An interesting pattern is showing in the published statistics for the Church in the UK.
Members
2014 186,878
2015 187,097
2016 185,848
2017 186,839
2018 187,415
2019 188,187 That's an increase of +0.7% over 6 years

Stakes
2014 45
2015 45
2016 45
2017 45
2018 45
2019 45 That's neutral at 0% over 6 years

Congregations
2014 339
2015 331
2016 334
2017 327
2018 323
2019 320 That's a decrease of -5.6% over 6 years

I read that to mean the total membership figure is the least reliable indicator of actual growth, and that despite an increasing total membership number, the Church is actually shrinking in the UK. I wonder if that's true in most parts of the world...

I imagine that it is very difficult to convert a muslim to mormonism, a christian to mormonism, an atheist to mormonism.

I imagine that the 18 y old elders don't give the full story about Joseph Smith and his gun and shooting and jailing, etc.
Even if a person converts to mormonism, down the line, he is going to eventually find out that this is not exactly christianity.

~~~~iceman9090

@anybody:
Personally, I don't see the point of having churches.
Just take the holy book and read it at home. There is no need to feed $$$ to some priest. A priest should get a real job. There is no need to go door to door. Just send a spam email to everyone. That's what Nigerian scammers do bc it is a lot cheaper and it pollutes less. No need to print books. It's just data (holy book) and data can be turned into a file and placed on a server.

~~~~iceman9090
I'm an atheist willing to help religious people with their "Should I send money to a priest questions."

Christians, in particular Catholics, have been their main cash crop for decades. Mexico, Brazil, Philippines have lots of Mormons.

They must know about the one hundred billion by now. Why should they send their money to Salt Lake? Why should they not run their own scam?

The number of Stakes (especially when you look at it for a period of several years) is a reliable number. It takes quite a few active Melchizedek Priesthood holders to keep a stake functional.

The most positive spin the Mormon church can possibly put on it is that membership in the UK is stable, but realistically, it's in decline (maybe a slow decline, but certainly not growing).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/2020 11:55AM by CrispingPin.

I’m not sure Stake numbers are reliable, as the number of congregations per Stake fluctuates. So it doesn’t provide a reliable guide to member attendance. For instance, Stake numbers have stayed static regardless of the movements in total members and congregations.

The movement in congregation numbers is a direct indicator of member attendance.

I see the figures (and thank you for them, Pettigrew) this way:

The missionaries are baptizing women and children, who can’t have the priesthood, or don’t get the priesthood, and so the numbers grow but the congregations shrink.

And no way in the world would anyone make a bet in a membership surge any first world country.

I'm friends with a few people in a few wards in the UK.

Every single one has reported their wards or branches are in decline, some are struggling to survive as units and should be merged into neighbouring units, but the stake presidents are under great pressure to not loose units as it puts their stake in jeopardy.

I have no doubt there are a couple of wards in the UK that have experienced meaningful growth,typically from move-ins. Those scant examples are enough for the UK members to keep themselves deluded that there is real growth.

Most of the congregations in the UK are made up of less than 100 active members (including children and babies), with a few exceptions. I’d guess active membership in the UK is less than 35,000 despite having 188,187 names on a meaningless list.

The only people I saw join the mormon church after me apart from my brother (1997- 2009) were older single people with various physical or mental health issues, and a couple of families that already had obvious struggles. One guy who was my age resigned a couple of years before me. He sent an email to everyone in the entire ward rebuking everyone for their un-Christlike behaviour and explained why it was all fraudulent. Everyone ignored it so I didn’t bother with that. There weren’t many converts. From what little info I can gather, things remain much the same as to who is there now, except that American families come and go as was always the case. There should actually be a large increase merely based on all the children who have now grown up. Hmmm...
I often have to drive past the church building. I don’t miss it at all.

Thanks, Pettigrew. This is good data that says a lot.

Just births alone ought to cause more growth than what they are reporting. Makes me think the wards (a) have very few young families, so not many births, and (b) mostly older members, so deaths are largely balancing out births, and perhaps even exceeding them.

All of which puts the local wards on a slow slide into oblivion. I like to think of Europe as the canary in the Mormon coal mine.

@Brother Of Jerry:
Europe seems to be quickly dropping the jewish flavor of religions. Look at the statistics for France, England, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, etc.
They are in the range of 45 to 80% atheist.
I think Canada is at 22%.
While the USA hovered around 5%, now it is 15%.

0.0% of Icelanders 25 years or younger believe God created the world, new poll reveals

http://icelandmag.visir.is/article/00-icelanders-25-years-or-younger-believe-god-created-world-new-poll-reveals

Atheism is the fastest growing "religion" compared to religions and this is something that has the major religious leaders worried.

I think one of Atheism's key attractions, aside from always siding with facts, is the dues.

It's $0.00, and you can pay it over your lifetime.

As it happens a former LDS member is now a Pastor in Barnsley.

I was a golden investigator in the UK (2005-2007).

No disrespect to the ward members, but I'm happy to see that it's not growing. Just sad to see that it still has members prepared to continue to be effectively just bullied by cult leaders and even paying for the privilege.

When I attended the members were blamed for lack of converts and were reminded that they needed to be obedient ( ie doing what they should be doing).

That was when, "AND I AM A MORMON", was a big and proud media campaign.


What a crackpot experience it all turned out to be. lol

Whereabouts were you? Long shot I know

Huddersfield StakeHouse.

A nice experience overall, except for eventually noticing the whitewashing in the various lessons and manuals. Members were decent and kind. I gave the benefit of the doubt to the 'official narrative' for too long.

I've since enjoyed discovering it's not true far more than when I hoped it would be true. I've learned a lot about New World History as a result. The real history that is.

A northerner!

I have a long-time friend who grew up in Barnsley.

Love Barnsley folk. Met my first Barnsley people when I was an engineering apprentice. Could hardly understand what they were saying! lol

'How is it going' sounds more like 'Arrs Thar going'.

'No' - sounds more like 'Naywa'. Soon picked it all up though.

So true!!!

I met my friend in sports. He was younger and much better at a particular part of my training. I couldn't understand a word he said except for "you're doing it wrong."

We ended up with a mutual assistance pact: he'd help me with my problems and I'd help him with his. It took me at least a few weeks to learn how to interpret his English (as he assured me it was). We worked together closely for years and our families remain in contact even now.

In my limited experience, people from Yorkshire are great.

The folk from Umbridge are just terrible when it comes to taking a joke!


A question... From whence emerged the Welsh? Must be a whale of a tale!

A former LDS member is now a Pastor in Barnsley.

He's probably putting the priesrhood to good use then, eh, what?

Blimey!

A northerner! I live in the south but I’m thinking of moving near to Newcastle. I guess I should visit first, I’ve no idea what it would be like in reality.
I had a great experience for the first maybe, four years. I have some fond memories even. Then everything went downhill. In fact a lot of stuff reversed. I’m not sure if all that niceness was even real with some people. At the very least I saw a dark side to it. That’s what happens when people are living a lie I guess?

I created a little unrest during my attendance. I brought in Brigham Young's teaching on negroes and various other ridiculous stuff from him and other early LDS leaders from the Journal Of Discourses.

Ended up twice in Bishops office effectively being given a gagging order, and asked not show any ward members my research. Bishop didn't know about hat and stone, Ward Historian (church history expert) had no clue Smith was marrying other mens wives.

Shared some info with a recent convert and he was done with it! He summarised that Smith and Young were just basically outlaws and hoodlums. lol

Bishop told him to hang on as he will personally counteract all the antimormon stuff and never did. Just kept away instead.

Whenever I asked a difficult question, or mentioned some church history stuff, I'd be looked at suspiciously.

Showed some book of Mormon verses about Lamanites changing to a dark skin colour for being disobedient to a recent 'black' convert and the ward Missionary accused me of kicking against the pricks!!

It was all ridiculous really and quite infantile.

Now it's just a source of great entertainment looking back at it all and watching the BS the leaders keep coming up with.

And the niceness, Yes I'm sure alot of it was fake and orchestrated as a lot of it was 'Love Bombing' for a conversion. They called it 'Friendshipping'!

In fact I recall a sacrament meeting talk about a baptised investigator who had lapsed a little (not in attendance) and how the speaker said that "She needs to pull her own weight now, we can't be carrying her along forever"! lol

I'm not an expert about the church in the UK, but I'm well versed in the expectation of telling lies because the leaders can't handle the truth.

My homeward split when I returned after serving a mission. I was befuddled. The ward never should have been divided. The numbers weren't really there. The existing ward was heavy in high priests, but had less than ten active elders. The new ward was just the opposite, there were very few high priests.

Do you know what the stake did to make this split look viable to SLC?

They moved in "ghost" high priests and their families. Yes, they moved in 4 high councilors to make the new ward work. They were nothing but place holders because they were always "on stake assignment" almost every Sunday. The wives and families were never in attendance because they had no intention of leaving their home wards to be part of a new ward.

I suspect that the church is pulling similar hijinks in the UK.

"How did you go bankrupt?"
"Two ways. Gradually, and then suddenly."
- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 1926

I suspect that will be how LDS Inc collapses in Europe. They can keep stretching and cobbling together stakes and hang onto moribund wards by force of will, until at some point, one of the parts just disintegrates, and then the rest comes tumbling down around it.

An American church selling the opportunity to enter an American Zion sold reasonably well in the 1850s to 1880s or so, even with the stench of polygamy. The dislocation of the Industrial Revolution made "let's try America" sound pretty good. [Note: IR dislocation started earlier than that, but the Mormons didn't much benefit until at least the 1840s]

Then after WWII, Europe had reason to think kindly of the US, and LDS Inc was pretty well received in the 1950s and 1960s. The Mo Tabs toured Europe, etc.

I think Vietnam soured Europe on hero worship of the US, and on American religions, for which Mormonism is exhibit A. The LDS Church has been in gradual decline in Europe since somewhere around 1970 IMO. Maybe a bit earlier.

With the spectacular unpopularity of Dear Leader in Europe, and the financial and psychological impact of COVID-19, LDS Inc, the quintessentially American church, may have finally gotten to the "suddenly" phase. The next 5 years should be interesting.

Plus I am pretty confident I will be around for 5 years, so I get to watch. :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2020 01:39PM by Brother Of Jerry.

You are right to tie the rise of international Mormonism to Pax Americana. The LDS church rode on the coattails of American power and prestige. And now that the US has become an international laughing stock, people will not give Mormonism a second thought.

It's interesting to consider whether LDS political philosophy would have been different if the church accurately appreciated its dependence on the reputation of the United States.

I don't mind the international laughing stock part, but it is starting to bother me that we're also becoming an intra-national laughing stock. That's not good!

Hahaha!

Manifest Destiny V3.0: Send In the Clowns.

I assume that the LDS population in Europe skews older. That means that they have increased vulnerability, will have increased mortality from CV-19, and will be reluctant to return to church meetings. Vulnerable populations will no doubt be be told to continue to avoid large groups.

Not going to be an easy beach ball to reinflate, since it was already half flat and leaking before it got spiked by coronavirus.