Several weeks back a rather amusing gaffe happened in an online article published in the Deseret News, a newspaper owned by the LDS church. The article is called "LDS CIO helps LDSTech attendees better understand church membership." This article reports on a representative from the church attending a conference and divulging a number of interesting statistics regarding church membership. Some statistics shared in the article include:
- 48% of members live in the U.S. and Canada
- 36% live in Latin America
- 3% live in Europe
- 3% live in Africa
- 3% live in Oceania
- 7% live in Asia
But the single most interesting
statistic originally shared in this article was that only 36% of Mormons
attend church each week. As you can see, this particular number is
nowhere to be found in the article linked above. That's because the
original article was hastily edited after initial publication, with an editor's
note saying "Some of the statistics originally reported in this
article have been removed because they have not been verified by the LDS
Church. The information was removed at the request of the speaker."
For those familiar with the book
"1984" by George Orwell, you will recall the concept of the
"memory hole." In the book, which depicts a futuristic
totalitarian society, where the thoughts and actions of citizens are heavily
monitored and controlled by "Big Brother," the main character works in a branch of the
government responsible for editing history and news. If the government
wants the population to collectively "forget" something, that
something is excised from all texts and publications and sent down the
"memory hole."
The LDS Church seems to naively
think it can live in the far-fetched world depicted in 1984. Perhaps Mr.
Orwell could have never foreseen the invention of the internet, which makes any
kind of "memory hole" impossible, but today's church leadership has no such excuse. For, as you guessed it,
someone took and preserved a screenshot of the article as it originally
appeared. You can view it here.
Tip for a church grappling with the
age of the internet: the more you try to bury something, the more attention you
are going to call to it. It is understandable why they would want to bury
it--this is the closest the church has ever come to releasing official numbers
on activity rates, even if it was inadvertent. It's hard to brag about
"15 million strong" (if that even bestows bragging rights at all)
when only a third of those members are at church on any given week.
So what are some of the implications
of this statistic? First, it's important to point out that the church
doesn't keep specific attendance on a member by member basis (that I know of,
at least). Instead, someone in the congregation, often the ward clerk,
will go around and count how many people are in attendance at sacrament
meeting. Babies, investigators, visitors, etc. All will be
counted. Therefore, this figure could be seen as a rough
"ceiling" on activity rates. In any event, the statistic must be an
average; therefore specific variations and outliers are
unimportant. This also means that church leaders should seriously
consider dropping the "strong" qualifier to any claim that the church
is "15 million members 'strong.'" The word "strong" implies
members who actively believe and participate in the church. But if, on
average, over 9 million of the people that the church claims as members want
nothing to do with it, they can hardly be considered "strong"
members. Perhaps the claim should be revised to something like "5.4
million strong." But that would be like time traveling back to 1983,
and it would destroy the illusion of growth the church so desperately strives
to maintain.
We really shouldn't be surprised by
this kind of disparity. The church is notorious for hiding or obfuscating
data like this. Take, for instance, the church's practice of keeping
"lost" members on its rolls until they are 110 years of
age. ("Lost" means that the church has not received any
official notice of the member's passing.) Well, how's that for
optimism! That means every member born since 1904 is still on the
books unless the church has formal notice of death or--possibly--resignation. Given the
less-than-precise record keeping that happens in third world countries, this
essentially guarantees a perpetual inflation of membership numbers. And
let's not even get started on the lack of financial transparency. It's
abundantly clear by now that the church will shout numbers from the rooftops
when it thinks they will make it look good. But when the numbers aren't
so flattering? Well, that's when you have to go digging. Or, in
this case, screen-capturing.
