"Christians are the largest group in every state, but some of the things we found interesting was the growth of the Mormons, who reported the largest numerical gain in 26 states," said Jones, who presented the report to a conference in Chicago.

The number of Mormons, whose Utah-based church's formal name is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, grew by 45 percent to 6.1 million in 2010, according to the census, which asked 236 religions to count their own adherents. Family members of adherents were generally included in the numbers."

http://m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/numbers-muslims-mormons-sharply-u-report-224401366.html?back=%2Fus%2F&.ts=1335962664&.intl=us&.lang=en

Chic in the Heart of Moville told me this morning that KSL is reporting the same thing.

I think it is related to Simon in Oz's link to a SL Trib article.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/54026798-78/lds-religious-church-largest.html.csp

Anyone else notice that they have been using this lower number as a show of growth instead of the familiar 14M?

Also, is it real growth as in active conversions, or is it births into the mormon family, as suggested by this quote "Family members of adherents were generally included in the numbers" ?

I don't know about you, but I can't imagine a mormon couple with 4 kids under the age of 8 claiming that there were only 2 mormons in the household.

I'm sure the mother hen counts all the birds. I sure would so I agree.

LOL! They probably counted all the buns in the oven, too.

:-)

To JoD 3:360 -

The lower figure is within the US - your 14 million is worldwide.

I too did a double-take on the 5 million, till I realized that. Can't blame TSCC if the report by these outsiders looked only at within-US numbers.

You drill down a bit on the details of the study and answer becomes very clear why the church is showing growth. Here's the source of the numbers according to SLTrib's Peggy Fletcher Stack:

"The study was assembled by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies and included self-reported numbers from 17 of the country’s largest religious groups."

Self-reported makes all the difference. If you're breathing and have ever been within 50 yards of a baptismal font, you're likely included in those numbers. Maybe even if you're not breathing.

The ARIS study still shows the church treading water with a growth rate roughly equal to overall population growth.

I've always wondered if they included names from dead dunking as well. Easy to say they're the fastest growing when you take names from obituary's and add them to the roster.