.

http://www.cumorah.com/index.php?target=church_growth_articles&story_id=15#ftn.id1

Such an estimate in Chile still suggests there are many people on the records of the Church who no longer consider themselves LDS.

Then again it's still possible that half the world wide members on record don't consider themselves LDS is possible. We've only considered three Central And South American countries and those three alone could have as many as 2 million members on record who no longer consider themselves LDS. The three numbers mentioned above add up to 1,837,060. But those were all from some years ago (15 years ago for Mexico).

If this type of study was done for each country in the world I wouldn't be at all surprised if it rose to half the members on the rolls, even if there are some problems with the reporting, as in the case of Chile circa 2002.

I've worked a lot with "less active" members in my ward and I wouldn't be surprised to hear many of them say they don't consider themselves LDS anymore, although some I'm sure would.

[JLHPROF]

Moses didn't author any books, if indeed he ever existed. But it would have been quite a feat to come back and finish the Pentateuch after he was dead!

 

That's your opinion, but it directly disagrees with the gospel.

Joseph Smith met Moses and had Moses lay his hands upon his head.  Seems real enough for me.

[stemelbow]

It was written by Moses, who as the PoGP tells us saw the whole thing happen real time in vision.  Moses 1:1-4 (Moses received his endowment directly from God).  But he saw the same things presented - creation, fall, Adam praying, etc.

Moses' authorship of Genesis is largely disputed. And for very good reason. It's possible he told stories about it, but the writing it down was done by someone after him.

Looking to the PoGP for history is equally problematic, I think.

[stemelbow]

That's your opinion, but it directly disagrees with the gospel.

Joseph Smith met Moses and had Moses lay his hands upon his head.  Seems real enough for me.

Wait a second...the gospel is being defined by who wrote certain pieces of scripture?

BTW,I'm not sure Moses putting his hands on his head supports a Moses authorship argument. And consider Joseph's own confusion of what is translation and where things came from (see Book of Abraham), I'm not sure it's a good idea to use this as an argument to support your point.

[JLHPROF]

Wait a second...the gospel is being defined by who wrote certain pieces of scripture?

BTW,I'm not sure Moses putting his hands on his head supports a Moses authorship argument. And consider Joseph's own confusion of what is translation and where things came from (see Book of Abraham), I'm not sure it's a good idea to use this as an argument to support your point.

 

Actually, I was referring to Gray's questioning whether Moses actually existed as described in D&C 110.

[stemelbow]

Actually, I was referring to Gray's questioning whether Moses actually existed as described in D&C 110.

But one could still deny Moses existed and still fully embrace the gospel. Indeed, in what manner was Joseph visited by Moses? In vision?

[Gray]

That's your opinion, but it directly disagrees with the gospel.

Joseph Smith met Moses and had Moses lay his hands upon his head.  Seems real enough for me.

 

My opinion is in line with what the scholarship is telling us. Mormonism embraces all truth, no matter what the source 

Edited October 21, 2015 by Gray

[JLHPROF]

But one could still deny Moses existed and still fully embrace the gospel. Indeed, in what manner was Joseph visited by Moses? In vision?

 

If we start accepting people being ordained by visions we are in a lot of trouble...

[stemelbow]

If we start accepting people being ordained by visions we are in a lot of trouble...

Maybe. Maybe we need to better understand what a vision was too. Perhaps if we really understood it, being ordained in visions may not be a problem at all.

[CV75]

I don't know where they get this from but really 1 million over gay marriage?

I think from the same place that asserts that over 1 million joined because of it.

[bluebell]

Additionally, to help support the half figure, if it really is anything near that worldwide:

Brazil had in 2010, according to the Church, 1,138,740. But the census of that year reported only 225,695 people claiming to be LDS. So we have 775,822

In 2000. In 2000 Mexico, according to the Church, there were 850,000 members. But the census of that year only found 205,229. That's another 644,771.

In 2002 Chile, the Church reported 520,202. The census reported 103,735. A difference of 416,467.

Of course there are many factors to consider:

http://www.cumorah.com/index.php?target=church_growth_articles&story_id=15#ftn.id1

Such an estimate in Chile still suggests there are many people on the records of the Church who no longer consider themselves LDS.

Then again it's still possible that half the world wide members on record don't consider themselves LDS is possible. We've only considered three Central And South American countries and those three alone could have as many as 2 million members on record who no longer consider themselves LDS. The three numbers mentioned above add up to 1,837,060. But those were all from some years ago (15 years ago for Mexico).

If this type of study was done for each country in the world I wouldn't be at all surprised if it rose to half the members on the rolls, even if there are some problems with the reporting, as in the case of Chile circa 2002.

I've worked a lot with "less active" members in my ward and I wouldn't be surprised to hear many of them say they don't consider themselves LDS anymore, although some I'm sure would.

 

Thanks Stem.  I think you've shown that there isn't enough information to state that 7.5 million members of the church don't consider themselves mormon anymore and that saying such a thing is a guess at best.

 

It's a tough thing to figure out.  We all know people who are not active but still consider themselves to be members, and we know people who were not active and did not think of themselves as members but who eventually came back into full activity (my own family was one of those).  And we all know people who are not active and don't believe at anymore and probably never will again.

 

The 'less active' category is a smorgasbord.

[Scott Lloyd]

Thanks Stem.  I think you've shown that there isn't enough information to state that 7.5 million members of the church don't consider themselves mormon anymore and that saying such a thing is a guess at best.

 

It's a tough thing to figure out.  We all know people who are not active but still consider themselves to be members, and we know people who were not active and did not think of themselves as members but who eventually came back into full activity (my own family was one of those).  And we all know people who are not active and don't believe at anymore and probably never will again.

 

The 'less active' category is a smorgasbord.

The figure that is read in conference reflects what's on the records of the Church. Everyone knows that -- or they should -- so it's not dishonest to give it.

 

To the Church's credit, we do not write people off just because they have stopped coming to meetings.

[JAHS]

The figure that is read in conference reflects what's on the records of the Church. Everyone knows that -- or they should -- so it's not dishonest to give it.

 

To the Church's credit, we do not write people off just because they have stopped coming to meetings.

I am wondering if in the figure we hear at conference has resigned and excommunicated members subtracted from it?

[Scott Lloyd]

I am wondering if in the figure we hear at conference has resigned and excommunicated members subtracted from it?

I would be very surprised if it didn't.

 

Again, it reflects the number who are on the records of the Church.