Difference between revisions of "Utah/Statistical claims/LDS population in Utah"
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Revision as of 01:02, 3 May 2010

Criticism

  • "Within the state of Utah, the number of Mormons has steadily declined over the past 10 years."
  • In Utah, more people are leaving the Church than are joining the Church.

Source(s) of the criticism

  • Search for the Truth DVD pre-distribution letter, March 2007. FAIRWiki link
  • Agence France-Press, "Mormons to lose dominance of US state of Utah within 30 years: figures Agence France-Press" (28 July 2005).

Response

Critics of the Church and misinformed members of the mainstream media sometimes claim that the number of Latter-day Saints in Utah has fallen. This belief led the producers of the anti-Mormon video Search for the Truth to claim that "within Utah, we are doing a fairly good job of combating Mormonism" and therefore "the Mormon Church is vulnerable" to anti-Mormon criticisms.

But such authors are simply incorrect, according to figures from the U.S. Census and the LDS Church Almanac:

  Utah: Total Utah: LDS Utah: Non-LDS
31-Dec-1990 1,722,850 1,236,242 486,608
31-Dec-2005 2,469,585 1,752,467 717,118
15-year growth 43.34% 41.76% 47.37%
annualized growth 2.89% 2.78% 3.16%

As the table shows, the LDS population in Utah is growing—it is just growing at a slower rate than the non-LDS population. The primary reason for this is the high non-LDS immigration into Utah over the last two decades.

According to a recent article in the Salt Lake Tribute:

Utah's ongoing religious diversification has little to do with the LDS Church or its teachings, but rather is a reflection of the economy.... When economic growth goes up, minority population goes up, and this is kind of a code word for non-Mormons.... While continuing to grow in actual members, the LDS share of the state population showed a slow but constant decline every year from 1989 to 2004.[1]

Data Sources

Endnotes

  1. [note]  Matt Canham, "Mormon portion of Utah population steadily shrinking," Salt Lake Tribune (22 June 2006).off-site (accessed 20 March 2007)

Further reading

FAIR wiki articles

Template:StatsWiki

FAIR web site

Template:StatsFAIR

External links

Template:StatsLinks

Printed material

Template:StatsPrint

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