Saints alive! Davis County has wide variety of faiths

Religion is alive and well in Davis County, with more than 210 different church buildings, representing almost two dozen separate faiths.

It's no secret that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the dominate faith in the county. An estimated 83 percent of county residents were LDS, according to a year 2000 membership report by the Association of Religion Data Archives.

However, a different 2002 survey estimated Davis County's LDS membership at only 72 percent. Since Davis County was settled by Mormon pioneers, the LDS religion has always been the dominant faith around.

Surprisingly, it wasn't a Catholic church that was the first non-LDS faith in Davis County. Bountiful Community Church was the first non-LDS church, and it arrived in 1881.

This United Church of Christ is located at 100 N. 400 East.

According to Glen M. Leonard in "A History of Davis County," employees attracted to military installations in Davis County brought with them "religious backgrounds not well-served by existing area churches." This began to happen in the early 1940s.

Leonard believes that Davis County's LDS population dropped from 80 percent in 1940 to only 72 percent in 1950.

He wrote that the non-LDS population grew from 20 percent to 28 percent from 1940-50. The LDS population also grew but not was much as the military-fed migration did.

Until 1941, Catholic Church members in Davis County either went to the Cathedral of Madeleine in Salt Lake City or St. Joseph Parish in Ogden. A Paulist mission of the

church was established in Bountiful in the early 1940s, using rented space. St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Layton started in 1942, and Saint Olaf's Catholic Church opened in Bountiful in 1959.

Clearfield Community Church originated in 1945, as another of the faiths where demand by military workers figured prominently.

The first Buddhist church in Davis County came to Syracuse in 1925 to serve Japanese farm workers who started coming to Davis County in 1917. That church merged with Ogden's Buddhist church in 1979.

Wat Dhammagunaram Buddhist Temple and Meditation Center came to Layton in 1995 at 844 E. Gordon Ave., to serve 80 families in the area. It started in Ogden in 1975, moved briefly to Layton's Fort Lane and then to its current location.