Utah is no longer a majority-Mormon state

[JAHS]

Utah is no longer a majority-Mormon state

 Latter-day Saints make up just 42% of the population of Utah, according to a new study published in the Journal of Religion and Demography. That is far lower than the 60% cited just a few years ago in The Salt Lake Tribune, drawing on 2019 data from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Why the discrepancy between the 2019 figures and the study’s?

They’re measuring different things, say the three sociologists who fielded the sample of 1,909 Utah residents. The church counts as members anyone who’s ever been baptized, even if they haven’t been to a meeting in years. Social scientists, however, measure how many people “self-identify” as belonging to a religious tradition — in other words, those who check the “Mormon/Latter-day Saint” box on a survey, regardless of whether they attend church.
So there’s always been a gap between the church’s loftier membership figures and the ones sociologists obtain, but that gap appears to be growing, said Rick Phillips, professor of sociology and religious studies at the University of North Florida.

----------------------------------------

The article goes on to site three reasons for the declining numbers in Church membership in the state:

Migration out of the state.
Declining Mormon birthrates. 
More people are leaving the LDS church altogether.

 

Edited December 31, 2023 by JAHS

[Pyreaux]

What about non-Mormons migrating into the state? From those leaving California or Mexico?

[carbon dioxide]

This is great news.  Can we now start blaming all the negative Utah stats on those who are not LDS?  Like if Utah has high suicides, it the non Mormons who are the reason.

[JAHS]

49 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

What about non-Mormons migrating into the state? From those leaving California or Mexico?

The article only says:
"The state’s flourishing economy and proximity to the mountains have proved to be a draw for many who are not Mormon."

[JustAnAustralian]

3 hours ago, carbon dioxide said:

This is great news.  Can we now start blaming all the negative Utah stats on those who are not LDS?  Like if Utah has high suicides, it the non Mormons who are the reason.

I was going to make a similar comment. I guess non-LDS only have themselves to blame if the legislature remains majority LDS, and are quite heavily to blame if Utah votes Trump.

[CV75]

14 hours ago, JAHS said:

The article only says:
"The state’s flourishing economy and proximity to the mountains have proved to be a draw for many who are not Mormon."

So the draw is spiritual and not religious?

[LoudmouthMormon]

18 hours ago, carbon dioxide said:

Can we now start blaming all the negative Utah stats on those who are not LDS?  Like if Utah has high suicides, it the non Mormons who are the reason.

Salt Lake City has been minority LDS for a long time now - perhaps decades?  This has been a valid response for Utah city issues for a while.

Edited December 29, 2023 by LoudmouthMormon

[Calm]

56 minutes ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

This has been a valid response for Utah city issues for a while.

You have lost me here.  Perhaps a bit more detail so I can follow along?

[The Nehor]

22 hours ago, carbon dioxide said:

This is great news.  Can we now start blaming all the negative Utah stats on those who are not LDS?  Like if Utah has high suicides, it the non Mormons who are the reason.

Being around Mormons causes suicide instead of being Mormon causes sucide?

Sounds fair to me.

[LoudmouthMormon]

22 hours ago, Calm said:

You have lost me here.  Perhaps a bit more detail so I can follow along?

Church critic: "This new study says gay youth kill themselves in SLC .2% more often than the national average!  Therefore the church is to blame!"
or
"This news article says SLC residents take antidepressants at 5% higher than the national average!  Therefore the church makes people sad!"
or
"SLC home prices are rising at a higher rate than the national average!  Therefore Mormons are part of the problem somehow!"

Response since like the mid-1980's:  "SLC is less than 50% LDS.  Rural Utah, where the % can be upwards of 98%+, don't show these trends.  Therefore your accusation is invalid, the church is not to blame, doesn't make people sad, and isn't part of the problem."

 

Hopefully that clarifies.

 

[Teancum]

On 12/29/2023 at 12:05 AM, JustAnAustralian said:

I was going to make a similar comment. I guess non-LDS only have themselves to blame if the legislature remains majority LDS, and are quite heavily to blame if Utah votes Trump.

Depends on demographics of where they live. And how the district maps are drawn at least for the legislature. Also I would guess many inactive Latter day Saints still politically lean right. I bet that the greatest concentration of non LDS and even disaffected LDS are Salt Lake County and that much of the state still remains solidly LDS.

[Calm]

3 hours ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

Hopefully that clarifies.

It does, thanks.

[CV75]

3 hours ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

Church critic: "This new study says gay youth kill themselves in SLC .2% more often than the national average!  Therefore the church is to blame!"
or
"This news article says SLC residents take antidepressants at 5% higher than the national average!  Therefore the church makes people sad!"
or
"SLC home prices are rising at a higher rate than the national average!  Therefore Mormons are part of the problem somehow!"

Response since like the mid-1980's:  "SLC is less than 50% LDS.  Rural Utah, where the % can be upwards of 98%+, don't show these trends.  Therefore your accusation is invalid, the church is not to blame, doesn't make people sad, and isn't part of the problem."

 

Hopefully that clarifies.

 

The greater-than-average light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not, greater than average! 

[blackstrap]

If only the Church had some sort of program that might address the situation...👿

[sunstoned]

10 hours ago, Teancum said:

Depends on demographics of where they live. And how the district maps are drawn at least for the legislature. Also I would guess many inactive Latter day Saints still politically lean right. I bet that the greatest concentration of non LDS and even disaffected LDS are Salt Lake County and that much of the state still remains solidly LDS.

The way they have gerrymandered the districts, there is little chance of any Democrats getting into office.

[webbles]

9 minutes ago, sunstoned said:

The way they have gerrymandered the districts, there is little chance of any Democrats getting into office.

Utah is currently estimated to get a new house seat in 2030 - https://thearp.org/blog/apportionment/2030-asof121923/.  New districts will be needed and I'm not sure they could gerrymander it to exclude a Dem leaning district with 5 districts.  But we'll see what happens in 2030.

[Teancum]

On 12/30/2023 at 11:55 PM, sunstoned said:

The way they have gerrymandered the districts, there is little chance of any Democrats getting into office.

Of course.

[BlueDreams]

On 12/30/2023 at 10:09 PM, webbles said:

Utah is currently estimated to get a new house seat in 2030 - https://thearp.org/blog/apportionment/2030-asof121923/.  New districts will be needed and I'm not sure they could gerrymander it to exclude a Dem leaning district with 5 districts.  But we'll see what happens in 2030.

Honestly I'm not super hopeful about it. If there is, it could still be a sign of gerrymandering via packing to reduce competitive districts. We just had an electoral cycle where the people of UT specifically voted for an independent commission to make districts for the state, said initiative was watered down to have no teeth by the very red legislature, and sure enought, when the commission made several reasonable maps for them to choose from and inspite of serious signs of disagreement by their constituents, the legislature made the one map that cut up any blue areas in the state to water them down with rural and redder ones. They justified it by saying it was to better rep rural areas...I couldn't see how that was the case and it seriously felt like a rebuff of a purely democratic decision by Utahns. 

 

But the demographics are changing in general in the state. It may lead to change by 2030...it may not do anything for a long while to come. If UT follows the trends of the country as a whole, it'll probably have a few power tug-a-wars before it starts to better rep the state. 

 

With luv,

BD 

[Stargazer]

On 12/31/2023 at 4:55 AM, sunstoned said:

The way they have gerrymandered the districts, there is little chance of any Democrats getting into office.

Just to balance this out a bit, isn't that kind of like how in some other states they gerrymander to prevent Republicans from getting into office? Let's not pretend that election engineering is the province of only one of the parties, i.e. the one you disagree with. They both do it.

And now let's get off politics, and go back to your favorite activity of blaming the Church for all the negative outcomes it's not causing?

[JAHS]

29 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

And now let's get off politics

Yes, please. 

[webbles]

http://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/2023/12/response-to-mormons-are-no-longer.html has an interesting analysis of the study.  One thing that struck me was that per the study and per the estimates of active members, there are a bunch of people who say they are members but aren't attending church.

Quote

Assuming 50% of Church-reported membership in Utah is active (as member activity rates in Utah are higher than most states outside of Utah), then 32.1% of the population in the State of Utah would be active members. The Cragun, Bull, and Phillips study reported that 42% of the state population self-affiliate as Latter-days Saints. Therefore, Church-reported members who are inactive and who still self-affiliate as a Latter-day Saint would be approximately 10% of the state population, or 338,080 people. Therefore, three-quarters of self-affiliated Latter-day Saints would be estimated to be considered active, whereas one-quarter of self-affiliated Latter-day Saints would be estimated to be inactive.

I wonder if this is true outside of Utah.  We usually try and guess how many of the global membership are "true" members based on activity rate but if Utah has more self-affiliated members than active members, then using activity rate might give to low an estimate.

The blog author also argues that active members might never have been a majority in Utah.

Quote

I argue that active Latter-day Saints have been a minority in Utah for the entire past 100 years. If using a member activity rate of 50% since 1920, there has never been a year when active Latter-day Saints have constituted a majority of the population in the State of Utah (the highest year would have been 1987 when 39% of the population appeared to be active Latter-day Saints).

 

[Stargazer]

13 minutes ago, webbles said:

I wonder if this is true outside of Utah.  We usually try and guess how many of the global membership are "true" members based on activity rate but if Utah has more self-affiliated members than active members, then using activity rate might give to low an estimate.

I have no idea if this is reflective of church in the UK or not, but our ward has about 400 members on paper, but sacrament meeting attendance hardly ever cracks 90 these days. We're doing about 17% on average. Back in 2018 we were at 26%. And a few years before that attendance was much higher. I don't know if it's demographics or faithfulness.

[JAHS]

2 hours ago, webbles said:

We usually try and guess how many of the global membership are "true" members based on activity rate but if Utah has more self-affiliated members than active members, then using activity rate might give to low an estimate.

There's a lot of gray area. I have a daughter that is no longer active at all but still fully believes in the truthfulness of the gospel even though she doesn't attend church or live some parts of it in her life.  Just the other day she asked me for a blessing when she was sick, which helped her recover from it.

[Stargazer]

Here's a video response to the Trib's article...