{"id":43803,"date":"2022-10-29T18:45:07","date_gmt":"2022-10-30T00:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=43803"},"modified":"2025-05-28T07:31:46","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T13:31:46","slug":"the-greatest-apostasy-since-kirtland-following-a-cohort-of-members-across-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2022\/10\/the-greatest-apostasy-since-kirtland-following-a-cohort-of-members-across-time\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greatest Apostasy Since Kirtland? Following a Cohort of Members Across Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

For some years there have been rumors of a large-scale apostasy happening in the Church. These rumors are hard to test without insider information because most surveys have such small samples of Church members it\u2019s really a case of peering through the glass darkly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been on record<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>suggesting that in the long run the Church is treading water in terms of out-flows and in-flows (conversions versus people leaving). However, I also recognized that just comparing the number of ex-members to the members of converts at a point in time can obscure some more recent trends.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I recently ran across the fact that the Cooperative Election Study has a sample of 136 members that they followed from 2010 to 2014. While this is a small sample size, it\u2019s one of the very few cases where we can follow a cohort of members measured by a third party to see how many are leaving or joining. (For our small-N, high level purposes here I\u2019m ignoring weights).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you follow this group across 2012 and 2014, we find that:<\/span><\/p>\n