The Mormon Church is shrinking in membership, at least in the United States. About 50% of people raised Mormon leave the Church later in life. And most of these become "religiously unaffiliated" (perhaps atheists?) rather than joining some other Christian Church.
Below, I also reproduce the two most interesting critical comments to the video above.
It struck me that the Mormons could still "save the day" by mass immigration to the United States (perhaps Utah) from other parts of the world, where their Church is still growing...
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LucasGuerreiro says:
This post is a perfect example of how legitimate research can be used to promote a misleading narrative. First, the Pew Research Center study examined religious retention in the United States, not worldwide. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a global religion, and American trends cannot automatically be applied to millions of members living across the world. Second, while the decline in retention from 70% to 54% is real, the claim about young women is misleading. Pew found no statistically significant difference between younger women (49%) and younger men (54%) in retention rates. Third, the study does not establish that Church teachings on sexuality, gender roles, finances, or Republican politics caused people to leave. These are the author’s personal interpretations, not scientific conclusions supported by the research. Correlation is not causation. Now, let’s look at the bigger picture. According to the Church’s latest official statistical report, released in April 2026, worldwide membership reached 17,887,212 at the end of 2025, an increase of 377,431 members (2.16%) in just one year. The Church also reported 385,490 convert baptisms in 2025, almost 25% more than in 2024. Worldwide congregations increased to 32,046. And here’s another finding from the same Pew study that this post conveniently ignores: 69% of American Latter-day Saints report attending religious services at least weekly, compared with just 25% of American adults overall. Of course, increasing membership does not eliminate legitimate concerns about retention, and official membership totals are not the same as active attendance. Every person who leaves deserves to be heard and treated with respect. But acknowledging challenges is very different from portraying a worldwide, growing religious community as a failing institution. The Church is not defined by American political divisions, and its mission is not to represent Republicans, Democrats, or any political ideology. Its mission is to invite all people, everywhere, to come unto Jesus Christ. We should welcome serious research. But we should also distinguish scientific evidence from ideological commentary.
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andrewsuryali8540 says:
Don't wanna rain on everyone's parade, but let's just say that the LDS is rich enough to be able to commission a more detailed and focused study on their own people, and depending on how Monson wants to treat Nelson's legacy, this might come out in the next several months as either leaks or actual publications... Anyway, what looks to be the case isn't that LDS members are becoming more open to liberal ideas. In many cases it may be the opposite. See, in 2018 Nelson tried to rebrand the LDS to try to make it look more "Christian non-denominational", at least in the way he understood it. He also allowed the loosening of some of the purity laws in trying to make the LDS look "less weird". The problem is that this was done almost immediately in the wake of a massive WILDLY POPULAR multibillion-dollar "proud to be Mormon" campaign where the church asked its members to double down on their Mormon identity. Then starting in 2020 there was an acceleration in the rate of members leaving. The main reason behind this isn't Mormons becoming more liberal-progressive and getting disenchanted by their church's conservativeness. The rate of more progressive youngsters leaving didn't really change. What changed was that more of the older generation and the LESS progressive young women started leaving in droves. The main culprit among the older generation is "loss of distinctiveness". These are people who have invested decades of their lives on being Mormons, who had just recently been "rewarded" by their church with a confirmation of their efforts and a public doubling-down of their identity. Then suddenly they were told to pretend they were regular Christians and asked to try to blend in with the very people who had rejected and tried to marginalize them all their lives. For many that was the last straw. The younger, more conservative women also have a similar complaint. They had also invested their lives into upholding the purity culture, had been rewarded, then had their lifelong effort annulled by Nelson. If you're a Mormon girl who had felt vindicated by not having piercings in 2018, then you'd feel utterly betrayed in 2025 when the leadership said it's OK for boys to date girls with piercings. So it isn't that the Mormons are becoming more open to liberal ideas and leaving because of that. Rather, it's Nelson's misguided effort to "normalize" the LDS within Christianity that's alienating the most hardcore Mormons and making them leave. It's actually really strange that he still made that mistake after seeing the example of the RLDS as they shed more than 60% of their members while transitioning into becoming the Community of Christ.
