It may be a trivial point... I realise that it says nothing about the veracity of the morg, but I am involved in a debate with a tbm, who quotes the 'US news and world report' (??) that the morg IS the fastest growing church.

anyone got any sources (that couldnt be easily dismissed as 'anti') for the fact that the morg is NOT the fastest growing church.

thanks

I think this idea is often promulgated by lazy journalists who pre for a story by reading the house file on the subject and regurgitating supposed facts which may or may not still be true but which they take fail to verify for themselves. Did the USNWR quote any actual facts to support their statement?

Very true. Journalists say, "I hear you're the fastest growing religion. Is that true?"

Mormon: "YES!"

But simple, simple math tells you otherwise: The Seventh Day Adventists didn't organize their church until 1863, 33 years after the Mormons. The same year that Mormons claimed over 14 million members with 30% retention, the Adventists claimed over 16 million, with 70% retention.

And of course, Islam grew from 1.3 billion to 1.6 billion just between 2000 and 2010. And how many births does Roman Catholicism have just in one year?

Here's what Mormonism MAY be--the fastest growing religion in Utah and parts of Idaho.

I think this claim was made in the mid-90s when it was possible TSCC was in fact the fastest growing Christian sect -- likely due to the high baptism rate in South America AND based on the Church's exaggerated reported number. Now, the growth rate has slowed considerably and that claim is no longer valid.

How about some simple math?

One billion Catholics, and close to that many Muslims. Even if one took the LDS concocted and manipulated number of 14 million, birth rates alone in those other religions would dwarf any LDS claims.

If you can find the numbers the mormon is claiming, you can compare them to this page:

http://fastestgrowingreligion.com/numbers.html

Fastest growing in America? No, it is Islam. Evangelical Christian is up there, too.

Fastest growing in the world? What about the Far Eastern religions.

Fastest growing in South America is Catholicism.

Fastest growing in Utah, maybe compared to the other religions, because of newborn BIC babies--but I see it shrinking in the neighborhoods in the SLC suburbs.

I wonder how fast-growing Atheism is. Or agnosticism. These people are not "organized" and don't keep any records at all.

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_2890645

"According to LDS-published statistics, the annual number of LDS converts declined from a high of 321,385 in 1996 to 241,239 in 2004. In the 1990s, the church's growth rate went from 5 percent a year to 3 percent.


"By comparison, the Seventh-day Adventist Church reports it has added more than 900,000 adult converts each year since 2000 (an average growth of about 5 percent), bringing the total membership to 14.3 million. The Assemblies of God now claims more than 50 million members worldwide, adding 10,000 new members every day.


""It is a matter of grave concern that the areas with the most rapid numerical membership increase, Latin America and the Philippines, are also the areas with extremely low convert retention," says Stewart, a California physician. "Many other groups, including the Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses, have consistently achieved excellent convert retention rates in those cultures and societies. Latter-day Saints lose 70 to 80 percent of their converts, while Adventists retain 70 to 80 percent of theirs."



also, how about this from the only people that know for sure what the conversion and retention numbers are:

" The Church makes no statistical comparisons with other churches and makes no claim to be the fastest-growing Christian denomination despite frequent news media comments to that effect. Such comparisons rarely take account of a multiplicity of complex factors, including activity rates and death rates, the methodology used in registering or counting members and what factors constitute membership."

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/topic/church-growth

Well I was going to say that you could just compare Mormon growth rate to my religion's growth rate. I just made it up yesterday, and I have converted all 3 of my room mates making that what, a growth rate of 300% per year so far??

The very claim to being the "fastest growing religion in the world" is meaningless anyway.

xkcd did a great one on this:

http://xkcd.com/1102/



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/17/2013 04:52PM by doubtisavirtue.

Thank you all for your input and links

:-)

The only way that claim makes any sense at all is if referring to percentage growth per year. In terms of just raw numerical growth, Islam trumps Mormonism by a country mile, with 22 million annual growth in the estimate I saw on Wikipedia a while ago.

LDS Inc won't provide a count of active members or average attendance per week, though they have both pieces of information. The only realistic data they give out is the number of congregations and stakes/districts they have.

Number of congregations has been going up at a bit over 1% a year. I would consider that a best case for how fast the LDS church is growing. And the world population growth rate is, wait for it, ........ 1.1% per year. IOW LDS Inc is just treading water, neither appreciably growing or shrinking as a percentage of world population.

That assumes congregations are always the same average size from year to year. I believe the average size of LDS congregations is slowly shrinking.

LDS Inc had a good run of growth back in the 1970s, but there are two very important things to note. First, the entire world population was growing like gangbusters in the 1970s. It has slowed dramatically since then. Second, the 1970s ended a third of a century ago. At some point bragging about past growth as if it were still going on must switch from just being embarrassing, to being downright deceptive.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/17/2013 05:11PM by Brother Of Jerry.

IIRC, the way this story started was that a few years ago, a group collected self-reported membership numbers. The church gave them numbers from 1990, but these numbers were used as though they were from 2000. The result was what looked like a 40% increase.

This error was caught by looking at census records, which didn't match the self-reported numbers. (The LDS church claims four times as many members in Brazil as those who self-identifying as members.)

Another point:

Mormon membership is kept in a database. Each member in that database likey has a field identifying their membership status. I'll wager that even those of us who resign are still counted as total members. I suspect my unbaptized, but BIC & blessed children are also counted. "Members" who have died, but whose death hasn't been recorded in the database, are also probably counted.

Perhaps even the higher ups don't know the real activity rate. From other posts it appears the wards pad the body count every Sunday.

I am disappointed this information isn't perceived as readily available. I have produced several references on RfM to challenge this claim.

You searched and couldn't find them?

I think secularism is growing faster than any religion.