Comments about ‘Utah LDS population hits lowest level ever’

If I was LDS I would be worried why the land of Zion is declining in membership. Maybe that is why the LDS church declines to comment? Maybe all the Christian evangelism in Utah that has been going on over the past two decades is starting to show fruit?

With growth of Utah this is not a major concern, there will just be more opportunities for missionary work. The overall membership of the church has never declined and will continue to grow.

Robert - Why should we Latter-day Saints be worried about the decline in church membership here in Utah?
I doubt that the many Latter-day Saints who live in California, Idaho, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, Montana, Florida and Maine are going to lose any sleep over this, so why should I?

I know that some LDS critics believe Utah is the only place in the whole world that has active Latter-day Saints, so if Utah is losing LDS membership, that only means one thing. The LDS Church as a whole is in decline.

Sorry, but that just isn't the case. Utah will continue to become more diverse, and the LDS Church will continue to grow everywhere.

Combined with the statistics on LDS Church activity rates, this means just about 33% of the Utah population are ACTIVE.

Interesting that all of the above comments make no sense. We live in St. George, which continues to have a smaller PERCENTAGE of LDS population, while the LDS population continues to increase in St. George. The same is occuring in the State of Utah.

Many who are from faiths other the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints continue to move into St. George and to the rest of Utah, making the PERCENTAGE of LDS go down in relation to the total population. That has nothing to do with the total number of LDS in Utah, just the percentage. The total number of LDS is continuing to go up as well, just not at the proportionate rate that the population increases.

LDS and doing fine:
You're exactly right. Just because the overall percentage of LDS is dropping in Utah, it doesn't mean that overall numbers are dropping. The article, especially the headline, was misleading about this. What interests me are the comments here that seem so gleeful about this. Fortunately, most of the non-LDS that I have met who live here don't exhibit such open bigotry.

Thanks all of you LDS for your comments. But the percentages do show that Utah's Mormon population is dropping and there doesn't seem to be an explanation why, just alot of speculation.
Also, it doesn't make me a bigot because I disagree with the LDS church's teaches or that I am glad that the percentages are dropping. I am concern very deeply for the LDS people because of the LDS teaches. To me, the drop in percentage of LDS in Utah is an encouraging sign that two decades of evangelical evangelism is showing fruit. But that's just my opinion.

How about we look at the growth of the LDS church in other states and countries? All this tells me is that not only are people of other religions moving into Utah, but many LDS, like my family, have moved to other states. "Zion" is not in Utah, it's in our hearts.

Well, you might not be concerned about the percentage decline now but I would not be suprised that the LDS church leadership are not scratching their heads about why? Could the recent drop be due to the recent Jesus Christ/Joseph Smith dvd and LDS documentaries that have been shown around Utah? I wonder?

Hopefully, this farce will play its course within another 100 years and people will turn to logic and reason instead of Deities for guidance in their lives. I am successful and happy and I post here so that others may see the light and shed their oppressive, useless, time-consuming dogma that is religion.

Can i get an Amen? :0)

Maybe the LDS Church should give a discount rate of only donating 7% of their salary for the next five years maybe that will help boost sells I mean membersright?

Whatever this is a cult, I say the Feds should step in and evaluate the states government.

Anytime LDS membership statistics are mentioned for Utah (and the rest of the world) it should be remembered that it is the ACTIVE LDS ONLY that should be counted. In Utah that avtivity rate is about 50%. If the population of Utah is 61% LDS then in actuality it is nearer to the 33% mentioned by a previous poster. World wide the active LDS is in the 30 to 35% range. 13 millon claimed membership is therefore actually under 5 million, representing .00077 of the worlds population.

"two decades of evangelical evangelism is showing fruit"

I highly doubt that. As an Evangelical Christian who also happens to think Mormons are good people, I've never met a Mormon who started going to a different church. Usually, they just stop going to church altogether.

As a non-Mormon I agree with the proportional comment. Take out the massive Hispanic and non white mmigrant population growth ( which is a national US trend)and the percentage of LDS remains the same.

Although Mormonism has accepted contraception, their birthrate is still higher than evangelicals. The "ethnic block" of Mormonism within Utah, will erode, but remain dominant for centuries to come.
In fact they are not sitting on their hands, but "evangelizing" these new Americans.

People talk about how the LDS only has about a third of their memebers active. That is very consistant with every world religion.

Citing the low percentage of LDS in the world is no implication as to the truth of the church. The Bible says the path to Heaven is straight and narrow and "few there be that find it". So, if the LDS church had 80% of the world's population, then I might think about there being something wrong with the picture. (and no, I'm not meaning to imply that only the LDS are going to "Heaven ", but that's a topic for another day).

As a fellow mormon, I think that its fine that the LDS population is growing smaller. Mor people to convert!