LDS Retention Pt 2

Posted on February 19, 2012
Filed Under Religion | 34 Comments

I mentioned last time that the Church’s retention rate has fallen significantly the last decade. According to Phillips and Cragun the retention rate went from 92.6% in the 70′s through 2000 to 64.4% the last decade. Elder Jensen in January made comments recognizing the change and problems. To Elder Jensen the big difference is the Internet.

Did the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints know that members are “leaving in droves?” a woman asked.

“We are aware,” said Jensen, according to a tape recording of his unscripted remarks. “And I’m speaking of the 15 men that are above me in the hierarchy of the church. They really do know and they really care,” he said.

“My own daughter,” he then added, “has come to me and said, ‘Dad, why didn’t you ever tell me that Joseph Smith was a polygamist?’” For the younger generation, Jensen acknowledged, “Everything’s out there for them to consume if they want to Google it.” The manuals used to teach the young church doctrine, meanwhile, are “severely outdated.”

Originally I was skeptical of the internet answer and thought this might primarily be a demographic issue. That is young single Mormons feel more out of place at Church because it both doesn’t meet their needs but also because they don’t feel like they are getting the Mormon ideal. Finally unlike many other Christian faiths there can be more of a consequence for pre-marital sexual activity. As the rate of unmarried members increases the drop out rate increase. When I tried to verify this it didn’t really work well for a variety of reasons.

That said I do think there are some big differences between what it means to self-identify as a Mormon versus what is required to self-identify within most other forms of Christianity. Still, it is interesting that the fastest growing group by far according to the ARIS survey was “Nones.” That is atheists and agnostics. Several people have suggested to me that what is really going on is a rise of a secular culture.

It’s true that we aren’t the fastest growing faith. According to ARIS within the United States various pentecostal groups grew at 40.7% from 1990 – 2008. Mormons grew at 27%. Assemblies of God (part of the pentecostal category) grew at 31.3%. Catholics grew at 24.3%. Non-denomenational groups grew at 24.9%. However Nones grew at a rate of 138%. Most other Christian groups grew at much lower rates or actually lost members.

The fact that the drop in retention happened in the late 90′s does suggest the prime factor is the internet. The retention rate for not only Mormons but also Evangelics drops about the same time. It was the late 90′s which saw the internet reach the mainstream. And certainly the last ten years has seen it move to being people’s primary source of information. However the drop in retention actually starts among the young earlier than the time when the internet reaches critical numbers. So while I think the internet definitely contributes to the issue I’ve become convinced of late that it’s part of a broader move towards a secular culture.

Some, such as in the Elder Jensen quote above, see this merely as making it easier to find out about controversial aspects of our history we don’t like to talk about. While that is part of it I don’t think that’s all or even the major issue. Were that the only issue we wouldn’t find such similar phenomena in other faiths. Further those faiths that allegorize so much away (and thus should be less affected by controversial facts) actually have worse retention.

While their categories aren’t quite the same and they are measuring a slightly different question than the ARIS survey the book American Grace by Putnam and Campbel has the overall Mormon retention rate as 60%. But look at how bad all the other faiths do.

Retention

One of the authors gave an interesting interview at T&S a few years back. Talking about these retention figures he said:

It is also correct that Americans are more likely to switch congregations than religions. But, as you note, switching LDS wards is not likely to change much about one’s worship experience. And it would definitely not mean much of a change in what is taught over the pulpit or in Sunday School lessons, etc. Thus, when Mormons are unhappy with their religion, it seems more likely that it would result in becoming inactive or even leaving the faith rather than switching wards (which Church policy makes difficult, although I have found that just how difficult varies according to local leadership). In American Grace, we report that Mormons are about as likely to leave their faith as are evangelicals, but that both groups have much lower switching rates than Catholics or mainline Protestants. So, comparatively speaking, Mormons have a high retention rate. This is undoubtedly due to the emphasis placed on religious education and on the relatively low interfaith marriage rate among Mormons. But while comparatively high, the Mormon retention rate is still only about 60 percent. In other words, two out of five people raised as Mormons drop out of the faith in adulthood.

Also look at the following graph tracking “Nones” with Evangelicals aged 18-29 from 1973 – 2008. (Sadly they didn’t have similar statistics for Mormons)

Youth

The change happens starting around 1990 for people leaving religion. The significant dip in Evangelicals starts somewhere between 1994 and 1995.

This suggests two things I think. First I don’t think the demographic argument works. Second I think the change starts before the rise of the internet and thus reflects a more generic secularism within society. This will affect Mormons not only because people will question things they once didn’t. But also because the very way they interpret answers will differ. This isn’t just how people interpret history and acknowledging the human weakness of past leaders on things like racism. Rather it means that when people try to reformulate their world view secularism will be a dominate interpretive lens. Mormons put a lot of emphasis on spiritual evidences but what constitutes evidence is often itself an interpretation. The secular society means that many people simply won’t interpret the same phenomena in the same way.

Let me give an extreme example of this. There is a phenomena called Hags Dreams (sleep paralysis) which is a psychological condition typical found in males in late adolescence up through the very early 20′s. i.e. right at the time LDS boys are going on missions. It involves waking up from sleep but having paralysis (i.e. only parts of the normal awake cycle are activated) This is frequently interpreted as possession, encounter with evil spirits or the like. Now imagine a kid who had a spiritual experience in the MTC where they thought they were encountering sons of perdition. (As everyone who was in the MTC recalls, this was a fairly common narrative one would hear about – at least when I was there it was.) This becomes the basis of a testimony. Then after their mission they study psychology and learn about this phenomena. How do they interpret it? Especially if they are being challenged in other areas.

Now of course while many spiritual experiences are ambiguous in ways like this it doesn’t follow that all are. But every experience has to be interpreted – often at an unconscious level. While I personally suspect the majority of spiritual experiences actually are misinterpreted I obviously don’t think all are. (Otherwise I wouldn’t be a Mormon) I’m far from convinced that many peoples spiritual experiences can be explained away from a secular paradigm. But many can. And even those that arguably couldn’t from a careful analysis may never get that careful analysis. There may be an instinctual appeal to more secular interpretive lenses. People can become “swamped” by secularism which frequently plays the delusion card or the “only believe public evidence” card. That can shake people.

All that said I think most people with strong testimonies aren’t swayed. Those people are swayed by other events disrupting their spirituality first so that such a reconception of past events is possible. The thing is, a living testimony is constantly being reconfirmed by new spiritual experiences. If you aren’t having those and are merely interpreting distant memories then the cultural paradigms you are immersed in matter a lot. That’s because when a person remembers something the memory isn’t just recalled out of a permanent storage. Rather it is recreated and then actually stored anew by the brain in a reinterpreted fashion. This can lead to spiritual experiences (correctly or incorrectly) be seen stronger when one is firmly in a religious tradition. But it can lead to them becoming weaker when one is in a more immersive secular culture.

I suspect that the United States is moving towards a largely secular culture like northern Europe has had for quite some time. We probably will never reach quite the levels that northern Europe has. I think there will always be a significant religious class in America. But I think that within 20 years it will be much, much smaller than it is now.

 

 

Related posts:

  1. LDS Retention Pt 1
  2. Mormon Divorce
  3. Pew Mormon Study
  4. Film on Missouri War
  5. American Religious Identification Survey
  6. Younger Accept Evolution

Comments

34 Responses to “LDS Retention Pt 2”

FYI, it doesn’t seem that Jensen said anything to Reuters. Rather, Reuters was merely quoting his Q&A that he gave at USU in January.

I can see what you’re saying about the rise of European-like secularism being behind the low retention rates…but now can you say what is behind the rise in that secularism in the US? Europe obviously went through this a long time ago and therefore for very different reasons (maybe) than we are now. Or perhaps we have a sort of “latent secularism” that is just now breaking free—in which case, my question is still “what is causing it to break free now?”

I hear many people point to post-modernism, but the more I look into it the more a) I think that movement is too old to account for recent trends, and b) I don’t have any idea what “post-modernism” even means :)

Thanks, Clark. That’s insightful.

Thanks for noting that Narrator. I fixed that line. Still it was quite interesting that Jensen was aware of it and tied it to the inoculation issue that’s been discussed so much at various LDS blogs.

Brian that’s the big question. It’s a really abrupt change in 1990. There’s a slight delay before Evangelicalism (which was on the rise) is affected and then Mormonism. (As I said I’m not sure the exact timing of the Mormon decline but I suspect it’s not long after the Evangelical change) What on earth happened then? That’s too early for it to be the internet, even acknowledging it’s prevalence in colleges. (I was on a lot of mailing lists in the early 90′s)

I’m pretty doubtful it’s anything to do with postmodernism or other philosophical fads, although that did peak in the early 90′s.

I’ve tried out a lot of hypothesis but haven’t reached a good one yet. The more Evangelical New Atheist movement really dates well after that period too. So we can’t attribute it to proselytizing by atheism. At least I don’t see anything that would point to 1990.

The best I can come up with, and it’ll sound silly, is that with the end of the cold war social pressures tending people towards religion were eased. You’ll not the rate of Nones growth decreases noticeably after 9/11 when some of those pressures increased and then returns back to the same rate once it becomes clear Al Queda isn’t a real threat (around 2006).

Clark, a friend commented to me that another explanation could be the politicizing of LDS Church policies that create generational tension, such as those related to marriage. I suppose you could relate that to secularism, but that relation is controversial, given that many who leave the LDS Church seem to maintain spiritual world views.

I am pretty skeptical about it being politicizing. I think people would have to explain how the same phenomena happens simultaneously in different religions and across the country as a whole. That’s not to say politics doesn’t enter in if the politics are part of a general secularization. Thus, for instance, youth might feel uncomfortable with the sexual politics of conservative religions (the lack of acceptance of premarital sex and homosexuality, the frequent lack of women’s equality in religious gender roles, etc.). But I suspect that’s just a manifestation of a broader social change. More the result than the cause. The question is what brought on the broader social change.

Clark,

Thanks for this. Your bit about sleep paralysis really hits home. I used to think it was the devil coming after me. But since then I’ve gone through some experiences that have caused me to reevaluated all of my previous experiences — and I’ve come to pretty much the same conclusion you did. Most of it can be explained away. But there’s that “little bit” that can’t.

So those folks who have “that much” more of a secular bent on life are probably going assume that the “little bit” — the stuff that still makes sense spiritually to the likes of you, myself and others who are still hanging on — has some naturalistic explanation. They just haven’t found it yet.

I think your explanation for the overall trend is a good one. No doubt if we were to find ourselves in a second cold war we would see retention rates rising in spite of the internet.

Clark you may also want to hypothesize about the emergence of self-sustaining quasi or pseudo religious organizations. I believe the environmental movement, among other secular cultural groupings, had, by the late 80′s gotten a robust enough base of collective moral understandings (i.e. implicit memes) to get things like the “big brother” effect Scott Atran says is necessary to sustain religious groups.

The obvious counterpoint is that ideological based groups, such as the core of the hippie movement, have always been around. While I could be wrong, I’m not sure these groups have historically had the secular societal landscape necessary to get into the group level adaptation game. I guess this class of effect is the same as your secular culture term, however, the ability of groups to coalesce as something more than a club or trends, is to my way of thinking what is needed to compete with our natural tendencies towards religion and religious like groupings.

It also raises that uncomfortable question of who are members for bad reasons and who are members for good reasons. There’s a tendency among Mormons to not want to ask that question and frankly hide from it a bit. We have a natural anti-elitist attitude in many ways. Yet it also seems clear that some people are more strongly committed than others. Some may seem strongly committed but a little adversity of the right sort and they fall away. I tend to think that’s more characteristic of those I’d designate with a more fundamentalist mindset since those are the ones I think have most trouble dealing with secularism – I obviously don’t. In fact often atheists are the funnest to talk with in some ways. Probably half the readers of this blog in the past have been atheists I suspect – although I’ve done a lot of religious posts of late and hopefully haven’t driven them all away. (grin)

Chris, I had thought of that but I just can’t see any kind of objective data pointing to something unique about 1990. Most of the major environmentalist and similar groups were already pretty established. The major left wing groups oriented around nuclear weapons and war were on the decline. The critical mass for various atheist and skeptical groups to form quasi-religious structures hadn’t happened yet. There wasn’t anything like the marxist movements in Europe of the 50′s though 70′s. The best I can come up with, other than the end of the cold war idea, is that Gen-X had that strong ironic distance attitude. Sincerity of a sort was in decline and often ridiculed. You can still raise the chicken/egg issue there. (Why was Gen-X so ironic? Of course there one could argue the rise of postmodernisms of various sorts the previous decade was characteristic of a larger social trend that just happened to culminate in the 90′s) I’d sure like something I could argue with data though.

I think the changes in the late 60′s you can explain pretty well. (And that was the period of the rise of Evangelicalism which in many ways was tied to counter-culture movement surprisingly) But this pivot point in 1990 seems a bit trickier. Whatever it was it obviously reached a critical mass and started spreading remarkably quickly. I see things like the New Atheist movement as more the culmination of these social forces. And perhaps a bit unsurprising that they take the form they do since the basic cognitive drives that produce much of the structure of religion are just as active in atheists.

I should also add that most of these two posts came out of a discussion I had with Alan Hurst on LDS-Herm. Originally I was pretty skeptical about the secular source for the retention issue. I was arguing the demographic basis. However when I plunged into the numbers to make my case it just didn’t work even though I could explain why it might in theory. So Alan really convinced me on this issue. That’s not to say there aren’t other effects at play such as the rise of the single demographic, anti-Mormon materials on the internet or other such matters. I’m just skeptically they offer more than a marginal effect.

Clark if you go back to those books I lent you a few years back, “Rebel Sell” and “Hello I’m Special”, it gives one the idea that the late 80′s is when middle class tribalization hits its stride. Nothing special about any one movement, but the way groups coalesced was different: they had a very high degree of implicit conformity complimented with ironically strong tendencies to keep and enforce unique identities and moral world views. Again, nothing unique, but still a very interesting confluence of many of Atran’s necessary but not sufficient religion markers.

Unfortunately I never had time to read them. So you are saying a new tribalism emerged in the 80s which became a secular identity over religion in the 90s?

It’s got to be video games. (which would of course explain why western Europe went through this change much earlier–okay maybe not.) But 1990 is the zenith in transition from 8-bit to 16-bit systems, scrolling graphics, and 3rd to 4th generation development. Blame this on Nintendo.

Obviously, there’s no single factor that’s an overriding cause. But while I don’t know whether it’s the chicken or the egg, I think a major factor is changing sexual attitudes including the acceptability not only of premarital sex but of cohabitation. Aside from improving technology, that’s the biggest cultural shift I’ve seen since growing up in the 1960s, when it would have been unthinkable for respected people to be shacking up and when the popular media reinforced the idea that there was some connection between sex and marriage. In today’s culture, evangelical and Mormon attitudes toward premarital sex seem quaint at best.

Clark: I don’t think the post-Cold War theory is too crazy.

I hate to sound like an old curmudgeon (especially since I am only in my 30s), but when I look at the generation in question—the post-Gen X generation—I see tons of evidence of pervasive slacker-ness (for lack of a better word). Kent O brings up video games, rather tongue-in-cheek no doubt, but consider that the ability to live a very comfortable, happy, fun life changed dramatically from the 80s to the 90s. An entry-level job at Best Buy will let you afford: an apartment you split with 3 other guys, smart phone, car, video games, Netflix, etc. What more do you need? Clothing, food, electronics, and entertainment (and as Eric points out, sex also) are comparatively super-cheap. And if for any reason you tire of your job, it’s easy to find another entry level job somewhere else—or, better yet, move back in with mom and dad and save a few hundred bucks on rent money. Not even pursuing higher education protects against this since so many colleges have become businesses concerned more with pulling in tuition dollars than with education.

In short, life in the US became very, very easy for a lot of people. Religion is just a lot of work for no pay.

If at all accurate, that is the exact opposite of why Europeans lost religion….

(And now I need to go drink my Metamucil.)

Eric while sexual mores definitely play into everything I’m pretty skeptical that’s a significant driver simply because you get that abrupt change in 1990. What happened in 1990? We can’t talk about birth control the way we could in the 60′s nor delayed reactions to it. Further in 1990 if anything you had a pull back due to the rise of a new batch of sexually transmitted diseases that couldn’t be cured by antibiotics – many of which were fatal.

Brian, I know that’s been talked about. The rise of eternal adolescence. And that was largely the model that I initially assumed – the rise of a new single culture incompatible with the old way of religions which were tied to a different style of community and responsibility. However attempting to link that up with the data was difficult. You look at the change in marriage age and so forth and it just doesn’t work.

That said I think there are some other changes going on with regards to say ethics, social mores and the like. There have been some pretty disturbing studies on those. But once again they come years after the changes we mention. Thus they seem better seen as a consequence rather than cause.

If I were to guess, the general problem is the rise of much better contrary evidence with regard to propositions that a significant minority of Mormons and Evangelicals maintain as essential to the faith. Evangelicals do this because of inerrancy, Mormons do this because many are almost as inerrantist as the evangelicals.

The key issue, it seems to me, is everything revolving around Adam and Eve. When I was in high school, in the late 1980s, seminary teachers were still preaching against evolution _of any kind_. It is hard for scientifically literate people to take that kind of thing seriously, and when students learn about the quality of the evidence for humans living on the earth for hundreds of thousands of years, they have one of three choices: (1) Deny the competence of modern science on virtually everything (2) Invent their own doctrine of the first five chapters of Genesis (3) Lose the faith.

The problem here is that the way things are typically taught, no one seems to be _allowed_ to take option (2), and no acceptable variations are presented. So people conclude that in order to be a good Mormon, (or a good Evangelical), they must believe that Adam and Eve jointly: lived on the earth six thousand years ago, are the parents of all humans, and initiated the Fall prior to which everything was in a paradisaical state, no death, no sin, etc.

If that kind of thing is presented _without allowances_, it is no wonder that a significant percentage of young people come to the conclusion that the people advocating such an interpretation are some combination of ignorant and stupid. In LDS-land in particular, the manuals present no allowances for anything. I imagine that Evangelical-land is similar.

A little off where the conversation has been going -

I found your mention of sleep paralysis interesting. That happened to me a lot all through high school and through my mission – finally stopping sometime after my first marriage. It never occurred to me that it was demonic possession. It was a little freaky the first few times, but I kinda sorta got used to it, and since it only really happened when I was awakened at an unusual time (say 4 in the morning when I usually get up at 6), I figured it was my body just taking its time fully waking up.

However, I did have a rather remarkable spiritual experience at age ten that is the foundation of (but not sole reason for) my testimony. Atheists have used that “memory isn’t just recalled out of a permanent storage. Rather it is recreated and then actually stored anew by the brain in a reinterpreted fashion” on me to claim it didn’t really happen that way – but I’ve had enough confirmation in other ways (and interestingly, I have some independent confirmation that I don’t want to get into for my experience at that age).

But yes, I do find people tend to default to supernatural explanations when there are other reasons. My stepkids are convinced their previous house was haunted because they heard banging noises all the time – never mind it was more likely due to plumbing issues.

Mark D.: You may be interested in this blog article I wrote recently: Genesis 1-3: History or Allegory?

I don’t know how much of a factor this specific issue is in retention for evangelicals and Mormons, but I can see why it could be for some.

I don’t usually get into the philosophical discussions, but I do find fascinating the sociological elements of this one. My first question is, does this observation hold worldwide, or are your data sets primarily US? If primarily US, I wonder this:

You hunt for something unique about 1990, but what comes to my mind (as a GenX-er who came of age in the early 1980s) is that the seeds for the trend were likely planted in teens and pre-teens during the 1980s. This makes me think of stuff out there in our culture like Cosmos, a Brief History of Time, ST the Next Generation, and Star Wars. I suspect that by 1990 the confluence of these ideas (science brings understanding of all things, that societies can be morally and successfully organized without religion, and religion is a quaint vestage from the past that can be really dangerous if taken seriously) gelled in the hearts of young folks.

I doubt you’ll find any one thing that is a trigger. Just a cumulative effect that hits resonance.

Mark (16) I’d be somewhat sympathetic to that except for the timing issue. I mean the evidence for evolution has been overwhelming for a long time. Good multimedia documentaries were around in the 70′s and 80′s. So what makes 1990 so special? That said I think CES has definitely done a lot of damage to Mormon youth on this point. I’ve known a reasonable number of people whose agnosticism started over the evolution issue. And there’s no reason since what CES teaches really isn’t necessary.

All that said if the brethren started making extremely positive evolution and science statements in General Conference I wouldn’t complain. I’m skeptical it’d reduce the losses that much but it’d certainly help some people.

Sorry, just back from a ski vacation….

“So you are saying a new tribalism emerged in the 80s which became a secular identity over religion in the 90s?” – Clark

No, I am assuming culture, by itself, does not have the necessary dynamics to compete very successfully with religion (or quasi-religions). I’m basing this on Atran’s work indicating religion is well characterized as a particular class of belief and a confluence of necessary (but not sufficient) group dynamic traits. I’m also basing it upon Wilson’s work on group level adaptations. Therefore my thinking is basically:

- Religion or quasi-religion is a natural tendency
- There is a threshold level that religions and quasi-religions must meet before they become a sustainable grouping

- People have an easier time switching between religions & quasi religions than switching out of a religion or quasi-religion because it does not leave a void in a natural tendency
- Culture, whether secular or religious, has less strength to fill this natural tendency.

Therefore to account for decreases in religious affiliation either:
1. Secular culture has suddenly become able to fill our natural tendency to religion or quasi-religion, or
2. Other groupings, such as quasi-religions have increased in prominence that isn’t accurately measured .

I favour option 2. This is because I think we are overly deluded about our own rationality and vastly underestimate our tendency to recreate structures emerging from natural tendencies. I also don’t see secular culture as being… monolithic enough to function at the same level as religious or quasi-religious groupings. I see you favouring option 1.

One experimental test of my thesis would be seeing what percentage of people leaving a religious or quasi-religious grouping join a group that meets my definition of a quasi-religion. I would posit that many former religionists that have become atheistic or agnostic have found membership with a group of like-minded individuals that share a common belief structure, moral “Big Brother”, freeloader detection/intervention, and other sundary markers of an adaptive group level unit.

I think the crux of this position is whether this type of grouping could only occur with computer mediated communication, or whether it could start occurring with faith that other like minded individuals exist and could be connected. I think Wilson addressed this idea of delayed groupings in his book Darwin’s Cathedral but I could be wrong.

I could see that Chris if we could pick out the quasi-religious organizations (or pseudo-organizations if it’s internet based) to measure them.

Yeah, I’m surprised I haven’t read about more religious scholars trying this research. Seems like a very productive scholarly field. Way more so that Stark’s old

The last decent book I read on this, Sacred Companies, tended towards a functional equation of supernatural belief with “slightly counter-intuitive” (aka demonstrable white lies) belief schema. In other words there was minimal functional difference between believing in God, a Pantheon of Gods, that pyramid schemes always work and are a pinnacle of morality, or that pop karma is organizational corner stone.

WIth other things I’ve read on organizational dynamics I suspect the degree to which “slightly counter intuitive” beliefs control organizational direction is the distinguishing feature between quasi-religious groups and simple cultural groups. Of course demarcation is much easier when beliefs are used to embody an actual “Big Brother” rather than just as an amorphous confluence of ideals. Personally, I tend to use unusually strong, time insensitive, rallying cries as my simple heuristic (think Global warming is false).

Clark: I think that there is a cultural factor that everyone is missing: 9-11. This event exposed the dark underside of religious fanaticism and made it easy to diss religion and especially unreasoning commitment. It was a game changer and I believe is responsible for the growth of atheism in its stridency and visibility. However, I also believe that the net is also a primary cause; but the environment in which folks engage is formed by this world-changing event.

Blake, I did discuss 9/11. You have a short burst of religiosity which decreases the rate of decline of Evangelicalism for a few years after which the earlier trend from around 1995 continues. I don’t think 9/11 can explain the decline as it’s just too late.

Chris, I’ll check out some of those books.

I’d not, regarding the growth of the ‘nones’, that (if I recall the Pew poll data accurately) over half of the ‘nones’ are religious/theistic.

For the ARIS survey this is how Nones were defined:

The “Nones” are an amalgamation of all the respondents who provided answers to our key question which identified them as having no religious identity or connection. The most common response was “None” or “No Religion.” This bloc can be described as the non- religious, irreligious and anti-religious bloc. It includes anti-clerical theists, but the majority are non-theists. For reasons of scientific integrity we have also included data on the “Unknown” category, composed of those who said they did not know the answer to our key religion question and those who refused to reply to our key question. We have no religious identification data on this population but we do have demographic and attitude data.

Pew on the other hand just has an “unaffiliated” category. Of the unaffiliated only about 1/3 never prayed which is a good indication that many were religious.

The problem I have with the ARIS data is that their ‘Nones’ seem statistically similar to Pew’s ‘Unaffiliated’. And Pew’s Unaffiliated have some interesting results – 6.3% are classed as ‘secular unaffiliated’, 5.8% are ‘religious unaffiliated’ (saying that religion is either somewhat or very important in their lives). 70% of the unaffiliated responded that they believe in ‘God or a universal spirit’.

Well the ARIS data definitely includes religious people among the Nones. If you go to their page on detailed breakdowns of the Nones they have a breakdown by types of belief in God. They have atheists as 7%, “hard” agnostics as 19%, soft agnostic as 16%, deist as 24%, and theist as 27% of the Nones. (Figure 1.17)

I take the Nones as much more a general movement that’s just not religious rather than real dogmatic atheism. Although I must confess I often use the term atheist to cover the movement. But I probably shouldn’t.

30 John Mansfield on February 29th, 2012 7:03 am

Clark, here’s an aspect of modern culture that I’ve wondered about. Asimov had a follow-up detective novel to Caves of Steel set on a planet with abundant robot labor and an extreme aversion for actually being in the presence of other people. Social relations were conducted by hologram, and the most popular sport was archery because competitors didn’t have to be near each other. Like some of the best of sci-fi, it was the sort of thing that we wonder if we are actually starting to create for ourselves. Religion has a community aspect to it, and it easy to find many Mormon blog writings each month lamenting that being Mormon is so congregational.

John I do think virtual reality, which frankly started when you and I were still in college with USENET and email, is interesting. I think Facebook and so forth really do create virtual worlds. That said I think it often ends up bringing people together as well. I ended up dating a few women I met in odd ways on the internet. (One girlfriend I met because she sent an email to the wrong address) So I’m skeptical it’s really leading to as much loss of face to face meetings. I do think it facilitates meeting people with similar views you might never have met before so in order to facilitate certain kinds of discussions. It can, especially with the young, end up limiting face to face activities. But let’s be honest when I was young it was TV and video games that people were yelling about for doing the same thing. I’m skeptical that it’s replaced face to face activities. Rather I think it’s just taken over time spent watching TV or the like.

As to how this virtualization has affected LDS growth and retention I’m just not sure. I think it’s had some effect. My suspicion it’s more complex than we suspect as Chris’ suggestions above indicate.

[...] LDS retention. I’ll not go over my main analysis again. (You can read it at my blog: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4) What I wanted to go into is just how hard it is to figure out how well the [...]

33 Evelyn Zielke on April 14th, 2012 7:08 pm

Clark, I’m wondering about the current issues the church is facing in retaining young adults. Apparently pornography is a huge factor. It would be worth checking that issue in 1990, but I suspect a conflagration of factors created a perfect storm. I recently read Boys Adrift, which discusses the phenomenon of men losing their drive, most notably manifest by them living in their parents’ basements playing video games. The author identifies a number of factors, but I think estrogen mimicking chemicals (phthalates)are absolutely significant. It seems we began to hear stories about feminized fish around 1990. Male sperm count is down about 50% from what their grandfathers’had at their age.

I’m not sure how much trouble they actually are having retaining young adults. I came into this a few months ago thinking there was a huge problem. Now I’m not so sure.

To the degree there is a problem I doubt it’s pornography so much as it is changing socialization due to postponement of marriage and family. Speaking as one who married late once you are single and over 25 Church becomes much more difficult for a slew of reasons.

The Church was doing some calculations apparently based upon when single adults attended tithing settlement. But that’s a really poor measure of activity due to the inherent nature of single adults. (I don’t think I attended a tithing settlement from the time I graduated college until after I got married – which would have shown me as inactive for more than 10 years which simply wasn’t the case)

Male sperm being down 50% seemed a bit dubious to me. But I checked and it turns out to be true. Interesting. I’d be careful drawing too many inferences.

Regarding Boys Adrift I don’t know much about it although I’m a bit skeptical. It seems a bit reductive and I’m skeptical of putting too much onto estrogen even though I think that a problem in general.

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