SLTrib did a second article today (Mar 5) on the Pew 2024 survey that is reported in the thread "Religion in Utah". It had some pretty startling findings.

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2025/03/05/lds-attitudes-toward-abortion/ [Probably paywalled]

Link to Pew survey:
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/decline-of-christianity-in-the-us-has-slowed-may-have-leveled-off/

The overall percentage of active Mormons in the US according to Pew 2024 survey is steady at 2%. Not that impressive a number, but for Christianity in general, that dropped from 78% in 2008 to 62% in 2024, so holding steady at 2% suddenly doesn't look so bad.

>Of those raised in the church, a bit more than half — 54% — still identify with the faith as adults (down from 70% in Pew’s 2008 report). [comment: a 16% drop in 17 years is IMHO a devastating stat. Presumably the adults who self-identified as Mormon in 2008 still do, assuming they are still alive. So the number of Gen Z-ers who were not yet adults in 2008 but are now must be dropping out in huge numbers, something well above 1% per year] [And a loss of 1% a year is already a devastatingly large number.]


>72% are white (down from 85% in the 2008 report), 6% Black (up from 2%), 12% Hispanic (up from 7%), 1% Asian (no change) and 7% multiethnic/other (up from 3%). Despite these shifts, the church still ranks among the least diverse.

>29% report a household income of $100,000 or more (up from 16%), while 27% cite bringing home between $50,000 and $99,999 (down from 38%).

>37% have children under 18 living at home (down from 49%). Despite this decline, Latter-day Saints are surpassed only by Hindus (44%) and Muslims (42%) in the latest survey.

****
**** 52% of [LDS] members are male (up from 44%),
**** 47% female (down from 56%).
****

HOLY ****, so to speak. This is major news.

Numbers from previous years (estimated off a visual graph, so I may be off by a percent or so]
2007 44% M, 56% F
2014 47% M, 53% F
2024 52% M, 47% F

[comment: Women are no longer the more active sex in the LDS world. This trend has been growing for a while. I doubt that more men are staying active in the church. Rather, female participation is falling off a cliff. I know back in the 1990s there was great concern among the Q15 that women were not transitioning from YWMIA to RS. Looks like things have only gotten worse.]

I have long wondered why women would stay with a religion where they are guaranteed second-class status both in life and for all of Mormon eternity. Yeah, I know, security and all that. There are other, better ways they can feel secure these days. They have outnumbered men at universities for years now. The times, they are a changing.

It took a while, but some of them appear to finally be voting with their feet.

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2531382

I was most surprised by the decline in activity among women. I would think that has the brethren concerned. If they lose a generation of young women, chances are good they lose the next generation of children as well.

Ah. Missed it.

The more discussion, the better. Everybody else missed or ignored it as well.

The church is getting hit in the baby maker.

I would think that when you are treated as an equal in the workplace, it might become increasingly difficult to be treated as "lesser than" by your church. It could also be that woman are tired -- if you work all week, and take care of your family, there may not be enough energy to drag yourself off to church on Sunday.

I think that the 37% with children under 18 (down from 49%) is really telling.Not as many children are being raised in the church.

You have a lot of non-members moving into Utah. Even into Utah Valley. Utah will be a different place in the future.

I’m hearing a lot of frustration from active members of the church. They think the church has become too corporate and corrupt. They put of with it there’s no love for the church beurocracy.

When ppl run for the Utah legislature & state-wide offices, do Mormon candidates put their ChurchCo membership up front, or is it more subtle?

Both.

I know this anecdotal statistics, but among younger adult members (18 -40) my observation is a large number of young men have left the church compared to young women. In my brother's family all for the males (that would be four returned missionaries) have left the church, two sisters still attend. In my family both sons have left. My nearest neighbors two sons have left, two daughters still attend ( not very devout though). Other neighbor all of their sons have left the Church, one sister has too, I'm unsure about the other sister. We have some hired help; husband and all of his brothers have left, his wife also. His sisters no longer speak with him. It seems unsustainable unless the Church takes up polygamy or greatly changes belief systems.

Interesting. Doesn't track with national trends on gender and religiosity, so perhaps a Mo thing.

That's not what I saw in the Pew study, linked at the top of the thread.

Most world religions were heavily male-centric - Hindu, Islam, Jewish, Orthodox.

The common US Christian religions (Catholic, mainline, evangelical, and Black Protestant) all had more female than male participants, but not overwhelmingly so. The survey does not break out those US major religions specifically when it compares gender attitudes in the various surveys. It lumps all religions together.

With all religions lumped together, on main issues women were more religious than men, but in the three surveys, and across all questions, the numbers for both men and women dropped with each survey, and women dropped more than men, so the gap is narrowing. As far as I can tell, LDS was the only group where the gap narrowed so much that it flipped, and a majority of active members were male.

So it appears LDS women are ahead of the curve. Good for them :)

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> The common US Christian religions (Catholic,
> mainline, evangelical, and Black Protestant) all
> had more female than male participants, but not
> overwhelmingly so.

Mainstream Christianity in the US is precisely what I was talking about:

"The typical U.S. Congregation draws an adult crowd that’s 61% female, 39% male. This gender gap shows up in all age categories. " “U.S. Congregational Life Survey – Key Findings,” 29 October 2003, <www.uscongregations.org/key.htm>

With the younger set, it is narrowing. But 61% v 39% is pretty much "overwhelmingly" statistically speaking.

That's two decades out of date.

The religious landscape in the US has changed radically since then.

Exactly. LDS numbers switched 8.5% between 2007 and 2023-4 in the Pew survey. Other US religions didn't switch quite as much, but they were certainly in the same ballpark.

Evangelical 46 M, 53 F
Mainline 41 M, 57 F
Black 35 M, 64 F
Catholic 46 M, 53 F

It would not take much more change for the Evangelical and Catholic churches to have even to predominantly male active membership.

Only the Historically Black churches are very predominantly female.

A couple other things I noticed in the survey that sort of surprised me:

LDS were pretty much middle of the pack when it came to home schooling. I would have thought them to be higher.

They were below middle of the pack in voter registration. With all the blather in Utah about 'divinely inspired Constitution' and on and on and on, I thought they would be top of the pack.

They beat out all other Christian denominations in number of bachelor degrees, at 24%. They were middle of the pack or maybe even a bit on the low side for graduate degrees, at 12%. So, lots of emphasis for going to college (I bet way more men actually graduated with their BS degrees), not so much for going to grad school. Not a surprise to me.

See the link to the Pew survey in the OP for the numbers. There are just too many numbers for me to try and shovel them all into here. The survey report is not that hard to read, but it is long...

I'm actually not surprised by the college graduation rates of Mormons versus many Non-Mormons, particularly of the evangelical variety. During the early 1980s when my brother was attending Arizona State University (before I came back for my graduate degree), he had tried out several different Christian religions. One of the things he told me was that he found, especially among Baptists of the time, both males and females were discouraged from getting a college education by their ministers. Apparently, the ministers feared that if their followers received college educations, they wouldn't be followers anymore. On the other hand, the Mormon church (as far as I know) encourages college education, especially for its males, as long as people don't use that education to criticize the church and its policies.

So happy to see this decline.....

Being an active Mormon is mostly Very Boring for women I believe;

some women live vicariously thru Peter Priesthood hubs seeking advancement.

? Is 2sd A mentioned much these days? Than could be a goal for Molly Mormon..