Jana Reiss is a 48-year-old convert to the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with a PhD in American Religious Studies from Columbia University. She recently penned this piece for RNS, “If Mormonism becomes liberal and progressive, won’t it decline even more?” Spoiler alert: the answer is yes… and no, mostly. It’s complicated.

Here’s a taste:

Popular sociological theory has long argued that conservative religions that make high demands of their members will flourish, while progressive ones that maintain more porous boundaries will inevitably decline. … More recent work has called this into question, driven by the reality that almost all religious traditions are now struggling — even conservative ones like evangelical Protestantism and Mormonism, which once seemed so reliably immune. … If [the sociological theory] could explain why liberal religions seemed to decline in the 1990s and beyond, we would see evidence that the exodus from liberal traditions such as mainline Protestantism was matched by a corresponding growth in conservative religions that was not already due to those religions’ higher fertility – and the data don’t show that. Religious decline is related to broader demographic patterns that are complex and ever-changing, from declining fertility and immigration to generational replacement. …

Hats off to Jana Reiss for a well-nuanced piece. She doesn’t simply dismiss the thesis that conservative religions grow, but looks at that dynamic in the context of larger and more important trends. I think she knows what she’s talking about.

We all have a stake in this important question, whether we’re mainline Protestant or Catholic or Evangelical or Orthodox, or…

Go read the whole piece here. Your comments are welcome below.

awr