Is Mormonism dying?

When outsiders think of Utah, polygamy and pairs of freshly scrubbed young men with nametags often come to mind first, probably more often than gangs, breweries, Catholics, lesbian punk bands, and the NSA. Yet actual Mormons — people who truly believe in the doctrines and participate in the church — currently make up little more than 40 percent of the state’s populace. While the church continues to spend untold sums of money on building lavish temples rather than using it for a more Christian endeavor of assisting the needy, there are fewer and fewer people interested in setting foot inside one of them. As a bare 41.6 percent of Utahns are now active Mormons, it leads one to wonder: Is Mormonism dying?

It appears to be.

At the top of the list of reasons why this is happening is immigration to the state by people who are less religious — and in the event that they are religious, like the rest of the world they are generally not Mormon. Californians and Nevadans appear to be attracted to the area … probably due largely to the fact that Utah is neither California nor Nevada. Can’t blame ’em. Coloradans also end up here, and for some reason Floridians do too, presumably because they are attracted to the bizarre or the surreal. And the two universities’ (if one considers DSU to be a university and not merely some weird, federally funded mafia) tendency to draw out-of-state faculty helps infuse the population with much needed individuals who may be better educated and less prone to brainwashing than some of the natives.

Another big factor in Mormonism’s shrinking demographic is the church’s demonstrated inability to retain members, particularly younger ones. Pew data from 2014 show that roughly a third of LDS-raised adults are now full-on card-carrying ex-Mormons while a scant quarter of LDS-raised adults are actual participating adherents to the faith. Even lowering the missionary age from 21 to 18 for men and 19 for women — presumably helping to more deeply indoctrinate youth at a younger, more fragile and susceptible age — clearly hasn’t stopped the bleeding.

Those numbers are even worse than Jehovah’s Witnesses’ retention rates, and theirs are abysmal.

The LDS Church has been aggressive about bolstering its numbers as plainly evident not only in the aforementioned proselytic tie-clad altar-boy duos (and now girl ones, ‘cuz they’re progressive now) but in the polygamous human farming of yore and Utah’s still alarmingly high birth rate.

(Saving the white race for Richard Spencer, eh lads? At this point, it’s a little late for a white ethnostate in Utah.)

Consider that Washington and Iron Counties’ rates of population growth have been particularly high over the past few decades. Mormonism’s falling numbers are even more glaring in light of southern Utah’s growing population.

The spectacular failure on the part of the LDS Church to retain Utahn millennials seems even more remarkable when one considers that these youth are largely more conservative than their progenitors. While polygamy was “officially” — *wink* — abandoned as a requirement for the ratification of the state (in a rare and historic event, God allegedly admitted that he had been wrong all along), the resulting citizenry since spawned by the relentless unprotected bedroom hijinks of married Mormon couples fortunately appear to be thinking for themselves.

It’s significant to note that there are “active Mormons” and “cultural Mormons,” also known as “Jack Mormons.”

I know, I know … even the slang is patriarchal. I’ll stick with the gender-neutral version.

You’re immediately confused, right? That’s because it’s immediately confusing to conflate a religion with a culture — yet here we are. Cultural Mormons are like ethnic Jews, or the delightfully oxymoronic atheist Jews. I dated a cultural Jew in college (not even a Khazar, she was a straight-up honky), and her family celebrates Christmas with nary a yarmulke to be seen. Not very Jewish.

The term “cultural Mormon” is misleading because these people no longer believe or participate in the religion. How they could be described using the name of the religion is baffling.

One is led to wonder what cultural Christians or a cultural Hindus would look like. I shudder to imagine cultural Muslims: otherwise normal dudes who like to treat women like property, throw homosexuals off of rooftops, wear daunting neckbeards, and recreationally explode amidst crowds?

The point is that demographic statistics that include cultural Mormons, adding roughly 20 percent to the apparent membership, are misleading and conveniently for the church skew apparent membership numbers. I imagine that the questionnaires must read thusly: “Are you currently a Mormon or pretending to be one?”

In reality, while the lesser toxin of cultural Mormonism is still prevalent here, the Mormon religion itself is increasingly moving toward becoming a fringe faith — making Mormons a shrinking minority in Utah.

As Mormons leave the LDS Church in droves, it’s interesting to note that they don’t seem to be going anywhere in particular. They’re not saying, “Hey, there’s even better pizza across the street, let’s go there instead!” They’re saying, “Uh … guys, this is not even food. This is round, hot garbage. Enjoy your dysentery, I’m going to go home and make myself a sandwich.”

One clear reason for the mass exodus of former members and inoculation of prospective victims is the ubiquity of information that was previously less readily available to the ignorant and naïve people upon whom missionaries predated in the pre-Internet age.

As harrowing an ordeal the LDS Church has made the process of unshackling oneself from its pews, ex-Mormonism is widespread enough by now that it even has its own Reddit group. Any who happen to be among the faithful should take a quick glance at that page to see what their Outer-Darkness-bound brethren are saying about their past experiences. Note the prevalence of sexual abuse in the discussions and ask yourself if you are surprised that “gentiles” don’t want their families anywhere near Mormon congregations (and to be even-handed, any others, for that matter) or its credibly dubious leaders, particularly behind closed doors.

Some groups, like Utah Lighthouse Ministry, are actually Christian groups attempting to “save” people from Mormonism by luring them into yet another thoroughly debunked religion. (“Look! It’s rectangular hot garbage!”) They are useful, rhetorically, as they still do a good job at poking holes through the already Swiss cheese of LDS doctrine, although their arguments ultimately dead end at the appeal to authority fallacy — where all religions ultimately seem to run out of oxygen.

Richard Packham, the man responsible for the public-domain photo that kicked off the public bedwetting that was 2015’s Undiegate, has long maintained a blog that begins, “To those who are investigating ‘Mormonism’” and is translated into nine languages. This one-page wonder begins by telling you at great length what Mormon missionaries will tell you and follows with a list of what they won’t tell you that is then anteceded by a thoroughly documented list of impositions upon a fresh adherent’s life, imploring the reader as follows: “Consider very carefully before you commit yourself, and remember that any doubts you may have now will likely only increase.”

Even harder hitting is MormonThink, a daunting scholarly endeavor that exhaustively catalogs inconsistencies, lies, forgeries, frauds, and fuckery on the part of the Mormon church and its contemporary and historical denizens.

The CES Letter is the stake in the heart of the vampire of Mormonism.

But the “Mortal Kombat” style coup de gras (“Finish Him!”) is the CES Letter, which documents what happened when a Mormon by the name of Jeremy Runnels committed the apparent crime of approaching his church leaders with genuine questions that were troubling him and was met with stonewalling at best and persecution at worst. It proves that the best way to dismantle a bogus narrative is to ask honest questions. What is most damning is not anything Runnells asked but the church’s response — or sometimes utter lack thereof.

Inshort, the CES Letter is the stake in the heart of the vampire of Mormonism.

For the record, this is not Mormon-bashing. I am not a proponent of ingroup/outgroup tribalism. I don’t condone the ostracization of Mormons or any other people and feel that nothing good could ever come of it.

But there is an enormous difference between a religion, which is just a collection of terrible ideas with no evidentiary defense whatsoever, and a person who has been ascribed or taken on a label in association with the aforementioned indefensibly terrible ideas. Bad ideas should always be attacked without mercy, but our neighbors should not. Love the sinner, hate the sin, as they say, rather ironically.

As the LDS Church wanes, the last thing we should do is demonize its membership, which has sufficiently demonized itself. Its membership itself does not comprise bad ideas with no evidence but rather people — oftentimes good people — who have unfortunately succumbed to bad ideas with no evidence. I would hope that adherents of other religions or cults in particular would view Mormons less with contempt and more with compassion. And I would hope that those with enough sense to abandon a science-fiction wish-fulfillment view of reality altogether would see clearly enough to realize that bad ideas require good ideas to counter them rather than hostility, exclusion, or violence.

While Mormons have historically discriminated against outsiders and continue to do so to this day, the most appropriate response as their religion slowly withers is probably to treat its congregants with kindness and to try to keep the bigger picture in view: that we’re all humans, we’re all Americans, and we’re all Utahns; that we’re all struggling to get by in life and are all dealing with our own pains, losses, struggles, and hardships, some unique and some shared; and that united we stand but divided we will always fall.

The viewpoints expressed above do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.

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