A Lot More People are Leaving the Church Now

Stephen C

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I finally got around to calculating the Church leaving rates from the latest Pew Religious Landscape Survey. The PRLS is one of the few surveys that has questions about both former and current religious affiliation with a large enough sample size that it can tell us something about Latter-day Saints.

So what do we find? According to the 2023-2024 PRLS, 54% of people who were raised Latter-day Saint still identify as such. So about half.

However, when we run the same numbers for 2014 it was 64%. And when we run the same numbers for the 2007 wave it was 70%.* So it looks like we’ve had a decent drop-off in the past twenty years. That means for every ten people who were raised LDS about three would have left in 2007 world, and five would have left in 2024 world, so two more out of ten (or 1.5 out of ten depending on how you’re rounding). This isn’t insignificant (but, to be fair, neither is it the “nobody used to leave now everybody is leaving” story that some observe). So the anecdotes and general vibes people have been getting of more people leaving the Church do have some bearing in the data.

I thought this in turn would have an effect on the composition of the Church, making it more of a Church of converts. However, in 2007, 74% of Church members were raised in the Church. In 2014 this number was 69%, and in 2024 this number was back up to 74%. So it does look like the raised-in-the-Church crowd is still the demographic ballast. In terms of a percentage, about 0.4% of the U.S. population are converts to the Church across all three waves (well, technically 4%, then 5%, and then 4% again in 2024, but at this point we might be asking too much of our sample size to really be able to say much about those trends).

So how are we still growing? As I’ve said a bajillion times elsewhere here at T&S, I think we owe a lot to population momentum (Google site:timesandseasons.org “population momentum” for my more detailed thoughts on this), or the fact that our parents had a lot of children, so as that demographic wave crests we’re still going to be seeing some Church growth from that, but it’s essentially due to reproductive decisions made long ago, so it shouldn’t be seen as indicative of anything we’re doing now.

Of course, whenever I do one of these posts people are quick to point out their own solution, but I really don’t see an easy fix to the demographic fundamentals of a secularizing society that has exponentially more lifestyle options than our parents and grandparents had (you can tell why I wasn’t Mr. Popular in my European mission’s zone conferences). The fact is the only religious groups that are growing rapidly in the developed world are ones that very intentionally shut off those other lifestyle options like the Amish and Haredi Jews. (Although the Assemblies of God is doing okay for themselves right now), so no, this would not all be different if the Brethren listened to your hot take on this or that 21st century culture war issue.

It is what it is, but again on a global level the fundamentals are strong, we’re not doing as badly as most, and we’ve been through much worse.

 

*Quick caveat, in 2007 they did this stupid thing where they weighted the continental US and Hawaii/Alaska differently, so the 2007 numbers are for the continental US, but at these numbers it shouldn’t matter much. 

Comments

16 responses to “A Lot More People are Leaving the Church Now”

  1. Treyeshua

    The popularization of the internet is a one time historic event. So many young people are “discovering” new things about the Church they grew up in that they are leaving. After a life of hard knocks, they will discover the Truth and be back, with strong testimonies. Watch the Come Back Podcast for many, many examples.

    This is why Biden was allowed, by God, to be elected. To show us what damage a President can do.

    Leaving our Church inflicts the same pain of those that leave as Biden and his handlers did to US.

  2. JB

    Ah yes Treyeshua, Biden, the practicing Catholic who inherited a 13.7% unemployment rate and a botched pandemic response that eventually killed over 1.1 million people from the adulterous failed-casino owner who preceded him, the same Biden who nevertheless swiftly got unemployment down to 4% via the largest stimulus package and vaccine rollout in our nation’s history and biggest infrastructure bill since Eisenhower, and who worked hard to finally bring down inflation to below 3% by last year—only to watch Tariffs McGee promptly reignite inflation, alienate all our allies, and ruin everything he touches yet again. I agree that one of the two men was sent here by God to show us how bad things can get.

    The reasons why people leave churches are diverse and multifaceted with no easy solution in the short-term, as the OP has indicated; but our retention rates are surely not helped along when the Youth of Zion are raised up hearing their leaders preach against the evils of adultery, pornography, casinos, and vulgarity, only to watch them all turn around and vote for Trump instead. If we don’t believe our own teachings, why should they? To quote Alma to Corianton, when they beheld our conduct, they would not believe our words.

  3. Stephen Fleming

    Thanks for breaking this down, Stephen C.

  4. Stephen C

    Didn’t expect this post to go political so fast, and a priori I doubt the president has much influence on this one way or the other. But empirically it’s also hard to make that case since the time trends we’re talking about here started in the George W. Bush years and continued through Barack Obama’s two terms, Donald Trump’s first term, and Joe Biden’s term.

  5. Frank

    I speak from my own experience and what I have seen in my children, the people around me, and what I have seen in my service in the Church.
    The Church is very focused on one way of achieving spiritual progress, which is the path of covenants and the temple. That’s fine, but notice how they use every trick in the book to say that, for example, PFJ (in South America) is an activity that changes your life… In reality, it is a spiritual retreat in the format of a “mission training center” where for five days there are “spiritual” classes, a little music, testimonies, and a couple of parties for the youth to socialize, in a school or place that is full of people all day long. What about those people who don’t like crowds, don’t like parties, enjoy sports and social activities more, and don’t feel very comfortable with testimonials? You then have a group of people, which is not insignificant, who will not feel part of the group that is enjoying themselves and will therefore gradually break away from the crowd.
    Sunday classes are repetitive, focused on repeating the same basic teachings over and over again, with questions or invitations to participate answered with the same responses: “You have to pray, you have to read the scriptures, you have to go to church.”
    Church manuals are too redundant. If you pick up any manual, even from a seminary or institute, you will see that it repeats the same thing as another manual, but does not delve deeper into the content.
    They promise you that you will have great spiritual experiences and that this will shape your future, when in general, emotional stability in life is based on resilience and a faith in simple things, and that day by day, almost imperceptibly, a relationship with God develops.
    You are taught that there is one way to worship, when in reality spirituality and connection with God depend on certain natural aptitudes: for some it is prayer, for others service, for others music, for others the study of the scriptures, for others meditation, for others nature, etc.
    The sacrament meeting talks are repetitions of general conference talks with stories centered on American life, tears, and repetition without adding personal reflections, personal testimonies of learning, etc.
    If you ask sharp or difficult questions in Church meetings, your classmates will look at you strangely, and at best, the teacher will tell you that we can go deeper into that at the end of class so as not to stray from the context.
    In our testimonies on the first Sunday, we say that we are happy because of the gospel, but with a tone of sadness (which we call spirituality) or with an exaggerated tone of “joy” that is characteristic of emotionally unstable people and probably not a good example to follow in life. There are others, but they are hidden among the different nuances.
    In short, something that does not seem to satisfy the diverse spiritual needs of the people who attend church. The older ones attend church out of discipline and commitment, while the younger ones, being a little less tolerant and authentic, are not willing to sacrifice their attention, preferring to continue on their own personal quest for spiritual fulfillment without the Church.
    Finally, and this is a little sad, there is a general feeling of moral superiority towards other people who are not of our faith. This is detected by members who have many friends outside the church and realize that there is something strange that does not add up.

  6. jader3rd

    I like how you focus on the abundance of different lifestyles. I made a comment on a different site about how people want different lifestyles and was quickly accused by the offended that I was really saying that people who leave the church just want to sin. And while that can be part of it, it’s not the entirety of it. Many times it is just a desire for a different lifestyle.

    I’m currently listening to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy with my son and we recently got to the point where Arthur asks the Mice why they’re searching so hard for the Ultimate Question and the mice reply, “I dunno. Momentum at this point I guess”. The church has wonderful answers for those who are searching the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything. But honestly most people just don’t care. They might care occasionally, but not enough to do anything about it. THGGTTG references the concept of not worrying about the big questions and just get on with life repeatedly through the book.

    I think that the church is doing a good job with the Saints series, and with the many examples of very difficult circumstances that leaders and members of the church have suffered through. It shows that bad things happening to righteous people is not evidence of a lack of God. But I suspect that most church members haven’t read the books. And because so many Sunday School lessons are focused on blessings from righteous living, that once bad things start happening to you, it’s easier to conclude that God isn’t real and just walk away. You compartmentalize all of the evidences of the church being true in a spot in your mind as stuff to forget about, and go about day to day living.

  7. Ethan

    Great information here and I am fascinated by the population momentum concept and dynamic. Your article from a number of years back introduced me to it and I’ve read a number of interesting articles and studies about it.

    And the first comment on this post is both amusing and concerning. But glad to see that some people have figured it all out lol ?

  8. Tom

    Just from looking around my ward and extended family, it certainly appears there are more people leaving.

  9. Vic Rattlehead

    Certainly I have noticed people leaving in larger numbers, especially among family and friends. It can be quite disheartening. However, I think that we ought to look closely at the reasons why as I tire of people saying that people leave just because they want to sin. While there may be a few cases of the reddit style imbecile, this is usually not the case. For example, my entire immediate family converted to non-denominational Christianity because they did not apparently feel close to God while in this church. So their leaving was out of sincere desire to find truth, even if I disagree with them, rather than to shirk responsibility, and hopefully we can find better ways to minister to these folks in the future.

  10. JTB

    I was mildly alarmed when I first looked at the PRLS data, but upon further inspection it seems to be a classic case of Mormon oversampling. This has been an issue for the entirety of the PRLS going back to 2007. The self identified LDS population in 2007 and 2014 was 1.7% and 1.6% respectively, which I think both pro- and anti-LDS can agree is certainly much higher than reality. 80+% of membership on the roles do not identify as LDS, much less attend church at the rates identified in those surveys. The percentage of the population raised LDS in both 2007 and 2014 was 1.7%, with 1.1% of the population raised LDS still identifying as adults in 2014. The percentage of raised and self identified LDS was exactly the same in 2023 (1.1%). The supposed large drop in retention is due to the percentage of those who who raised in the church increasing almost 25% in the 2023 survey, from 1.7% to 2.1%, with that increase exclusively contributing to those who no longer identify as LDS (from 0.6% to 1.0%). This is extremely unlikely, as it suggests that the number of people raised LDS is greater than the entire reported membership. Considering that 0.4% of the population are LDS identifying converts, and that convert retention is (generously) 50%, roughly 3% of the population was either raised in the church or baptized at some point. This would mean that there are roughly 3 million people who have had their records removed to arrive at the roughly 6 million members (2% of the population) on the rolls. That just hasn’t happened. The reality is that self identified LDS is lower than the survey suggests, and that disaffiliation may have had a slight increase, but not the jump that the 2023 survey suggests. I’d love to hear any thoughts on my math and reasoning.

  11. JTB

    Slight correction: *roughly 7 million members on the rolls

  12. Old Man

    We are watching a significant meltdown of the core of the LDS community. As previously noted
    it is not as devastating as some religions have experienced, but the longterm effects of this are serious. I know of no families who have not felt the impact of it. No one can estimate the changes coming to LDS culture due to this event. Twenty years ago, I could name a dozen families off the top of my head who had no members who have left the Church. I certainly can’t do that today, and it’s not due solely to a worsening memory!

  13. Aaron

    Something I heard recently that resonated with me was a comment that the #1 reason people used to leave the church because of historical questions/issues, but over time it’s turned into a feeling that the church isn’t “good” anymore (eg misogyny, homophobia, classism, racism, or general “meanness” in our politics). It’s easy to have a nuanced look at our history, but it’s much harder to push back against a culture that feels like it’s lost its way.

  14. Ryan R

    I’ve enjoyed this series of posts. I would be interested in seeing in how the data breaks down in the United States. For instance, I’m middle aged but the concept of a jack Mormon no longer exists like it did when I was young. Those folks might have answered surveys stating they were Mormon in previous samples, even if they weren’t active participants. To what extent is this just people on the margins disaffiliating?

    It’s also frequently framed as an issue, but I question if it isn’t better off for the institutional church. You have a more committed group of core members creating more doctrinal cohesion and buy in. I don’t mean this as a moral judgement, but you also lose religious free riders.

    In the end I’m not certain this is the cause of concern many think it is for Church leadership or that frankly they should be concerned.

  15. ReTx

    “So how are we still growing?” I don’t know how representational this is, but in my area we are growing because we have several baptisms a month. However, most of those people only come to church a month or two and then disappear. Zero percent make it to the one year mark.

    In terms of lifestyle, the challenge I’m seeing in my extended family is that the church doesn’t fulfill the promises it makes of lifestyle. Not when the 20-somethings can look at their peers and see that their lives are just as meaningful, rewarding, and positive without having to deal with the negatives of Mormonism.

  16. Stephen C

    @JTB: So, if I’m reading your concern correctly, it sounds like there may be some oversampling of raised-Latter-day Saints in the 2024 PRLS (something that happens in other surveys like some years of the GSS when they do a coarse-grained multistage cluster sample and some of the clusters happen to land in Utah). But in that case the exact same 1.1% of raised-and-still-LDS is a smaller proportion of the total raised LDS in 2024 than 2014 because of the oversampling of LDS in 2024. So (again, if I’m reading this right), I don’t think that’s a issue to the main take-away here because the issue is *specifically* if raised-and-left LDS were oversampled *relative* to raised-and-stayed; I don’t see how that would be affected if raised LDS were simply oversampled. I tried checking distribution by state to see if it was an Utah thing, but my 2024 dataset has all missing values on state, probably for deidentification purposes.

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