About that claim of mass resignations from the LDS Church

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You may have seen stories like this one that claim more than 1000 people will resign from the Church. An ex-Mormon lawyer is offering to help people leave the Church and is planning a rally on Saturday.

There is one important detail to consider: an on-line poll on its own Facebook site shows that a tiny percentage of the people resigning are active members of the Church. In fact, as of Thursday afternoon, here were the numbers:

*Considered “Inactive”: 340 people

*Resigned (Apostate): 104 people

*Non-Member: 43 people

*I don’t attend, but my children do: 17 people

*Attend Weekly: 16 people

*Attend Monthly: 6 people.

So, of the 526 people who responded to the poll, only 22, or about 4 percent, are actually going to Church regularly today. I am not convinced that 22 active churchgoers resigning is a “mass resignation.”

Now let me stipulate that even one person is a tragedy in the eyes of the Lord. We don’t want to lose members. Ever. And yes it is true that inactive members could in theory be activated at some point.

But have we considered that perhaps the Church may gain many more members than it loses by having a clear cut policy on moral issues? Most of the people who read this blog are in the United States or Canada. The rising acceptance of same-sex marriage in those countries is a phenomenon of a relatively small part of the world’s population. Most people in Latin America, Africa and Asia (which by the way are the areas where the Church is growing rapidly) do not share the enthusiasm for same-sex marriage.

Even in the U.S., relatively conservative churches (Mormon, evangelical Christian, Orthodox Jew, Muslim) are growing while liberal churches that accept same-sex marriages are in a precipitous membership free-fall.

So, here is what we know: the “mass resignation” isn’t really a mass resignation. Membership is growing quickly in countries with traditional values on marriage. And conservative churches are growing while liberal churches are in decline.

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About Geoff B.

Geoff B graduated from Stanford University (class of 1985) and worked in journalism for several years until about 1992, when he took up his second career in telecommunications sales. He has held many callings in the Church, but his favorite calling is father and husband. Geoff is active in martial arts and loves hiking and skiing. Geoff has five children and lives in Colorado.

18 thoughts on “About that claim of mass resignations from the LDS Church”

  1. Geoff, the numbers you post from the Facebook site are highly illuminative about the sort of people we’re dealing with; and from a temporal/political standpoint it’s certainly gratifying to see that conservative churches are, generally speaking, having fewer growth/retention headaches than their more libertine peers seem to be.

    Even so, I think we need to steel ourselves for a time when our sticking to our beliefs does cause adverse consequences for the church collectively, as well for its members individually. I don’t think such an outcome (including, at some point, a possible net decrease in church membership rolls) is precluded in our end-times prophecies; and I get concerned that “It must be growing, because it’s true!” becomes too easily conflated with “It must be true, because it’s growing!”.

  2. Completely agree JimD. There may come a time when the Church does not grow or even shrinks, and we need to be mentally prepared for that.

  3. People have been leaving the Church almost since the day it was founded. Of course Christ wants all to come to Him. However, we also know that “God will force no man to heaven.” Those who wish to leave the Church will continue to do so and those who find the good the Church has to offer will continue to join. There were those who left the Church because it refused to ordain African Americans. There were those who left the Church because it ordained African Americans. There were those who left the Church because it practiced polygamy. There were those who left the Church when it stopped practicing polygamy. This is more of the same. People come and people go but the Church moves forward always. As Bruce R. McConkie said, “The caravan moves on.”

  4. The Book of Mormon was written for our day: a day preceding the Second Coming…a day much like that which the Nephites/Lamanites experienced just prior to the First Coming. The year by year detail of Book of Mormon history really picks up in the hundred plus years prior to that First Coming. During that time period the fluctuations in Church membership, up and down, were massive. So far that hasn’t happened to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If it does, will that make the truth of things without effect? No!

  5. Did you happen to see the TED talk posted today from Chelsea Shields? “How I’m working for change inside my church.” She described the church in terms I could barely recognize. I hadn’t heard of her before, but apparently she’s part of OW.

  6. Whenever a person does submit a resignation letter, I have known bishops who were so kind-hearted that they took no action. Or if they did, I have known stake presidents who wouldn’t take action. But they were wrong. When a person wants to withdraw from our society, we must allow them to do so. I hope the bishops and stake presidents will promptly process these name-removal requests.

  7. Saw the first 6:29 of Chelsea Shields TED talk. Will watch the last part tonight.

    She describes being a kind of Mormon growing up that I sometimes see. These are families where the father rules the home and the mother is a meek individual who stays at home to raise a large passel of kids.

    The thing is that most of the families I know are families where even if the father “rules the home,” the mother is a spitfire.

    Chelsea is an anthropologist and first woman (or individual?) in her family to get an advanced degree. She appears to have been involved in the whole “wear pants to Church” thing, OW, etc. She does not appear so far in this talk to credit any of the myriad ways women do preside in Church.

    However when the portion I had downloaded ended, Chelsea was starting to talk about how anti–religion critiques from the left were as virulent as the attacks she got from her co-religionists who were objecting to the changes she and her fellows were pushing for. It seems like she was in the midst of saying that the anti-religion leftists cause SJW within religions to retrench and defend their religion.

    As for me, I applied to West Point back when West Point had only just been opened to women. During my mission, I lobbied my Mission President to set up a leadership structure within the ranks of the Sister Missionaries. I am the breadwinner in my family, and was the first female to [insert numerous events], including being the first civilian woman to obtain a degree from the Naval Postgraduate School, as the only woman in the first cohort that admitted civilians to NPS.

    Chelsea talks about being the kind of Mormon that told young missionaries they’d rather see them dead than return home with dishonor. What a weird thing to say to someone going on a mission. What a weird thing to say to anyone in any case.

    Back to the matter at hand, same gender sexual activity, particularly same gender sexual activity that is in the context of an enduring lifestyle choice, has been elevated to the status of apostate behavior. Like declaring that Christ didn’t actually atone for our sins (see Amasa Lyman) or that polygamy is required to obtain exaltation (see Loren Woolley) or that the Mormon Church is messed up (see Dehlin, Kate Kelly, Snuffer, Bennett, Godbe, etc.). And it is incompatible with membership, which is what we say to all who are either not baptized or baptized into other religions, even other Christian religions.

    Promotion of same gender relationships as an ideology is simply now declared as inconsistent with being a faithful Mormon as promoting Lutheranism as an ideology to which one is more devoted than one is to Mormonism.

    Perhaps Chelsea Chields was one of those Mormons who was told “I would rather see you dead than a Lutheran.” But I personally don’t know anyone who actually thinks that way. In fact, my mother (libertarian that she is) had told us as young people that she’d support us if we wanted to flee to Canada to avoid the draft and suggested she’d rather see us living an actively gay lifestyle than to never have love. But, alas, she raised a passel of kids who would rather take up arms than not and kids who adore people of the opposite sex. And even though we have learned about other religions and such, we have each in our time found ourselves embracing Mormonism, even sometimes at intense personal cost.

    Lesson learned – never tell a person you’d rather see them dead than (insert ‘honorable’ option). Never make death threats. And don’t take your own life. And when you learn of less-educated Saints doing such things, suggest that they might wish to consult with God regarding a better way to express their desires than loved ones enjoy all the benefits of the godly life.

  8. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, LDS Church membership grows by about 5,600 convert baptisms each and every week. (That doesn’t count child-of-record baptisms.) So, a “mass resignation” of a few hundred people is pretty much in the “noise level” in terms of Church membership even on just a weekly growth basis.

    I’ll note here that the standard counter-argument is, “Yeah, but you have low [or some will even claim “zero”] retention of new converts.” That is easily demonstrated as wrong, because growth in stakes and wards tracks very closely to growth in membership — and you can’t form new stakes and wards, at least not for long, without the corresponding growth in active Church membership, since there will literally be no-one to staff callings in those units.

  9. Meg – “Promotion of same gender relationships as an ideology is simply now declared as inconsistent with being a faithful Mormon as promoting Lutheranism as an ideology to which one is more devoted than one is to Mormonism.”

    Back up a bit there, the rule changes state nothing of the kind. It simply said that members of the same gender who marry will be disciplined. It does not say acceptance of others relationships are a test for being a faithful Mormon.

  10. I think that if I were actively proselytizing my Mormon friends to be Lutheran, my Mormon bishop might have a problem with that.

    Actively encouraging young people (or old people) to enter into same gender relationships, even if one is not oneself in a same gender relationship, might be viewed as similarly subversive.

    Now if I have a friend who is [insert other ideology], of course I could love them and support them (without going all Stockholm syndrome). I can advocate for them to receive fair treatment and all legal benefits. I can eat with them and sing with them and march for equal pay, etc. But I can’t start telling the young people in the Primary/Young Women/Priesthood class that they should engage in same gender sex without crossing a barrier that ought not be crossed (if one is a faithful Mormon).

  12. Frank,

    The policy change certainly implies such. Why must children raised in same-sex households explicitly disavow those kinds of relationships, unless it is expected that all members of the Church disavow them implicitly as part of our membership?

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