What Do People Know About Latter-day Saints?

Stephen C

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What do People Know About the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Members sometimes have this image of what the normie gentiles think about us (one that often that neatly fits into our view of how the Church should change), when in fact hardly anybody knows anything about us beyond the basics, and sometimes not even that. 

The most recent survey about this that I am aware of was one I was involved with with the BHR Roberts Foundation’s 2022 National Latter-day Saint Survey. It found:

  • Only about half of Americans know that Latter-day Saints consider Jesus to be the son of God.
  • About a quarter believe that Latter-day Saints can’t have blood transfusions.
  • 1/3 believe that Latter-day Saints still practice polygamy.
  • About half know that Latter-day Saints can’t drink alcohol
  • About 15% believe that Latter-day Saints can’t eat chocolate.

This abysmal state of religious knowledge is reflected in older surveys.

In 2010 a Pew survey asked:

When was the Mormon religion founded? (44% answered correctly)

   After 1800, 

   Between 1200 and 1800, 

   Before 1200 A.D.? 

The Book of Mormon tells of Jesus appearing to people in what area? (40%) 

   The Americas

   Middle East

   Asia 

Was Joseph Smith (51%) 

   Mormon

   Catholic

   Jewish

   Buddhist

   Hindu

If you do the math the top two are slightly better than guessing, so for a lot of your gentile neighbors, if you tell them you’re Mormon for all they know you’re practicing a thousand year old religion that teaches that Jesus appeared to Asians (although the Middle East is technically Asia). 

In 2018 Pew repeated the Joseph Smith question, and America scored a little better at 58%. Optimistically, maybe the various Mormon moments in the media eventually led to people having at least a basic knowledge of the Church, or maybe it was just the kind of survey-to-survey fluke variation that you sometimes see. 

However, I suspect we can assume that people who are basically religiously active and knowledgeable almost universally at least know that Joseph Smith is connected to the Church. As evidence for this, 98% of respondents of a survey of active members and clergy of Presbyterian USA, a mainline Protestant denomination, correctly connected Joseph Smith to Mormonism. 

What else do people know or think about us besides raw knowledge of the basics? A somewhat dated Gallup survey asked “Next, we’d like you to think about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormon church. What comes to mind when you think about this religion?”

Unsurprisingly, polygamy comes in first at 18%, then Utah at 10%, then Good people/Kind/Caring/Strong morals at 8%, and Dislike their beliefs/ Don’t agree with their doctrine/False teachings at 6%. So we fit in the kind of respected-in-some-quarters but hated in others type that I’d expect God’s authorized Church to fit into.

Comments

5 responses to “What Do People Know About Latter-day Saints?”

  1. Not a Cougar

    Stephen, having grown up outside the Latter-day Saint corridor my entire life, I can’t say that I’m all that surprised about the results of the survey for a few reasons. First, while we try very hard to get our name out there (we certainly put a lot of effort into missionary work), objectively, we’re still not a household name in the United States. Yes, we claim nearly 7 million people on the rolls, and even taking that number on its face, we’re still under 2% of the population with much of that being very concentrated in the inter-mountain West. When talking about eh United States, in terms of size, we’re closer to the National Baptist Convention than we are the Southern Baptist Convention, let alone the Catholic Church.

    Second, we’ve expended a lot of social capital in maintaining or adopting standards and conventions that don’t line up with American Protestant Christianity (at least up until President Nelson), and we can’t be too shocked when that results in Americans not lumping us in with other Christians. For example, in the mid-20th century, we stopped completely any and all uses of the cross as a symbol in an effort to, as I understand it, distance ourselves from being lumped in with Catholics as “undesirables” by Protestant America (and apologies for any oversimplification). We can argue whether that decision was wise in the long run, but I will point out that the Church appears to have softened on that point at least slightly as our meetinghouses are now identified by a cross symbol on Google Maps (at least they are where I live).

    Third, to be honest, I’m not sure how much the average American would be able to say about any given Christian denomination, not just the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Whether that’s because most Americans don’t really study religion (their own or others) or because we’re far enough from the mainstream that we just aren’t common knowledge, I can’t say for certain, but I would suspect it’s the former. As evidence of that, off the top of your head, what do you know about the origins of the Baptist movement and how it got to America? How many people would be able to name Roger Williams (often credited with founding the first Baptist church in the United States) as an important person in Baptist history? Would the average person know the difference between the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention? I certainly don’t, and I’d argue that I’m a lot better read on religion in than most Americans (which isn’t saying much!).

  2. SDS

    In support of not-Cougar’s last point: Recently in our ward, a brother who has been a bishop and member of the high council (and who is btw a wonderful man compared to whom I am a spiritual peon) said in a Sacrament Meeting talk that our church is the only church in the world that includes the name of Christ in the name of the church. I truly love and admire this man, but I’m thinking: how can any literate person today possibly say that? It’s an extreme instance, maybe, but I constantly hear from our members embarrassingly wrong-headed assertions about what other churches did, do, or believe. So it does run both ways.

  3. Stephen C

    Not a Cougar and SDS: Oh definitely, religious literacy is bad across the board (according to that Pew survey only about half of Americans could name the four books of the gospels). However, we tend to score higher than most: in that same Latter-day Saints scored higher than any other group besides atheists. But yes, I take the point and agree we could know more. I’ll quibble a little on the comparison with Protestant denominational history, simply because denominational differences (arguably) don’t really matter anymore in the American landscape (Southern Baptists [arguably] have more with the Lutheran-Missouri Synod than they do with the American Baptist Churches USA), so the appropriate analog would be people not knowing Aquinas is connected to Catholicism, or knowing that Charles Taze Russell is connected to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  4. SDS

    Good points, Stephen. And I confess that I didn’t know about Charles Taze Russell, so mea culpa.

  5. KLC

    The problem is not what they don’t know about the Mormon church, the problem is what they are sure they know that isn’t true.

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