“They go to church, they fulfil congregational callings, they pay tithing, they socialize with believers and participate with family members in every aspect of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, except for one. These are Latter-day Saints who are, in the words of active Mormon and newspaper columnist Gordon Monson, “faking it.” He writes with incredulity, A substantial number of Latter-day Saints who stop believing in Mormonism nevertheless choose to remain members of the LDS church. Yet the membership statistics only tell part of the story. Some of this decline is due to a lack of success among proselytizing missionaries, and some is due to disillusioned members who are choosing to leave the LDS church. For example, The Cumorah Foundation, in its June 2022 newsletter 2, reported that an LDS church stake (i.e., an organizational grouping of congregations) was discontinued in the UK for the first time in history, attributing the closure to “stagnant membership growth rates combined with probable decreases in member activity in the area” – an LDS membership assessment that can be applied to many parts of the world. Journalist Andy Larsen at The Salt Lake Tribune, calls it an “LDS Church membership stagnation,” saying, “we’re in a Latter-day Saint ebb in America.” 1īut it’s not just America that is experiencing LDS church growth stagnation. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is experiencing a declining growth rate.
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