Rethinking the International Expansion of Mormonism

Rethinking the International Expansion of MormonismAuthor(s): Rick PhillipsSource: Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 10, No. 1(August 2006), pp. 52-68Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/nr.2006.10.1.52 .

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Rethinking the InternationalExpansion of Mormonism

Rick Phillips

ABSTRACT: The rapid international expansion of the Church of JesusChrist of Latter-day Saints—the LDS, or Mormon Church—promptssome sociologists to claim that Mormonism is an incipient world reli-gion. This expansion also serves as the basis for several sociological the-ories of church growth. However, these observations and theories relyon an uncritical acceptance of the LDS Church’s membership statistics.This article uses census data from nations around the world to arguethat Mormon Church membership claims are inflated. I argue thatMormonism is a North American church with tendrils in other conti-nents, and that calling Mormonism a “world religion” is premature.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the LDS, orMormon Church—is a burgeoning international Christian faith.LDS Church statistics report that membership has doubled since

1985 and currently stands at almost 12 million. Most of this growth hasbeen outside the United States, and in the late 1990s the church’s inter-national membership outstripped its United States base. Such rapidinternational expansion prompts some scholars to claim that Mormonismis an incipient world religion—a distinct branch of Christianity separatefrom Protestantism and Catholicism.1 However, others question theaccuracy of LDS membership statistics. They argue that the actualnumber of self-proclaimed Mormons is substantially less than thechurch’s published totals.2 This article investigates this concern bycomparing LDS membership statistics with census counts of Mormonsfrom several nations around the globe. I use discrepancies betweenthese enumerations to argue that LDS Church membership claimsare substantially inflated. Based on this evidence, I conclude thatMormonism is best described as a North American church with

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Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Volume 10, Issue 1, pages52–68, ISSN 1092-6690 (print), 1541-8480 (electronic). © 2006 by The Regents of theUniversity of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permissionto photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of CaliforniaPress’s Rights and Permissions website, at www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

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contingents in other continents, and that calling Mormonism a nascent“world religion” is premature.

THE MECHANICS OF MORMON GROWTH

Mormon growth is fueled by a volunteer army of over 50,000 full-time missionaries. LDS leaders teach that no one can achieve truesalvation without being baptized by Mormon authority. This makes evan-gelism a vital concern. In recent decades, however, the Mormons’ questfor converts has acquired new meaning. The church now uses its rapidgrowth as evidence of the legitimacy and efficacy of church doctrinesand programs—both for members of the church and for the largerpublic. Lowell C. Bennion and Lawrence Young observe: “More thanever before, the LDS Church seems to measure its milestones in termsof numbers.”3 Rapid growth is offered as an objective measure ofMormonism’s global appeal, and is an important feature of the church’spublic relations strategy.4 In short, growth has become an end untoitself for the LDS Church.

Some scholars of Mormonism suspect that the reality of Mormongrowth does not conform to the church’s public pronouncements. Theyassert that until very recently, the LDS missionary program was driven bythe need for expansive growth, and used tactics that emphasized quickconversion, while neglecting the needs of new converts once theyjoined. This resulted in large numbers of convert baptisms, but lowrates of convert retention in many parts of the world. The churchemployed this missionizing strategy for almost 40 years.

For instance, in the 1960s the church began using its sports andrecreation programs to find and convert adolescents in Europe.Missionaries scoured cities and towns looking for youths who were inter-ested in baseball. Once found, they were invited out for a game and to lis-ten to a message about Mormonism.5 The result was that thousands ofyoung people throughout Europe were taken to LDS chapels and toldthat before they could play ball they would have to be baptized. D.Michael Quinn writes: “With little or no gospel instruction, pre-adolescentand teenage boys were joining the church by the tens of thousands”—sometimes without their parents’ knowledge.6 Not surprisingly, only afraction of these youths remained active in the church. Nevertheless,Henry Moyle, a ranking member of the LDS hierarchy and the chiefproponent of these programs, dismissed concerns about retention byasking rhetorically, “Is it better to baptize a hundred and retain fifty orto baptize six hundred and retain a hundred?”7

F. Lamond Tullis describes similar incidents of mass baptism inMexico during the 1970s. He notes that many new converts “dropped outbecause of the circumstances under which they were baptized.”8 Otheraccounts from disparate locales tell comparable tales.9 Recent Mormon

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missionizing has been more restrained, but many of these problems per-sist. Stewart claims that many new converts to Mormonism quickly lapseinto inactivity, and holds that “low short-term retention rates can be mostreliably traced to LDS missionary practices”10 Wilfried Decoo asserts: “Inour preoccupation with sheer numbers we have often baptized peopleprematurely in the expectation that some spiritual form of ‘natural selec-tion’ would eventually separate the weak from the strong.”11 Problemswith convert retention are manifest throughout the church, includingrecently opened missions in former Soviet bloc states. Decoo continues:

[Mormons] are fond of telling stories of “miraculous conversions” in ex-communist countries and citing remarkable figures. These accounts,however, contrast with what I have learned from personal visits with well-informed sources in those countries: Some [congregations] that oncehad a hundred or two hundred members have already collapsed to onlya dozen still active.12

Undoubtedly, some of these dubious converts have joined otherchurches or forsaken religion. Nevertheless, they are counted as mem-bers by the LDS Church until they die or they specifically ask to havetheir names expunged from church records.13 Those whose where-abouts are unknown remain on church rolls until their 110th birth-days.14 In short, the church meticulously counts those who join, but doesnot attend to those who leave.15 This policy ultimately leads to large dis-crepancies between the number of members claimed by the churchand the number of self-identified Mormons in many parts of the world.

CHURCH STATISTICS VS. CENSUS TALLIES

The discrepancy between LDS membership totals and the number ofself-identified Mormons can be accurately determined for six nations:Australia, Austria, Canada, Chile, Mexico and New Zealand. Thesenations all specifically count Mormons in their censuses.16 This facili-tates straightforward comparisons between church membership figuresand official census data, which serves as a good measure of convertretention for each of these nations.

Australia. At the close of 2001 the LDS Church claimed 102,773members in Australia.17 However, the 2001 census of Australiareports only 48,775 self-identified Latter-day Saints.18 Thus, only47.5 percent of the Australians on LDS Church rolls actuallyclaim to be Mormons.19

Austria. At the close of 2001, the LDS Church claimed 3,919members in Austria,20 but the 2001 Austrian census reports just

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2,236 self-identified Latter-day Saints.21 Thus, only 57.1 percentof the Austrians on LDS Church rolls claim to be Mormons.

Canada. At the close of 2001 the LDS Church reported 160,743Canadian members.22 However, the 2001 census of Canada tallies93,890 Latter-day Saints.23 Thus, just 58.4 percent of theCanadian members claimed by the church actually profess to beMormons. This discrepancy is smaller in Alberta.24 In the latenineteenth century, Mormon pioneers founded colonies inAlberta that persist to this day.25 Mormons living in and aroundthese sites are largely born in the faith and descend from theseoriginal pioneers.26 This implies that Canadians who join theLDS Church through missionary outreach are even less likely tobe self-identified Mormons than the national mean suggests.

Chile. The 2002 Chilean census records 103,735 Mormons age fif-teen and over.27 Chile’s decennial census does not record the reli-gious affiliation of children under fifteen. However, affiliatedchildren under fifteen are included in LDS membership totals.28

Thus, in order to make church figures comparable with Chileancensus data, the number of Chilean Mormons under fifteen mustbe estimated and added to the census. Fortunately, available dataallow a reasonable estimate of how many such children thereare. LDS demographer Tim Heaton reports that South Americancountries average about 17.5 Mormon children aged 0-11 per100 LDS adults, and about 43 Mormon teens aged 12–18 per 100LDS adults.29 If half of those between twelve and eighteen areunder fifteen, then 39 per 100, or 40,457 Chileans aged zero tofourteen should be counted as members. This raises the total to144,192 self-identified Chilean Mormons and their affiliated chil-dren. This is probably a liberal estimate because the percentageof all Chileans under the age of fifteen (26.4 percent) is less thanthe mean for South America (30.5 percent).30

In 2002 the LDS Church claimed 527,972 members in Chile.31

This means that only about 27.3 percent of the Chilean membersclaimed by the LDS Church are self-identified Mormons. Suchwide discrepancies are found not only in Chile, but in Mexicoas well.

Mexico. According to church statistics, Mexico has the world’ssecond largest Mormon population, trailing only the UnitedStates. The church boasted 882,953 Mexican members in 2000,32

but in that same year the Mexican census counted a mere 205,229Latter-day Saints.33 This means that the number of self-professedMormons in Mexico is only about 23.2 percent of the numberclaimed by the church.


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New Zealand. At the close of 2001 the LDS Church claimed91,373 members in New Zealand.34 However, the 2001 census ofNew Zealand reports only 39,915 Latter-day Saints.35 Thus, only43.7 percent of the members claimed by the church in NewZealand identified themselves as Mormons on census forms.

Taken collectively, the gap between LDS Church membership claimsand the number of self-identified Mormons in these six nations aloneamounts to just under 1.2 million persons—over 10 percent of thechurch’s total membership at the time these censuses were taken.Certainly similar discrepancies exist in other nations, but can they beestimated in countries lacking comparable census reports? The follow-ing analysis addresses this question by correlating convert retentionrates for these six nations with measures of LDS Church growth andvitality for various regions of the globe.

GROWTH RATES AND CONVERT RETENTION

Earlier I argued that proselytizing strategies emphasizing quick con-version are partly to blame for the LDS Church’s problems with convertretention. If this argument holds, retention rates will be lowest in placeswhere these strategies produce the most converts. Several Mormonscholars have identified other reasons why rapid growth via conversioninhibits convert retention. For instance, rapid growth in some parts ofthe church creates a leadership shortage that prevents converts fromintegrating into their new congregations. Mormonism employs a layclergy, and congregations staff their programs with volunteer members.Some of these jobs—or “callings”—require a degree of familiarity withthe procedures and doctrines of the church that takes time to acquire.Important leadership callings are limited to men who are ordained toMormonism’s lay priesthood, and in order for congregations to bestaffed fully, a sufficient number of priesthood holders is necessary. Inrapid growth areas, new converts are often added so quickly that notenough experienced men are available to fill these roles. This leads toincompetent leadership, understaffed programs, and attrition.36 Sexratios in most regions of the church exacerbate these problems. Forinstance, there are many more female than male converts in LatinAmerica, and hence a smaller proportion of the membership base is eli-gible for important lay clergy callings.37 Thus, it stands to reason thatnations with high rates of LDS growth will have low rates of convertretention.

The scatterplot in Figure 1 investigates this hypothesis for the sixnations profiled above, and displays the correlation between retentionrates and five-year growth rates, measured by the percent increase in

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membership for the five years preceding each nation’s census enumera-tion.38 This five-year interval is ideal, because studies show that mostMormon converts who defect do so within five years of baptism.39

Growth rates range from a high of 17.5 percent for Mexico to a lowof .5 percent for Austria. Figure 1 shows a statistically significant nega-tive correlation between retention and growth, with retention ratesfalling as growth rates rise (r = .82, p < .05). Thus, for these six nations,rapid growth attends low convert retention. Moreover, these nationsaccurately reflect trends in Mormon growth for the various regions ofthe globe they represent. Latin America has very high growth rates,while membership in Western Europe is stagnant. North America andthe South Pacific (including Australia and New Zealand) fall betweenthese extremes.40 It is therefore likely that nations with similar growthrates have comparable rates of convert retention. In the following sec-tion, I show how regional patterns in Mormon religious participationbolster this conclusion.

RELIGIOUS PARTICIPATION AND CONVERT RETENTION

Like growth rates, levels of Mormon religious participation vary widelyacross different regions of the globe. It stands to reason that regions withlow rates of participation will also exhibit low rates of convert retention,


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since eventual apostasy is a logical consequence of sustained inactivity.Indicators of international Mormon religious participation are not as cur-rent or precise as measures of growth. The LDS Church does not publishthis kind of information, and useable figures must be gleaned from thepapers of Mormon social scientists with privileged access to the church’sproprietary data. Nevertheless, three published sources report regionalvariations in religious participation with enough detail to inform thisanalysis. If retention rates in the six nations profiled above are indicativeof retention in the regions they represent, then the limited evidence sug-gests that areas with low levels of religious participation do indeed havelow rates of convert retention.41

In the first source, Bennion and Young compute the percentage ofadult Mormon males ever ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood forvarious regions of the globe.42 The Melchizedek priesthood is the high-est order in Mormonism’s lay priesthood, and ordination is reserved formen who adhere strictly to Mormonism’s lifestyle demands. For thisreason, Melchizedek priesthood ordination is a good measure ofMormon religious participation.43 This rate also measures the size of thepotential leadership pool, since Melchizedek priesthood ordination is aprerequisite for most high-ranking lay clergy callings. Bennion andYoung find that 52 percent of eligible men in Canada are ordained tothe Melchizedek priesthood, followed by 35 percent for the SouthPacific region (which includes Australia and New Zealand), 34 percentfor Western Europe (including Austria), 25 percent for South America(including Chile), and just 19 percent for Mexico.44 Overall, this is con-sistent with the idea that places with low levels of religious participationalso have low rates of convert retention. (See Figure 2 in the Appendix.)

The next published source provides the percentage of Mormon cou-ples that are married in the temple. LDS temples are special buildingsset aside for Mormonism’s most sacred rites, including marriage.Married converts in civil unions are expected to have their marriages“sealed” in the temple once they are established in the faith. Those whoare single and plan to marry are also expected to marry in the temple.According to Mormon theology, temple marriage is essential for com-plete salvation.45 Access to the temple is limited to those Mormons whoconform to the church’s lifestyle mandates. Hence, higher temple mar-riage rates are indicative of greater levels of religious participation.Heaton reports that approximately 51 percent of married Mormonadults in Canada are married in the temple, followed by about 36 per-cent for the South Pacific region, 31 percent for Europe, 10 percent forMexico and Central America, and 8 percent for South America.46 Thisis similar to the pattern observed with Melchizedek priesthood ordina-tion, and supports the claim that rates of Mormon religious participa-tion and convert retention tend to rise and fall together. (See Figure 3in the Appendix.)

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Finally, with respect to church attendance, Heaton writes:“Attendance at [church services] varies substantially. Asia and LatinAmerica have weekly attendance rates of about 25 percent, Europe aver-ages 35 percent and Africa, Canada, the South Pacific, and the UnitedStates average between 40 and 50 percent.”47

Limitations in the Data

These measures of religious participation are not ideal, primarilybecause they are not current. The LDS Church has not published countsof Melchizedek priesthood holders since the 1980s, and Heaton’s figuresare from work published in the 1990s. Beyond this, Melchizedek priest-hood ordination rates do not measure women’s religious activity, andskewed sex ratios in some parts of the world preclude some highly reli-gious women from finding Mormon mates—a prerequisite for templemarriage. Finally, before new converts are invited to receive theMelchizedek priesthood or attend the temple, they must first demon-strate their commitment to the faith during a short probationary period.This means that in areas with very rapid LDS growth, a smaller percent-age of active Mormons are eligible for priesthood ordination and templeattendance than in slow growth areas. Nevertheless, these data are quiteliterally the only available indicators of regional variation in Mormon reli-gious participation, and it is important to note that in spite of their lim-itations, they all point to the same conclusion: regions with low rates ofreligious participation also have low rates of convert retention.

Omissions and Anomalies

Unfortunately, there are no enumerations of the self-identifiedMormon population for any of the nations of Asia or Africa, so convertretention rates cannot be computed for these regions. With respect toAsia, religious participation rates and first-hand accounts suggest that theLDS Church has trouble retaining converts there. Numano describes sig-nificant retention problems in Japan, and attributes these to high-pres-sure missionary tactics akin to those described above.48 A news storyfrom Brigham Young University’s NewsNet describes the situation in thePhilippines thusly: “Out of the 49,000 [Filipino] converts who joined thechurch in 2001 and 2002, only 1000 remain active.”49 Church atten-dance and temple marriage rates in Asia are on a par with Latin America,and Melchizedek priesthood ordination rates are even lower.50 Japanand the Philippines account for almost 80 percent of the church’s Asianmembership, and the Philippines alone account for nearly two-thirds.

On the other hand, Africa is an anomalous case. LDS growth inAfrica is brisk, and African Mormons have high levels of religious par-ticipation. In addition, the church’s ability to staff lay clergy callings in


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African congregations is enhanced by the fact that male converts out-number females in this region.51 These participation rates and sex ratiosare correlates of convert retention. Hence, Africa may countermand therule that rapid LDS growth attends low retention rates. Nevertheless,high growth rates in Africa are partly explained by the small baselineMormon population. The church did not begin formal missionary oper-ations in many African nations until the 1980s or 1990s.52 Africa holdsonly 1.6 percent of all Mormons, and in 2003 the church claimed moremembers in Guatemala (188,531) than on the entire African continent(182,412).53

DISCUSSION

Regional variations in LDS convert retention rates have implicationsfor the claim that Mormonism is an incipient world religion, ratherthan a predominantly North American church with tendrils in othercontinents. At the present time, just under half of the Mormons onchurch rolls reside in North America, but the foregoing analysis suggeststhat this continent still holds a substantial majority of self-identified Latter-day Saints. Canada has the highest convert retention rate of the sixnations profiled above, and Darren E. Sherkat’s study of religious switch-ing in the United States—based on a representative national sample—finds that the LDS Church retains a large percentage of its Americanmembers.54 Studies also show that North American Mormons havehigher levels of religious participation than Mormons elsewhere, astrong correlate of convert retention.55 These facts, combined withexpansive LDS growth in Latin America, prompt Armand Mauss to writethat Mormonism is not yet a “world religion,” but rather a “westernhemisphere phenomenon.”56 A closer look at Mormonism in LatinAmerica may temper even this conclusion.

Latin America

LDS growth rates in Latin America are uniformly high. Scholars usethis growth to speculate about the future complexion and character ofMormonism.57 Comparing LDS growth in Latin America with growth inEurope illustrates the significance of this trend. For example, in 1970,5.6 percent of all Mormons lived in Europe. Today the figure stands atjust 3.7 percent. Bennion and Young project that this decline will per-sist, and by 2020 Europe will account for only 1.3 percent of Latter-daySaints.58 By contrast, in 1970 about 5 percent of all Mormons lived inLatin America. Today the figure stands at almost 40 percent. Independentobservers estimate that by 2020, between half and two-thirds of all

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Latter-day Saints on church rolls will live in Latin America.59 But con-clusions about the future of Mormonism using these projections musttake into account the disparity between LDS membership claims and thenumber of self-identified Latter-day Saints in Latin American nations.Recall that rapid growth is correlated with convert retention prob-lems. Latin America also has very low religious participation rates—another correlate of poor retention. Finally, some observers reportthat missionary tactics stressing conversion over retention have beenused extensively throughout Latin America.60 Retention problems areclearly evident in Chile and Mexico, and these nations are probablynot outliers.

Aside from inferences drawn from Latin American growth and reli-gious participation rates, retention problems in this region can be exam-ined by comparing the rate of membership growth to the rate of ward andstake formation. Mormonism has a parish system, and congregations—called wards—have specific geographic boundaries. The programs andauxiliaries of each ward are staffed by its members, and the congrega-tion is structured so that everyone can have a calling. Whenever thereare more willing members than callings for them to occupy, wards aresplit into two.61 This keeps congregations both busy and intimate. A typ-ical ward has about 500 members on its roster. All things being equal,wards with a high percentage of active members will have fewer mem-bers than this, while wards with many inactive members will have more.Sometimes attrition or inactivity makes it impossible to fill critical call-ings within a ward. When this happens, two wards are consolidated intoone to ensure a full complement of services.62

Groups of about seven or eight contiguous wards are clustered intoadministrative units called “stakes,” which are roughly analogous toCatholic dioceses. Like the wards that comprise them, stakes split andconsolidate depending on church growth and vitality. All things beingequal, regions with frequently splitting stakes are more vital than areaswhere stakes are eliminated through consolidation. Stewart explains:

Of all of the basic indicators used to describe church growth—convertbaptisms, total members, units, stakes, etc.—the number of stakes is theonly indicator with any obligatory relationship to actual member par-ticipation or activity. Baptized converts may fall away and branches canbe formed with only a handful of participating members, but stakes can-not be formed without a requisite number of active MelchizedekPriesthood holders.63

If Stewart is correct, then comparing trends in membership growth withrates of stake formation in Latin America reveals the depth ofMormonism’s leadership shortage and convert retention problems inthis region.


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For instance, official church statistics report that in the two-yearinterval between 2000 and 2002—the years relevant to the census dataused above—Argentina added one stake and 19,500 new members.Venezuela also gained one stake and 16,320 members. Church-wide,however, the average number of members per stake is 4,370. In theUnited States there are only about 4,000 members per stake. Thus, basedon the church-wide mean, Venezuela added over three stakes’ worth ofmembers for its one new stake, and Argentina added the equivalent offour stakes’ worth of members for its new stake. In this same two-yearspan, neither Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala or Honduras added a singlenew stake, but between them they added 38,185 (or almost nine stakes’worth) of new members. Colombia lost a stake through consolidation—going from 23 to 22—but added 6,385 members. Peru lost a stake aswell, but managed to add 19,731 new members. Finally, Brazil lost threestakes and a total of 190 congregations (88 wards and 102 branches)through consolidation between 2000 and 2002, yet added almost 66,000new members—going from 743,182 to 808,940. The only explanationfor the countervailing pattern of stake consolidation and membershipgrowth in these nations is that rates of convert retention in Latin Americaare extraordinarily low.64

CONCLUSION

Based on his analysis of LDS membership statistics, Rodney Starkdeclares: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will soonachieve a worldwide following comparable to that of Islam, Buddhism,Christianity, Hinduism, and the other dominant world faiths,” and thatexamining Mormonism in the twentieth century allows social scientiststo witness “that incredible rare event: the rise of a new world religion.”65

Stark expresses his confidence in the church’s membership statistics, say-ing, “These are the only denominational statistics I know of that are sub-ject to audit”66 and “these are very accurate data.”67 I conclude, however,that their accuracy depends on what one thinks they measure. Certainlyeach person on LDS Church rolls was baptized and confirmed a mem-ber of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is how thechurch defines membership, and so in this sense the numbers are accu-rate. But the church’s long history of dubious missionary tactics, a publicrelations strategy that highlights expansive growth, and the fact thatdefectors are never removed from church rolls unless they specifically askin writing beg the questions of just how social scientists should define whois or is not a Mormon, and how we should think about the significanceof Mormonism’s international expansion.

It is important to note that in the past few years the LDS Church hasbegun altering its missionary strategy. The dearth of potential leaders in

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certain areas of the church has become so critical that many congrega-tions are collapsing.68 The church has responded by making changesthat recognize the importance of convert retention. For example, thechurch now requires that newly baptized converts wait until the follow-ing fast Sunday69 before they are officially confirmed as members of thechurch. Previously the ordinance of confirmation was performed imme-diately after baptism. Those who are baptized but not confirmed arenow dropped from the rolls after one year. This weeds out many nomi-nal members who would otherwise encumber church rosters. The con-sequences of this and other similar measures can be seen in the church’slatest statistical report. In 2003 there were 242,923 new converts toMormonism. This is the lowest number of new converts since 1987,when 227,284 were added. Moreover, the 2003 number was achievedthrough the labor of 56,237 missionaries, compared to just 35,806 in1987.70 These contrasting figures may provide insight into how manyMormon converts in previous years never took root. But they do notaddress the fact that defection from the church remains common forseveral years after joining, or that those who left shortly after baptismjust a few years ago will probably be counted as members at least untiltheir deaths.71

In sum, while limitations in the data temper the strength of my con-clusions, I assert that the available evidence shows that the LDS Church’smembership claims are greatly inflated. Because of this, it is too early totell if Mormonism will emerge as a new world religion.

APPENDIX

The scatterplot in Figure 2 displays a statistically significant positiverelationship between regional rates of Melchizedek priesthood ordina-tion (as computed by Bennion and Young),72 and convert retentionrates in the nation(s) representing each region (r=.97, p <.01). Canada,the highest among the six in convert retention, also enjoys the highestordination rates. By contrast, Mexico and Chile (representing LatinAmerica) have low rates of retention. This corresponds with low ordi-nation rates in Latin American nations generally. Austria and Australia/New Zealand, representing the Europe and South Pacific regionsrespectively, rank in the middle.

A similar pattern is observed in Figure 3. This scatterplot displays astatistically significant positive relationship between regional templemarriage rates and convert retention (r = .91, p < .05). Once again,Canada has high levels of convert retention and temple marriage, whilethe Latin American countries fare poorly on both measures.


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ENDNOTES

1 Rodney Stark, “The Rise of a New World Faith” in Latter-day Saint Social Life:Social Research on the LDS Church and Its Members, ed. James T. Duke (Provo Ut.:Religious Studies Center and Brigham Young University Press, 1998), 9–27; JanShipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University ofIllinois Press, 1985), 131–49.2 David Clark Knowlton, “How Many Members Are There Really? Two Censusesand the Meaning of LDS Membership in Mexico and Chile,” paper presentedat the 2003 Sunstone Symposium, Salt Lake City, Utah, August 2003; RogerLoomis, “Rolling to the Ends of the Earth: Measuring LDS Church Growth,”paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study ofReligion, Chicago, November 2002; Marjorie Newton, “Towards 2000: Mor-monism in Australia,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 29, no. 1 (1996):193–206; Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman, One Nation Under God: Reli-gion in Contemporary America (New York: Harmony Books, 1993), 298.3 Lowell C. Bennion and Lawrence Young, “The Uncertain Dynamics of LDSExpansion, 1950–2020,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 29, no. 1 (1996): 8.4 Rodney Stark, “Extracting Social Scientific Models from Mormon History,”Journal of Mormon History 25, no. 1 (1999): 176. See also Coke Newell, Latter Days:A Guided Tour through Six Billion Years of Mormonism (New York: St. Martin’s Press,2000), 223–24, 227.5 Derek A. Cuthbert, The Second Century: Latter-day Saints in Great Britain(Cambridge: Derek A. Cuthbert, 1987), 52–53.6 D. Michael Quinn, “I-Thou vs. I-It Conversions: The Mormon ‘Baseball Baptism’Era.” Sunstone 16, no. 7 (1993): 34.7 Richard D. Poll, Working the Divine Miracle: The Life of Apostle Henry D. Moyle (SaltLake City: Signature Books, 1999), 209.8 F. Lamond Tullis, Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture (Logan,Ut.: Utah State University Press, 1987), 206.9 See Henri Gooren, “The Dynamics of LDS Growth in Guatemala, 1948–1998,”Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 34, no. 3–4 (2001): 55–75; Jiro Numano,“Mormonism in Modern Japan” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 29, no. 1(1996): 223–35; Newton, “Towards 2000,” 193–206.10 David Stewart, “LDS Church Growth Today,” at <http://www.cumorah.com/report.html>, accessed 26 August 2004.11 Wilfried Decoo, “Feeding the Flock: Reflections on the Struggle to RetainChurch Members in Europe,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 29, no. 1(1996): 112.12 Decoo, “Feeding the Flock,” 110.13 A “fraction of one percent” of those who leave are formally excommunicatedfrom the church for serious transgressions. See Bennion and Young, “UncertainDynamics,” 10.14 Church Handbook of Instructions, Book I: Stake Presidencies and Bishoprics (Salt LakeCity: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1998). This is a privatemanual for Mormon ecclesiastical leaders. See also Stewart, “LDS ChurchGrowth Today.”


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15 Kosmin and Lachman, One Nation Under God, 298.16 Other nations enumerate religion in their censuses, but do not specificallyrecord members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.17 Deseret News 2003 Church Almanac (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 2002), 280.Hereafter the LDS Church’s biennial almanacs will be cited by date and theshort reference, Church Almanac.18 These data are from the 2001 Census of Population and Housing, availablefrom the Australian Bureau of Statistics, at <http://www.abs.gov.au/>.19 See also Newton, “Towards 2000,” 194.20 2003 Church Almanac, 283.21 These data are from Volkszählung 2001, available from Statistik Austria, at<http://www.statistik.at/index_englisch.shtml>.22 2003 Church Almanac, 298.23 These data are from the 2001 Census of Canada, available from StatisticsCanada, at <http://www.statcan.ca/>.24 Rick Phillips, “A New World Faith? Tempering Claims of Mormon ChurchGrowth,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for theSociology of Religion, Atlanta, August 2003.25 Brigham Y. Card, “Charles Ora Card and the Founding of the Mormon Settle-ments in Southwestern Alberta, North-West Territories,” in The Mormon Pres-ence in Canada, ed. Brigham Y. Card, Herbert C. Northcott, John E. Foster, HowardPalmer and George K. Jarvis (Logan, Ut.: Utah State University Press, 1990), 77–107.26 Lynn A. Rosenvall, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Alberta:A Historical and Geographical Perspective,” in Regional Studies in LDS ChurchHistory: Western Canada, ed. Dennis Wright, Robert C. Freeman, Andrew H. Hedgesand Matthew O. Richardson (Provo, Ut.: Department of Church History andDoctrine, Brigham Young University, 2000), 1–12.27 These data are from the Censo de Población y Censo de Vivienda 2002, avail-able from Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas, at <http://www.ine.cl/ine/canales/chile_estadistico/home.php>.28 Mormon policy holds that young children are not actual members of thechurch until they are baptized and confirmed—rites that take place around ageeight. See Bruce R. McKonkie, Mormon Doctrine (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1979),852–53. Nevertheless, “children of record” who have not yet been baptized arecounted as full members of the church in LDS membership statistics.29 Tim B. Heaton, “Vital Statistics,” in Duke, Latter-day Saint Social Life, 121.30 Figures from the CIA World Factbook, at <http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html>, accessed 26 August 2004.31 2004 Church Almanac, 291.32 This number is the average of the 1999 and 2001 membership totals forMexico taken from the 2001–2002 Church Almanac, 359, and the 2003 ChurchAlmanac, 369.33 These data are from the Censo General de Población y Vivienda 2000, avail-able from Sistemas Nacionales Estadístico y de Información Geográfica,<http://www.inegi.gob.mx/inegi/default.asp>.34 2003 Church Almanac, 382.

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35 These data are from the 2001 Census of Population and Dwellings, availablefrom Statistics New Zealand, at <http://www.stats.govt.nz/default.htm>.36 Gooren, “LDS Growth in Guatemala,” 55–75; David Clark Knowlton, “Mor-monism in Latin America: Towards the Twenty-first Century,” Dialogue: A Jour-nal of Mormon Thought 29, no. 1 (1996): 159–76; Decoo, “Feeding the Flock,”97–118; James T. Duke, “Latter-day Saints in a Secular World: What We HaveLearned about Latter-day Saints from Social Research,” annual Martin B. HickmanLecture sponsored by the College of Family, Home and Social Sciences, BrighamYoung University, 4 March 1999; Bennion and Young, “Uncertain Dynamics,”8–32; Tullis, Mormons in Mexico, 206–8.37 Heaton, “Vital Statistics,” 120.38 Growth rates are computed from data published in various biennial LDSChurch almanacs.39 Stan L. Albrecht, “The Consequential Dimension of Mormon Religiosity” inDuke, Latter-day Saint Social Life, 266.40 Bennion and Young, “Uncertain Dynamics,” 17–23.41 The exception of Africa will be dealt with later.42 Bennion and Young, “Uncertain Dynamics,” 19.43 Rick Phillips, “Religious Market Share and Mormon Church Activity,” Sociologyof Religion 59, no. 2 (1998): 122.44 Bennion and Young, “Uncertain Dynamics,” 19.45 McKonkie, Mormon Doctrine, 117–18.46 Heaton, “Vital Statistics,” 124.47 Heaton, “Vital Statistics,” 119.48 Numano, “Mormonism in Modern Japan,” 225.49 Veeda Ware, “Missionary Work in Philippines Emphasizes Convert Retentionand Member Reactivation,” BYU NewsNet, 3 September 2003, at <http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/45396>.50 Bennion and Young, “Uncertain Dynamics,” 19; Heaton, “Vital Statistics,”119, 124.51 Heaton, “Vital Statistics,” 120.52 2004 Church Almanac. Until 1978, the LDS Church did not allow men ofAfrican descent to hold the Mormon priesthood. Before this policy change, LDSmissionary outreach in Africa was concentrated on white South Africans.53 2004 Church Almanac, 146, 322.54 Darren E. Sherkat, “Tracking the Restructuring of American Religion: Reli-gious Affiliation and Patterns of Religious Mobility, 1973–1998,” Social Forces 79,no. 4 (2001): 1469.55 Lawrence A. Young, “Confronting Turbulent Environments: Issues in theOrganizational Growth and Globalization of Mormonism,” in ContemporaryMormonism: Social Science Perspectives, ed. Marie Cornwall, Tim B. Heaton, andLawrence A. Young (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 57–58.56 Armand L. Mauss, “Identity and Boundary Maintenance: InternationalProspects for Mormonism at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,” in MormonIdentities in Transition, ed. Douglas Davies (London: Cassell, 1996), 13.


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57 See Thomas W. Murphy, “Reinventing Mormonism: Guatemala as Harbingerof the Future?” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 29, no. 1 (1996): 177–92.58 Bennion and Young, “Uncertain Dynamics,” 20–21.59 Bennion and Young, “Uncertain Dynamics,” 20–21. See also Tad Walch, “LDSSurge in Latin America,” Deseret News, 21 March 2003.60 See Stewart, “LDS Church Growth Today”; Gooren, “LDS Growth in Guatemala”;Tullis, Mormons in Mexico; Gary Shepherd and Gordon Shepherd, MormonPassage: A Missionary Chronicle (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998).61 Sometimes two wards will be split into three.62 Sometimes three wards are condensed into two.63 Stewart, “LDS Church Growth Today.” “Branches” are fledgling congregationsthat are established in remote areas or places that are new to Mormon mis-sionizing. Branches are administered by the missionaries until there are enoughmembers to fill key leadership posts, at which time they become wards.64 All of these figures are taken from the LDS Church’s biennial almanacs.65 Stark, “Rise of a New World Faith,” 10.66 Rodney Stark, “So Far, So Good: A Brief Assessment of Mormon MembershipProjections,” Review of Religious Research 38, no. 2 (1996): 175.67 Rodney Stark, “The Basis of Mormon Success: A Theoretical Application.” inMormons and Mormonism: An Introduction to an American World Religion, ed. EricA. Eliason (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 208.68 Stewart, “LDS Church Growth Today”; Duke, “Latter-day Saints in a SecularWorld.”69 Mormons call the first Sunday of each month “fast Sunday.” Mormons skipbreakfast on fast Sundays and break their fast with bread and water communionduring worship services.70 The 2003 membership figures are listed in the 2005 Church Almanac, 6. The1987 figures are from the 1989–1990 Church Almanac, 6. 71 Albrecht, “Consequential Dimension of Mormon Religiosity,” 266.72 Bennion and Young, “Uncertain Dynamics,” 19.

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Rethinking the International Expansion of Mormonism

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