Is Mormonism dying?
When outsiders think of Utah, polygamy and pairs of freshly scrubbed young men with nametags often come to mind first, probably more often than gangs, breweries, Catholics, lesbian punk bands, and the NSA. Yet actual Mormons — people who truly believe in the doctrines and participate in the church — currently make up little more than 40 percent of the state’s populace. While the church continues to spend untold sums of money on building lavish temples rather than using it for a more Christian endeavor of assisting the needy, there are fewer and fewer people interested in setting foot inside one of them. As a bare 41.6 percent of Utahns are now active Mormons, it leads one to wonder: Is Mormonism dying?
It appears to be.
At the top of the list of reasons why this is happening is immigration to the state by people who are less religious — and in the event that they are religious, like the rest of the world they are generally not Mormon. Californians and Nevadans appear to be attracted to the area … probably due largely to the fact that Utah is neither California nor Nevada. Can’t blame ’em. Coloradans also end up here, and for some reason Floridians do too, presumably because they are attracted to the bizarre or the surreal. And the two universities’ (if one considers DSU to be a university and not merely some weird, federally funded mafia) tendency to draw out-of-state faculty helps infuse the population with much needed individuals who may be better educated and less prone to brainwashing than some of the natives.
Another big factor in Mormonism’s shrinking demographic is the church’s demonstrated inability to retain members, particularly younger ones. Pew data from 2014 show that roughly a third of LDS-raised adults are now full-on card-carrying ex-Mormons while a scant quarter of LDS-raised adults are actual participating adherents to the faith. Even lowering the missionary age from 21 to 18 for men and 19 for women — presumably helping to more deeply indoctrinate youth at a younger, more fragile and susceptible age — clearly hasn’t stopped the bleeding.
Those numbers are even worse than Jehovah’s Witnesses’ retention rates, and theirs are abysmal.
The LDS Church has been aggressive about bolstering its numbers as plainly evident not only in the aforementioned proselytic tie-clad altar-boy duos (and now girl ones, ‘cuz they’re progressive now) but in the polygamous human farming of yore and Utah’s still alarmingly high birth rate.
(Saving the white race for Richard Spencer, eh lads? At this point, it’s a little late for a white ethnostate in Utah.)
Consider that Washington and Iron Counties’ rates of population growth have been particularly high over the past few decades. Mormonism’s falling numbers are even more glaring in light of southern Utah’s growing population.
The spectacular failure on the part of the LDS Church to retain Utahn millennials seems even more remarkable when one considers that these youth are largely more conservative than their progenitors. While polygamy was “officially” — *wink* — abandoned as a requirement for the ratification of the state (in a rare and historic event, God allegedly admitted that he had been wrong all along), the resulting citizenry since spawned by the relentless unprotected bedroom hijinks of married Mormon couples fortunately appear to be thinking for themselves.
It’s significant to note that there are “active Mormons” and “cultural Mormons,” also known as “Jack Mormons.”
I know, I know … even the slang is patriarchal. I’ll stick with the gender-neutral version.
You’re immediately confused, right? That’s because it’s immediately confusing to conflate a religion with a culture — yet here we are. Cultural Mormons are like ethnic Jews, or the delightfully oxymoronic atheist Jews. I dated a cultural Jew in college (not even a Khazar, she was a straight-up honky), and her family celebrates Christmas with nary a yarmulke to be seen. Not very Jewish.
The term “cultural Mormon” is misleading because these people no longer believe or participate in the religion. How they could be described using the name of the religion is baffling.
One is led to wonder what cultural Christians or a cultural Hindus would look like. I shudder to imagine cultural Muslims: otherwise normal dudes who like to treat women like property, throw homosexuals off of rooftops, wear daunting neckbeards, and recreationally explode amidst crowds?
The point is that demographic statistics that include cultural Mormons, adding roughly 20 percent to the apparent membership, are misleading and conveniently for the church skew apparent membership numbers. I imagine that the questionnaires must read thusly: “Are you currently a Mormon or pretending to be one?”
In reality, while the lesser toxin of cultural Mormonism is still prevalent here, the Mormon religion itself is increasingly moving toward becoming a fringe faith — making Mormons a shrinking minority in Utah.
As Mormons leave the LDS Church in droves, it’s interesting to note that they don’t seem to be going anywhere in particular. They’re not saying, “Hey, there’s even better pizza across the street, let’s go there instead!” They’re saying, “Uh … guys, this is not even food. This is round, hot garbage. Enjoy your dysentery, I’m going to go home and make myself a sandwich.”
One clear reason for the mass exodus of former members and inoculation of prospective victims is the ubiquity of information that was previously less readily available to the ignorant and naïve people upon whom missionaries predated in the pre-Internet age.
As harrowing an ordeal the LDS Church has made the process of unshackling oneself from its pews, ex-Mormonism is widespread enough by now that it even has its own Reddit group. Any who happen to be among the faithful should take a quick glance at that page to see what their Outer-Darkness-bound brethren are saying about their past experiences. Note the prevalence of sexual abuse in the discussions and ask yourself if you are surprised that “gentiles” don’t want their families anywhere near Mormon congregations (and to be even-handed, any others, for that matter) or its credibly dubious leaders, particularly behind closed doors.
Some groups, like Utah Lighthouse Ministry, are actually Christian groups attempting to “save” people from Mormonism by luring them into yet another thoroughly debunked religion. (“Look! It’s rectangular hot garbage!”) They are useful, rhetorically, as they still do a good job at poking holes through the already Swiss cheese of LDS doctrine, although their arguments ultimately dead end at the appeal to authority fallacy — where all religions ultimately seem to run out of oxygen.
Richard Packham, the man responsible for the public-domain photo that kicked off the public bedwetting that was 2015’s Undiegate, has long maintained a blog that begins, “To those who are investigating ‘Mormonism’” and is translated into nine languages. This one-page wonder begins by telling you at great length what Mormon missionaries will tell you and follows with a list of what they won’t tell you that is then anteceded by a thoroughly documented list of impositions upon a fresh adherent’s life, imploring the reader as follows: “Consider very carefully before you commit yourself, and remember that any doubts you may have now will likely only increase.”
Even harder hitting is MormonThink, a daunting scholarly endeavor that exhaustively catalogs inconsistencies, lies, forgeries, frauds, and fuckery on the part of the Mormon church and its contemporary and historical denizens.
The CES Letter is the stake in the heart of the vampire of Mormonism.
But the “Mortal Kombat” style coup de gras (“Finish Him!”) is the CES Letter, which documents what happened when a Mormon by the name of Jeremy Runnels committed the apparent crime of approaching his church leaders with genuine questions that were troubling him and was met with stonewalling at best and persecution at worst. It proves that the best way to dismantle a bogus narrative is to ask honest questions. What is most damning is not anything Runnells asked but the church’s response — or sometimes utter lack thereof.
Inshort, the CES Letter is the stake in the heart of the vampire of Mormonism.
For the record, this is not Mormon-bashing. I am not a proponent of ingroup/outgroup tribalism. I don’t condone the ostracization of Mormons or any other people and feel that nothing good could ever come of it.
But there is an enormous difference between a religion, which is just a collection of terrible ideas with no evidentiary defense whatsoever, and a person who has been ascribed or taken on a label in association with the aforementioned indefensibly terrible ideas. Bad ideas should always be attacked without mercy, but our neighbors should not. Love the sinner, hate the sin, as they say, rather ironically.
As the LDS Church wanes, the last thing we should do is demonize its membership, which has sufficiently demonized itself. Its membership itself does not comprise bad ideas with no evidence but rather people — oftentimes good people — who have unfortunately succumbed to bad ideas with no evidence. I would hope that adherents of other religions or cults in particular would view Mormons less with contempt and more with compassion. And I would hope that those with enough sense to abandon a science-fiction wish-fulfillment view of reality altogether would see clearly enough to realize that bad ideas require good ideas to counter them rather than hostility, exclusion, or violence.
While Mormons have historically discriminated against outsiders and continue to do so to this day, the most appropriate response as their religion slowly withers is probably to treat its congregants with kindness and to try to keep the bigger picture in view: that we’re all humans, we’re all Americans, and we’re all Utahns; that we’re all struggling to get by in life and are all dealing with our own pains, losses, struggles, and hardships, some unique and some shared; and that united we stand but divided we will always fall.
The viewpoints expressed above do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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Dream on, friend, dream on. By the way, you don’t fool anyone with your “By the way, this is not Mormon-bashing” statement. You only reveal your willingness to prevaricate.
Pew research doesn’t lie, friend, and your unwillingness to take my stated intentions at face value is of no concern to me.
If people like Markey Fingers could be persuaded by research, they wouldn’t be Mormon.
You may be right. I sense in comments like those of Mr. or Ms. Fingers a deep fear that what he or she believes might be true may in fact not, and I understand from firsthand experience how threatening that can feel. Yet the truth is unalterable, and I have a great deal of faith in the human capacity to overcome both cognitive dissonance and a clinging to ideology for comfort’s sake as I myself did the same half a lifetime ago. And I am incalculably the better for it. So regardless of who is receptive to it, it would be a moral failing for me not to at least shine the light of truth into the dank recesses of religious dogma, which is easier than ever to do in 2018. It is ultimately an act of compassion for my fellow primates as they grapple with understanding a complex world, which is made no easier through various acts of charlatanry. At any rate, the right to religious self-delusion is just as Constitutionally protected as is the freedom to criticize it, and if one truly appreciates and loves the liberty that comes with being an American citizen, it is only natural for one to want to extend to others a chance at the liberty that comes with being freed from the shackles of totalitarian religious nonsense. Again, I speak from personal experience.
Dear Jason, Don’t quit your day job….
This is my day job, Mr. Ehrisman, so thanks for the encouragement and positive feedback! I’ll proceed with renewed focus, vigor, and commitment to enlightenment values, free speech, and truth.
I disagree, Jacob – if Jason quit his job, he could take a stab at making a six figure “modest stipend” in an organization full of easily-fleeced but well-meaning fools. Journalism just doesn’t pay what pushing ancient Jewish trans-continential wooden submarines makes these days.
Actually, cultural Christians, cultural Hindus, and even cultural Muslims are established concepts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Christian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Hindu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Muslim
The last of them seem to be the reverse of what was described above:
https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/stepping-out/the-rise-of-the-cultural-muslims/
I imagine one could find cultural Buddhists, cultural Sikhs, and cultural Zoroastrians as well.
i had hoped to see a reply from mr gottfried saying something to the effect of “my bad. should have done a quick google search”. thats disappointing
It’s a nonsequitur, a conflation of religion and culture, and hardly merits any further investigation. Without true belief in and devotion to a religion’s concepts and practices, the remnant cultural elements of a religion are just meaningless and comparatively inconsequential bells and whistles. One can go to church on Sunday, but if one hasn’t truly accepted Jesus Christ as one’s lord and savior, this “cultural Christianity” (or insert your religion) isn’t operating on the same level of meaning, and therefore consequence, as whatever religion it’s shadowing. This may just as well be called “political Christianity” (or insert your religion) in terms of its real-world effect in social terms. I could be an atheist and a “cultural Mormon” simultaneously, and clearly I would not actually be a Mormon. Not only that, but as an apostate, cultish Mormon doctrine has actually invented a unique category of punishment, just for me. Yet I could report myself to the U.S. Census Bureau as “Mormon” under this empty pretense of “cultural Mormonism” and be officially counted as one. But from a religious doctrinal perspective, this is clearly disingenuous. A cultural Mormon is not a Mormon in the sense of being an adherent of the faith itself, which is the only consequential way one could be or not be Mormon (or otherwise religious), and there is clearly far less danger to society in being part of a social subculture than clinging to delusional ideas about how the universe operates.
The traditional Christ of whom they speak is not the Christ of whom I speak. For the Christ of whom I speak as been revealed in this the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times. He together with His Father, appeared to the boy Joseph Smith in the year 1820, and when Joseph left the grove that day, he knew more of the matters of God than all the learned ministers of the gospel of the ages.” (Church News, June 20, 1998, p70) Gordon B Hinckley
We Look to Christ 2002 General Conference April
https://youtu.be/bkks2O6erGU
Jason, after reviewing your article, I must point out several instances in which you are quite dishonest in your critique of the Mormon faith. For one thing, to conclude your article with phrases such as, “For the record, this is not Mormon-bashing,” and “As the LDS Church wanes, the last thing we should do is demonize its membership” is almost laughable since your entire article is one bashing, demonizing comment after another. No objective person of this article would conclude you’re sincere in saying everyone should “…to treat its congregants with kindness.”
Your comment, “While the church continues to spend untold sums of money on building lavish temples rather than using it for a more Christian endeavor of assisting the needy…” would lead the ready to assume the church spends nothing, or virtually nothing on the needy, when nothing could be further from the truth. How does such a comment convey any sort of kindness to members of the Mormon Church?
You said, “And the two universities’ (if one considers DSU to be a university and not merely some weird, federally funded mafia).” I have no idea what DSU means and I don’t know how many of your readers would know what it is either. If this is reference to BYU, you should know there are more than two BYU campuses including those in Idaho and Hawaii. And if your comment “some weird, federally funded mafia” is indeed in reference to BYU, how is that not a demonizing remark? How is this not Mormon bashing?
When discussing how the LDS Church continues to “bolster” its numbers, you made remarks such as, “…but in the polygamous human farming of yore and Utah’s still alarmingly high birth rate,” along with, “…the resulting citizenry since spawned by the relentless unprotected bedroom hijinks of married Mormon couples fortunately appear to be thinking for themselves.”
Again, how are these comments not Mormon bashing? How are they not intended to demonize Mormons?
You said, “ex-Mormonism is widespread enough by now that it even has its own Reddit group.” Of course there is, but there are also ex-pick just about any religion, and you’ll find it on Reddit. Does this mean all religions are totally false? Based on your latter comment about the Utah Lighthouse Ministry and its work to move Mormons towards Christianity, clearly you do seem to think all religions are false.
In reference to the ex-Mormon Reddit page you said, “Any who happen to be among the faithful should take a quick glance at that page to see what their outer-darkness-bound brethren are saying about their past experiences.”
This comment is a false interpretation of Mormon Church doctrine. Mormon doctrine on what is called Outer Darkness is for those who have gained a perfect knowledge of God and Jesus Christ and then turned against it. To have simply been a Mormon and then become an ex-Mormon is not the same thing. Why do you feel the need to be dishonest in this way? If the Mormon Church is obviously false, there would be no need at all to make such distortions in your analysis.
You said, “While Mormons have historically discriminated against outsiders and continue to do so to this day…” Again, how is this not Mormon bashing? How is this not demonizing? This remark, from my point of view, is intended to simply kick the church and its members to the dirt just before you do a 180 and proclaim your so-called kindness towards the Mormon Church with “…we’re all struggling to get by in life and are all dealing with our own pains, losses, struggles, and hardships, some unique and some shared; and that united we stand but divided we will always fall.”
I’m sorry to say this, but if your intention was to demonstrate to members of the Mormon Church the error of their ways in a manner not intended to be insulting, dishonest or condescending, you did not do a very good job.
Thanks for your comment. What you have done is conflated criticizing ideas and behaviors with criticizing people. Ideas and behaviors are always fair game for criticism, and it’s how a civil society grows in a positive direction.
If you don’t know that “DSU” refers to Dixie State University, I’d wager that you’re clearly not from Utah. I try not to write out “Dixie State University” whenever possible as the name is such a painful embarrassment to the region, named after settlers utter failure to grow cotton in an environment that is remarkably dissimilar to the actual Dixie region. For a primer on that university administration’s wicked and despicable behavior, head to Dallas Hyland’s opinion column.
The church and the religion themselves are noxious ideological and social poisons, and humanity would be far better off were it cleansed from its bloodstream. But the people who have succumbed to their authoritarian influence should not be demonized — just the bad ideas and behaviors that comprise Mormonism and are associated with it. I made this very explicit. Indeed, I hope I was insulting and condescending to the brutish, cultish Mormon tenets and activities as they absolutely deserve nothing less.
If you missed this point, the clear delineation between ideas and people, I welcome you to reread the piece in hopes that you may get it the second time around. But the victimhood mentality doesn’t make any stronger a case for the patently false and overtly harmful Mormon religion and frankly only puts it on the defensive — a position one never need take when one is in the right.
Rather than pointing false accusations at me, you would do better to contact Jeremy Runnels, Richard Packham, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, or MormonThink.org and begin dissecting their in-depth criticisms of Mormonism. However, Pew research statistics don’t lie.
Everything is Mormon bashing. I posted a comment on the BYU Football board that they needed to revisit the Honor Code to be more competitive to get better recruits and everyone thought I was bashing the church. It’s kind of like how avid Gun owners cling to their guns whenever there is a mass shooting. You can’t win with TBM’s. I wouldn’t worry about the whole Mormon bashing thing author. I found the silver lining right away when you made it clear that good people can be mislead and let me take this one step further. People always say how nice Mormons are and I agree. Super nice people….. until you see the egoic underbelly that leads to judgement, shunning, disparagement, and defending lies. You can’t win with TBM’s and they will always get offended if you say one little thing that sounds like you’re opposed to their core beliefs. It’s bullcrap. They should be able to take it as much as they are willing to dish it out.
Whether the scriptures claim to be scholarship isn’t the point, although they do present a version of history that is not only incongruent with literally every other account of American history known to man but entirely unverifiable by Mormon archaeologists who spent their lives trying to prove the scriptures correct, only to learn the hard way that they are not. Furthermore, these transparently false narratives — some of which are plagiarized — are purported to be divine in origin, which means that either the scriptures are lies, that god does not understand history, or that god is a liar and an intellectual property thief. Take your pick of which you find most palatable.
The point is not whether the scriptures claim to be scholarship but that the claims made by the scriptures are demonstrably and manifestly false. If you find a specific thing on MormonThink.org that is provably false, rather than whining about peer reviews you should be a real religious hero and cut to the chase by writing an opinion piece proving its falsity — not claiming but proving. If you cannot or will not do this, you’ve proven my point. I’m waiting.
I’ve read the CES Letter in its entirety and your misrepresenting it to me won’t do you any good. I’d say nice try, but you don’t even appear to be trying. Like all religions, the Mormon religion is a lie, and I feel that you and the rest of its followers should be particularly ashamed of teaching it to innocent children. Prove me wrong and I’ll happily retract that statement with a profuse public apology to the official LDS Church. Again, I’m waiting. The free press is here at your disposal to demonstrate that you are right and intelligent free-thinkers everywhere are wrong if you can. But what won’t help your cause is another comment full of baseless claims while crouching in the shadow of a pseudonym. One of us is right, and one of us is full of it.
Hi Jeremy, thanks for your comment. Accusing me (or you) of Mormon bashing when I (or you) have plainly not engaged in it is (gag) mere loathsome identity politics. One of the reasons for employing identity politics is that it enables one to take on the role of the persecuted. Once someone takes this position, one assumes that one is unassailable. You see it with race and gender politics constantly. You and other people who can read English will note that I not only went out of my way to delineate the difference between ad hominem and criticizing beliefs, ideas, and actions but also went out of my way to extend intentions of goodwill towards the people who have succumbed to the intellectual tethers of Mormonism. But identity politics requires that the aspiring aggrieved ignore those entirely and simply cry about persecution and wet the bed. Intelligent adults (and a lot of kids, I’ve learned) see through this for what it is, and it doesn’t help any cause in the long run to lean heavily on identity politics because in doing so one abandons potentially better arguments (assuming that they exist) while dealing permanent damage to one’s reputations. That said, thank you for the kind words of encouragement. Rest assured that it hadn’t even occurred to me to worry for so much as an instant about accusations of Mormon bashing. If I engage in Mormon bashing, it will be painfully and spectacularly clear that I have engaged in Mormon bashing. However, I have instead engaged in Mormonism bashing, and while I cherish and would readily defend America’s Constitutionally-supported freedom of religion, I will continue to point out the utter ridiculousness and patent and plainly apparent falsity of socially poisonous religions such as Mormonism as a moral duty to my country and my fellow man in the service of liberty and truth.
Did you seriously call MormonThink “scholarly”? How much of their work is peer reviewed? You also falsely claim Runnels was excommunicated for “asking questions”. Not only is this the tired smokescreen for all excommunicated critics (in an effort to try to portray them as a helpless victim of a tyrannical organization) but you should know he was excommunicated for publicly denouncing the church(he no longer believed in) and financially profiting off his work. Funny you left that little detail out.
Oho! How much of the Book of Mormon, the Word of Wisdom, or the Pearl of Great Fiction was peer-reviewed? For that matter, how much of it was plagiarized? What MormonThink.org points out that is true is manifestly true regardless of your filter bubble and regardless of peer review. A lack of evidence is a lack of evidence. It’s not science, it’s investigative history, and MormonThink.org shows in great detail how the Book of Mormon is demonstrably archaeological fiction.
What led to Runnells’s excommunication was indeed asking questions and meeting a baffling series of brick walls. I can sympathize with the pain and betrayal he must have felt at the hands of the church leaders whom he beseeched in all innocence after devoting his life to Mormonism. The CES Letter stands on its own merit and is thoroughly documented in its original, unedited form.
I would welcome all intellectually honest and truth-seeking Mormons to read it in its entirety as well as MormonThink.org thoroughly and make their own decisions rather than taking the above attempt at minimizing at face value. Get your Wards together and make a book club-style event out of it. And then you can pray about it. The Holy Spirit never let anyone down, after all.
The scriptures do not claim to be scholarship whereas you applied that label to Mormonthink. If you want to claim Mormonthink practices actual scholarship you should point out peer review they are subject too unless of course they are a glorified tabloid.
Runnells was not excommunicated for asking questions as that is not an act that merits disciplinary action. Runnells was in open apostasy and determined to take down as many with him as possible. Of course, the money he has made from his internet fame sours his victim hood narrative that he likes to push.
The CES letter is a classic Gish Gallop document that is 90% the same things evangelicals were saying since the 60’s and about 10% of the criticisms are from the trendy progressive atheism camp. I do not find it at all convincing and it once again appears you mistake snark (for which the exmo community is rife with) for depth.
You can watch Runnels court of love on YouTube. He was ex’d for asking questions and refusing to remain silent about nobody being able to answer those questions.
This is why although it was spawned within our borders, I feel that Mormonism should not be considered the great “American” religion. Judaism, and to a lesser extent some Protestant forms of Christianity, have long histories of lengthy open discussion of doctrine and text. This spirit of inquiry fosters an environment of comfort and honesty — to which I can attest, having been there myself. The LDS Church, on the other hand, has created a more Orwellian environment for its congregants. Religions such as Islam and Mormonism are fundamentally authoritarian to a degree that strikes me as starkly unAmerican. You can leave neither religion without retaliation from the religious body, and questions are not seen as a striving for the truth (presumably God’s) but rather evidence of some moral failure on the truth-seeker’s part or corruption by the Devil. Even Catholicism seems relatively tolerant of questioning compared to Mormonism — and when you’re making the Catholic Church appear to be liberal-minded, you’re doing something wrong. Yet another irony is that this spirit of inquiry is a foundational component of the Judaeo-Christian values upon which Western Civilization and America herself were built. I would like to see how the MAGA folks in the LDS crowd plan on making America great in an inquisitorial intellectual environment. Rather than a free society, they would be more likely to build something more closely resembling a fascistic/socialistic/mafiesque plutocratic theocracy … which to some degree they arguably already have. Just as the truth will set you free, the suppression of it will ultimately be this religion’s undoing, which as I argue in this piece has already begun.
Rather than get into a useless bash over a number issues, I simply will make a few passing comments.
First, no Mormonism is NOT dying. It s a worldwide faith and though the rate of growth has slowed, it is still increasing. It would be true that immigration into Utah is diluting the percentage of population being LDS. This has been going on for a while. Perhaps eventually those who are not LDS will stop blaming LDS for everything they hate about in Utah.
Second, I find it annoying when people assert the activity rate of LDS membership as if all “inactives” do not believe in the faith. I have been inactive a number of times for various reasons including work schedule. Does this mean that I do not believe in “Mormonism” No. People become inactive for a variety of reasons like work and health. My mom was inactive for much of here life. That did not mean she did not believe in the faith and that definitely did not mean she was an atheist.
Finally any honest observer would not that the CES letter is simply a redrafting of arguments that many others made long before Mr Runnels was born. It is simply repackaged stuff I read in many other places for years before the CES letter came around. I personally got very bored with it. Feel free to give him all the awards you want but getting all excited in 2018 if you see someone do the moonwalk today. Sorry but I saw Michael Jackson do the moonwalk in the early 80s so I don’t get excited if I see somebody do it in 2018.
Mormonism is gaining new members quickly, but it is losing membership more quickly than it is gaining membership, resulting in a net loss. So one-sided reports that it’s growing quickly are misleading.
Furthermore, many of the places where it is growing quickly are populated by uneducated people who are susceptible to suggestion and unable to refuse charity. It’s quite predatory and exploitative behavior, really, and it speaks more to the church’s imperialist intentions than any real appeal the religion allegedly has to intelligent, educated people in the West, which is ever closer to zero.
I was not referring to people who are inactive but still believe. I was referring to people who officially do not believe but are still registered as Mormons, polling in the census as Mormons, or still remain a part of the church and its activities for the sake of the social cohesion that they have come to depend upon. They are massive in number.
Your last point is utterly fallacious: That an argument having been made before does not make it any less true. The story told in the CES Letter is compelling only partly because of the potency of the questions posed, regardless of whether they’ve been posed before, but also largely due to the church’s inability to answer them and it’s subsequent hostile and rather unchristian behavior toward Runnels. I think that this is the weakest argument I’ve read so far, and I almost feel that some kind of congratulation is in order for managing it.
Enjoy your Moonwalk!
Wow, this Gottfried comes off as a typical arrogant atheist douche. He has zero tact, zero clue, and seems to have a chip on his shoulder. What a loser.
Ladies and gentleman, I give you the ad hominem attack: the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel rhetorical device used when all is lost and the favored argumentative device of children and people with nothing to argue that hides from the conversation in favor of mere name-calling. You’ve really put me in my place this time, sir. How will I ever recover?
Lol!
If you are unable to give an articulate response, start name calling.
I thought the piece was well written.
I love how you look down on those in the developing world as uneducated dopes who are unable to resist the “imperialist” LDS church (or perhaps in a vernacular you might be more comfortable with LD$ INC!!11!). Apparently they are incapable of reading and critical thought unlike the white man in the west.
When one looks at a site like Cumorah.com created by a church member listing statistical evidence for church growth and activity in various countries one finds a difference between what the LDS church officially their numbers and what the latest census records say they are. Perhaps the missionaries are too eager and do not properly indoctrinate their new recruits. Perhaps giving up tea and coffee is not something they like. Or not watching TV or playing games on Sunday. Also tithing ones gross income my be a challenge in this age when wage growth is stagnant and standards of living are falling.
You, my friend, are a genius.
Well written.
Well thought out.
Accurate to what is happening in the world.
Mormonism will turn into just another tiny religion of people who can’t think for themselves. It lasted 200 years. And will disappear.
That same thing has been said repeatedly since the beginning. It was not true then, it is not true now. The same kind of haters have been hating and claiming the same things and yet the church moves on. Growth is irrelevant, we know that there will be few that find the strait gate and fewer still who stay on the narrow way. We are simply called to share the message and offer the opportunity. The church is not shrinking, despite the fact that the non-Mormon population of Utah is increasing rapidly and causing the percentage of believers in the state to drop. Regardless, the work goes on and Mr. Gottfried’s putrid bile is not noticed by nearly all of the members of the church who find joy and happiness in their faith on a daily basis.
I love the article. While I was a TBM for many years, I too researched after a long battle with doubt.what I found was peace,truth, and the feeling I was not alone. The information is our there but very few will ever have the guts to seek it out. Doubt your doubts…I haven’t stepped foot inside the church walls for many years and truly have never been happier. The truth will surely set you free.
Thanks for your comment. What you describe is similar to my experience, although I was Protestant and never Mormon. I was having a conversation with a psychology student who is an ex-Mormon today, and she was recanting her numerous horror stories involving the church-sanctioned misdeeds that she and her family suffered under the LDS Church and its adherents. My question for her was “What is the difference between people like us who desire to know the real truth and those who shy away from it in favor of the warm embrace of the cocoon of delusion?” It seems that the need for wish fulfillment is too great for some to overcome, but I have to agree with you that reality is far more satisfying than living within the pages of someone else’s science-fiction novel. On that note, I’ll see you in hell, right? XD
It always hurts the credibility of a piece if you get some of the basic facts wrong. Missionary age was not reduced from 21 to 18 for men. It has been 19 for decades, so it was only dropped by a year. Female missionary age was dropped from 21 to 19. And you imply that female missionaries are a new thing “(and now girl ones, ‘cuz they’re progressive now)” when they have likewise been around since long before you were born.
You make some good and interesting points. They would be more effective if you didn’t give people so many easy reasons to dismiss your argument because of some very basic blunders.
Thanks for your comment, Bill. I stand corrected on those points and thank you for pointing them out. However, dismissing an unrelated argument in the piece because I was incorrect about one fact would seem to be a larger blunder than my own. The LDS Church is constantly revising its positions to cover for egregiously unethical positions proposed by its founder through the convenient loophole of “prophecy,” and while I was incorrect about the age limit lowering, the church does regardless continue to virtue signal about how progressive it is regarding race and gender. For example, I recently attended the Alex Boye concert at DSU. Much to my discomfort, he was able to get away with several overtly and racist jokes that you or I would have been shouted off stage for making, presumably because he’s the endearing black Mormon, and this embarrassing trend is one that I see more and more (Look at how not racist we are now!), which is difficult to reconcile with … well, the entirety of Mormon scripture. But I would imagine that I’m preaching to the choir at this point. I will always admit when I’m demonstrably wrong, and thank you very much again for pointing out the error in my piece.
Jason Gottfried is the smartest person alive.
Sorry I’m so late to the party, but you’ve said several times that “Pew research statistics don’t lie”. That may or may not be true, but you clearly have lied about Pew research statistics. According to the 2015 Pew data, Mormons had a 64% generational retention rate, while Jehovah’s Witnesses had 34%. Now, I’m not a math major, but I believe that 64% is higher than 34%.
Again, these statistics refer to people who IDENTIFY as Mormon; furthermore, it is notoriously difficult to remove oneself from the official LDS membership roster, and presumably the church does this to inflate its apparent numbers. Had you read my piece closely you would have gotten this, and so you I surmise that either you didn’t read it closely or you did and are making a dishonest argument.
But let’s assume you’re right and that Mormon retention rates are higher than those of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Congratulations, you’ve outwitted the class retard and outraced a cripple. This statistic taken at face value would mean that the faith loses 36% of its adherents. That is a startlingly high number for The One True Religion.
Here’s a quick rundown for you, since you are so hung up on facts, which I appreciate (you can be forgiven for getting them wrong when the church has worked so hard to obscure them): http://religiondispatches.org/mormon-numbers-not-adding-up/
And that article is five years old. Perhaps you can convince yourself that things have miraculously turned around in five years’ time.
This article is more recent and drives home my point that who we refer to as “Mormons” as a whole are not the disciplined and devoted people the core members make the outliers to be when they include them in their statistics: https://www.religionnews.com/2016/10/05/leaked-worldwide-only-25-of-young-single-mormons-are-active-in-the-lds-church/
Your comment is a distraction from my premise, which stands. The religion, particularly here in Utah, is visibly weakening further every day thanks to demographic shifts, the Internet, and millenials being better informed than their elders.
Wow. “Again, these statistics refer to people who IDENTIFY as Mormon.” The Pew statistics, which I cited and are available at the link below, are for those who IDENTIFY as Mormon. Had you actually read the Pew study, you would have gotten this. It leaves me to wonder whether you actually read the Pew study that you not only cited but arrogantly stated “do not lie”, you would have gotten this, so I must surmise that you either you didn’t read it closely or you did and are making a dishonest argument.
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/chapter-2-religious-switching-and-intermarriage/pr_15-05-12_rls_chapter2-02/
“But let’s assume you’re right and that Mormon retention rates are higher than those of Jehovah’s Witnesses.” I am.
“Congratulations, you’ve outwitted the class retard and outraced a cripple.” I’m glad to know that the door to snarky, baseless insults is now open.
“Your comment is a distraction from my premise, which stands.” No, my comment is a demonstration that you are a liar, and your switch to relying on your premise is a deflection of that. But even then, your premise does not stand. Your premise is that Mormonism is dying. The two studies, both of which I am quite familiar with, do not support that premise. The first shows that the Church, while previously growing, is now maintaining its share of the population that identifies as members. Now, that’s a concern for a church that focuses on growth, but it’s a far cry from a church that is dying. Your second source supports the unremarkable notion that young single people go through a phase of inactivity at a high rate. It says nothing, one way or the other, about how they identify, whether they return to the church, or really anything that can be extrapolated to other church demographics.
I know that you think that because you write a poorly edited column for a third-rate newspaper in a podunk town in a rural state, you can play fast and loose with the facts, but there’s really no excuse for this kind of lazy writing.
I’m not a Mormon and think Mormonism is a bit silly. Even sillier than other religions cuz at least other religions have the mystery of time. But Mormons are free to practice it and humans are free to criticize it. Religion is a choice not a born trait. However as a straight up honky, I’m offended by your disgusting racism. Just because it’s against white people and your white, doesn’t make it not racism, and it offends me and makes me sick.
Not sure what you’re referring to.
After reading your comments, I find it interesting that you continue to stand by your statement of not mormon bashing. and then you call people retards referring to jehovahs witnesses. You make many other statements calling people stupid that follow a religion. You state the Book of Mormon is full of american inaccuracies. It is not a geological map nor a scientific book. It cam from the writings of men earlier in our history of the Americas. You basically are on a soap box showing you hate religion. You have the right to do so. As do other people have the right to believe in religion. What you miss is the the things the Church have done humanitarian wise for many people outside the church. During hurricanes and other natural disasters the church is often the first to show up with supplies for people. The times that the church has gone to Africa to help plant food, dig wells, help people who are starving or set up clinics to help them with medical issues. But you are the typical writer the independent employees. Negative anti religion. You want to stir the pot. When was the last time you helped a perfect stranger dig out their basement when it had 6 feet of mud in it? When was the last time you drove across country to help others out when they were flooded. You cite pew research and cherry pick numbers to massage into your narrative. You understand nothing of the mormon culture or the faith. That is your right. Keep up in bashing people. It must make you feel special. When you preach to the choir you will only get praise. The independent doesnt represent many people. You and Dallas Hyland should go on a hike together and plot how you can change the world and actually try it. I would love to see how that goes for you.
Now that Mormons have been told that they call themselves Mormons only because the Devil has tempted them to do so, fundamentalist Mormons will say they are the only true Mormons, and that the big Salt Lake group are not Mormons, just as their leader has told them. All these decades they have called themselves Mormons they have been deceived. Real Mormons are polygamists.
Agreed. In fact, I feel that the FLDS or arguably some other originalist minority denomination is the only authentic version left of this religion. Contemporary “mainstream” Mormonism has revised itself to the point that it is a mere watered-down bastardization of what its founder created, for better or for worse. It would seem that anyone who claims to regard the teachings of Joseph Smith as true would for that very reason reject the mainstream LDS Church. But the capacity for sustained cognitive dissonance is a requirement for participation in many faiths, and possibly most of all for this one.
“While the church continues to spend untold sums of money on building lavish temples rather than using it for a more Christian endeavor of assisting the needy …”
Wow. Your bias against the Church shows right off the bat. Never mind that the Church is among the top humanitarian groups in the world in terms of feeding the hungry and showing up to help out at sites where natural disasters occur.
This author Jason Gottfried truly trades credibility for fallacy in this article..
As you’ve accused me of fallacy, I’ll point out that you’ve employed fallacies in the process including tu quoque (by employing fallacies in pointing out fallacies, which you didn’t actually point out), red herring (by distracting from the fact that the church wastes exorbitant suns on aesthetic architectural extravagance and empire-building rather than using it towards the Christian mandate to assist the needy), ad hominem (attacking my “credibility” in favor of presenting some rational argument against one of mine), and the fallacy fallacy (by claiming that because I have a bias, which everyone does, my argument is therefore immediately invalid). Poverty is particularly high here in Iron County. But for each lavish temple the LDS Church builds — and I’ve personally seen them erect one of these monstrosities 50 or 60 miles away from another one, much to the incidental benefit of regional real-estate and business owners — there are that many more hungry mouths that consequently go unfed. That’s not particularly Christlike behavior. Saying that one did some is not to say that one did enough, much less to say that one did what was asked of him by Christ. To be fair, this criticism also applies to all of the other wealthy religious organizations that parade about their humanitarian work like virtue-signaling Pharisees praying aloud on a street corner in hopes that their greed, pride, and vanity will be overlooked. At any rate, my “credibility” will most certainly rest upon the objective facts as they stand and the integrity of my arguments rather than any random snarky, half-witted trollery.
Jason Gottfried thank you.
It was a pleasure as always, Jana.
People see what they want to see. What I see here is deep loathing and resentment toward Muslims, Mormons, and religious people in general. It’s not a healthy way to live. If you want to heal, why not accept people for who they are and what they want to be?
Your guitar is out of tune my friend. I hope that one day you find a happier note to strum. You are good writer, most definitely, and I do appreciate the thought provoking issues you bring to light.
We Latter-day Saints can do better, I most certainly agree. And I am hopeful that in the days and years to come, we most certainly will.
“I shudder to imagine cultural Muslims: otherwise normal dudes who like to treat women like property, throw homosexuals off of rooftops, wear daunting neckbeards, and recreationally explode amidst crowds?”
So cultural Muslims are all sexist, homophobic terrorists, is that right?
Exactly how many Muslims – of any stripe – do you personally know? How many have you ever called a “friend”?
Yes, because NEWS FLASH Islam is culturally sexist and homophobic and promotes conquest through violence. Hence a cultural Muslim, if it were a thing, would indeed by definition be a sexist, homophobic terrorist. Do you know anything at all about Islam? I’ve known about four Muslims as friends. Incidentally some of the most unhappy and antisocial people I’ve known.
Jeremy Runnells is a high-school educated computer programmer who cut-and-pasted various content from the internet, disguised this content as “questions” when in fact they were “positions”, and then, after submitting these question to an Institute teacher and getting no response (and why would the Institute teacher have responded to something so disingenuous anyway?), said, “All I was doing was asking some questions.”
Mr. Runnells is a literalistic, simplistic and uneducated thinker: which is just how the author of this opinion piece comes across.
If Runnels had held a PhD in computer science, what would that change? Nothing. If he had come up with the content of the questions himself, what would that change? Nothing. If you were actually aware of what happened, you would know that he did indeed get a response, and the Mormons were astonishingly unaccommodating. To dismiss a valid question as “disingenuous” rather than simply answering it is to transparently dodging an unanswerable or problematic question. Going after Runnells’s education and calling me names are bottom-of-the-barrel last resort nonarguments. If you actually have a point other than smearing juvenile ad hominem in the comments section, which I doubt, why not answer Runnells’s questions yourself? That’ll put both him and me in our place.
I have smeared you? Your whole opinion piece is a smear on the LDS church.
As for answers to Mr. Runnells CES Letter, you can go to FAIR Mormon, and other similar sites. There is not a single “question”, i.e. position, in Mr. Runnell’s silly production that has not been addressed by credentialed scholars with various fields of expertise.
And there is at least one book on Amazon, probably more, which directly addresses Mr. Runnells. All one has to do is look.
Trashing someone’s religion is not a very nice thing to do, especially in a community where most of the movers and shakers belong to that religion. You ought to know better.
Saying that someone “comes across” as a “literalistic, simplistic and uneducated thinker” is enough of a smear that I suspect you would object if I aimed similar words towards your religion, much less at you personally. But what I actually I said was “smearing juvenile ad hominem in the comments section,” comparing your comments to something that can be smeared like feces, not referring to them as a “smear.”
Asking me to do your work for you and chase down the defense of fiction is also a dodge. The onus is not on me after having written the piece; the onus is on you, and you’ve predictably deflected as did the church leaders in Runnells’s case. Regardless, I’ve seen nothing on FAIR Mormon or elsewhere that satisfactorily answers Runnells’s questions.
In anticipation of moving to Utah and to prepare myself for the transition from civilization to Bizarro World, I read seven or eight books on Mormonism, from academic explanation and apologetics to memoirs, both in favor and against Mormonism (and more since), hoping to give myself a wide and balanced spectrum of information about the religion and its history and present behavior. Having done so, Runnells’s questions are easy to anticipate since this religion is more full of holes than a net.
Trashing a religion is a wonderful thing to do, because if the religion actually holds up under criticism, it is to the credit of the religion and thus strengthens — not weakens — it in the eyes of the public. It just so happens that the religion under scrutiny in this piece does not. Nothing that is true crumples under criticism, and no one who honestly thinks what he believes is true shies away from it.
There are about 2,000 religions in the United States alone, in 2019 alone. How many there have been across the world and the centuries is another story. The most generous thing one could say about them is that they can’t all be correct presentations of the universe and how it works.
Aiming criticism toward the most shabby of these is not only harmless but the duty of anyone who cares about society or the well being of our more naive citizens, many of whom are not only mislead but taken advantage of.
Many of the Mormons who are smart enough to realize that it’s all a dystopian social game, including your “Jack Mormons,” aren’t brave enough to speak out against it, and any who could believe that something so patently false is true is quite foolish, to say the least. Many Mormons are very kind and good people, but a significant portion of them are malevolent enough to use the religion for social and financial gain. I have witnessed this criminal behavior over and over here by the aforementioned “movers and shakers” to a breathtaking degree. Utah society, eroded from within by the toxin of this religion, is as corrupt and rotten to the core as any I’ve come across, and I have come to learn this unfortunate fact both through observation as well as firsthand. This religion is pure poison, and bringing it to the light of genuine inquiry is an objective good regardless of whether or not you or anyone else approves of it.
In fact, this religion is so outrageously false that it is constantly under legal attack (https://www.ecosia.org/search?q=mormon+church+being+sued&addon=opensearch). And in seemingly every discussion of the most absurd contemporary religions, there are two that consistently seem to float to the top: Scientology and Mormonism. When a religion is able to really put up a fight in competing with Scientology for World’s Most Transparently Ludicrous Religion, we’re talking about some Olympics-level nonsense.
So you can save your finger-wagging for someone dumb enough to feel ashamed. Frankly, Mr. Calloway, I’d think anyone would know better than to publicly dodge a sincere invitation to defend his position and then merely say “You ought to know better.”
I am heartened to see that Mormonism is dying. Why? Because I care about innocent people’s well being and think they deserve a chance to pursue the truth honestly without being sabotaged by spiritual pitfalls; on the contrary, people like you appear only to care about feeling that you’re right and virtue signaling with flimsy, vapid Pharisaic condemnations. I forgive you for that, but if you don’t have anything substantial to say and are going to continue to decline to answer Runnells’s questions directly, don’t expect any more attention from me. Thanks for reading.
Jason, a brilliant piece of editorial work. I love the wit, wisdom, and writing style. Keep up the good work in 2020. Happy New Year.
Thanks, and a Happy New Year to you as well.
Jason, your responses to all of the naysayers are absolutely brilliant. I’m an ex-Mormon who just happened to spend two years knocking on doors and riding a bicycle in a suit (Mormon Mission). There was a time when I was as defiant with those who challenged my Mormon beliefs as those who responded to your article with dripping sarcasm and vitriol. I would dare say that nearly all of their research of anything church related has the seal of approval of the the ivory tower brethren from downtown Salt Lake City. Even if someone were to venture out and read something as quasi-innocuous (but well researched and eye opening) as Runnells’ CES Letter, it still wouldn’t be on the approved LDS reading list and might cause potential guilt and/or shame from having had perused some Anti-Mormon literature (now called Pro-Truth in my everyday parlance).
Also, you are spot on in your assessment of those who convert to Mormonism. There is a much greater likelihood that someone from a poorer, less sophisticated country/society will believe the Mormon teachings that include magic plates, magic underwear, magic oil and magic handshakes than someone coming from a more educated world environment. A good example of this would be the greater numbers of Mormon converts from Central and South American countries compared to those from Europe and Asia.
As for the CES letter, it’s a fantastic piece of work; the result of which answers a lot of questions for anyone possessing a truly analytical mind. Just recently, however, I discovered another online document well worth reading – http://www.letterformywife.com. It takes LDS subjects and answers them using only Mormon published documents. It is a great read and highly recommended.
God bless the internet because without it, the church would have never been forced to admit to things such as Joseph Smith’s trail of polygamist wives (including the 14 year olds and women already married to other men), the peep stone in the hat to translate the Book of Mormon (even when the plates weren’t in the same room as Smit) as well the Masonic connection with the Mormon temple ceremony.
One question for all church devotees and Sunday attendees of the steepled buildings; the entire religion stands or falls on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. We know that Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Abraham was completely inaccurate. We know that Joseph Smith’s translation of the Kinderhook plates was also inaccurate as the plates themselves were a complete hoax. If Joseph Smith’s translations of these documents (the two that are still available to us to substantiate) were completely WRONG and not remotely close to accurate representations, how can anyone believe that his translation of the Book of Mormon could possibly be accurate, creating “the most correct book on Earth?”
Thanks for the kind words as well as sharing that link. Very interesting, I hadn’t come across that one. I’m glad that you escaped the intellectual gulag.
And to answer your question, even though it wasn’t directed toward me, one pervasive problem with all belief systems is that they are sustained by belief rather than bolstered by evidence. It seems that once people become enmeshed by religion, and therefore addicted to the false comforts it can bring, their becoming untangled from it requires more than just pointing out why it is clearly false since religious proponents will simply point to a lack of faith as some moral failing to be remedied by mere prayer rather than honest, rational scrutiny.
Really, if Mormonism made any sense whatsoever, why would anyone ever need to depend upon faith in order for them to buy into it? No one seems to rely upon faith in order to believe in gravity since it’s readily apparent.
In reality, it looks like the entire religion really stands or falls on one’s ability to believe in Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.
And believing a fairy tale feels good, especially when the beneficiary of that fairy tale just so happens to be the believer.
My two cents. Cheers.
Awe Jason, bless your heart❤!