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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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/a> It found:<\/p>\n This abysmal state of religious knowledge is reflected in older surveys.<\/p>\n In <\/span>2010 a Pew survey asked<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n When was the Mormon religion founded?<\/em> (44% answered correctly)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0After 1800,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0Between 1200 and 1800,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0Before 1200 A.D.?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Book of Mormon tells of Jesus appearing to people in what area?<\/em> (40%)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0The Americas<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0Middle East<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0Asia\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Was Joseph Smith<\/em> (51%)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0Mormon<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0Catholic<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0Jewish<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0Buddhist<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0Hindu<\/span><\/p>\n 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\u2019re practicing a thousand year old religion that teaches that Jesus appeared to Asians (although the Middle East is technically Asia).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In 2018 <\/span>Pew repeated the Joseph Smith question<\/span><\/a>, and America scored a little better at 58%. Optimistically, maybe <\/span>the various Mormon moments in the media<\/span><\/a> 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 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, <\/span>98% of respondents of a survey<\/span><\/a> of active members and clergy of Presbyterian USA, a mainline Protestant denomination, correctly connected Joseph Smith to Mormonism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n