Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In the 1980s, 80% of the people who were raised Latter Day Saints still identified with the church as adults. But today that number is closer to 50. That is huge. And it's reinforcing this narrative online that the church is uniquely losing members at an alarming rate. But I was surprised to find out that when you kind of zoom out and see the broader picture of how the church compares with other religions, the picture's a little bit different.
And so I was even genuinely shocked at some of the results found in this new paper that's been done. Today we're going to talk with his social scientist, Justin Dyer, to help us understand the broader picture, get under the data and see what's really happening under the surface. So thank you, Justin, for joining us today.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Oh, thanks so much for having me here. It's wonderful to be here.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: So Justin Dyer is a professor of Religious education at Brigham Young University.
You've received your PhD in human and Community Development from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. And you were a postdoctoral fellow at Auburn University. You teach classes on religion and family as well as graduate statistics. You are a fellow with the Wheatley Institute at byu and you're the current editor of BYU Studies. This is a new appointment and You've published over 80 peer reviewed articles and your work has been cited over 3,000 times. That is quite the resume.
[00:01:09] Speaker C: Just hearing about it makes me tired.
You are prolific. Amazing.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: And so the paper we're talking about today is Latter Day Saint religiousness well being and retention in the United States. And this is a paper you've worked on with a variety of colleagues. You've got Jenna Erickson, Sam Hardy, Barbara Morgan Gardner and David C. Dollahite. And this is a pretty robust finding, bringing together various studies people have done about religiousness in the United States and narrowing in on Latter Day Saints specifically. Super interesting stuff. So the question everyone wants to know is, of course people have heard the claim that the church is losing members in droves, that it's hemorrhaging at a large rate.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: What's the truth?
So that's actually the question that got us going on this in the first place. We'd heard that before and said, okay, well how would we find that out? And we have all kinds of data sets that are out there that we can draw upon to figure out what really is going on. And a lot of the things that we found also surprised us. But one of the most important things that we found is that you really do, as you said, have to zoom out and you have to Take a broader view of what's going on in the United States in general.
And there's a few things that you have to begin the conversation with. The data that we're using are big data.
I love data. I'm a data head. When I get a new data set, it's like Christmas morning. It's a present I get to unwrap. What am I going to find when I open these data.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: And.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: And it's something that I just really enjoy doing.
At the same time, there's a limitation to big data.
So we've heard the phrase you might miss the forest for the trees. In other words, you're focused so much on the minutia that you don't get the overall forest view of that. However, you can also miss the trees for the forest, where you're focusing so much on the macro that you miss the individual. And so what can happen with these big data sets is that somebody will say, well, I don't feel like my individual experience really is reflected there. And that's not surprising at all because we're looking at the overall landscape of it. And so when we talk about these things, obviously the individual trees are impacted by what's going on with the overall forest. But the individual trees, when you're looking at them, you need to see what's going on with that tree, what's going on that location. So when we're doing this work, we often want to look at the individual as well as the overall. So sometimes what you have is a person saying, well, this is my experience in the church. And there's the fallacy of saying, well, that's everybody's experience in the church.
There's also the fallacy of saying, well, these are the macro trends. And then that's going to be an individual's experience.
So we need to recognize what we're dealing with in these particular data. This is macro data. And seeing what are the overall trends. Right. Overall trends within a forest impact a tree. But then also there's unique things about the trees.
[00:03:54] Speaker C: Would you maybe say it's fair to say that what we need, like when we step back and we look at this macro data, what we need to do with that is we need to use it to help us contextualize the individual experiences of specific people, rather than, like, use it to maybe characterize or make judgments about. About it. Like if you're a bishop, for instance, and someone comes to you and they say, hey, I'm having a hard time, or I'm thinking about leaving the church, or Whatever. I don't know what people would say in a particular instance.
How does maybe having the forest, understanding the forest help them better assist the individual? I guess. Does that make sense?
[00:04:29] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I served as a bishop, and, you know, having all the data in my head is a great thing, but you always want to understand the person who's right in front of you.
Having the data in my head is as, oh, this is part of this kind of trend or that kind of trend. And that's really helpful for me to contextualize what this person is experiencing. But I also really need to understand that person. And if people are doing well in one way or struggling in another way, and I have those kinds of facts in my head, then I can say, oh, I can help direct them to the place that's going to be most helpful for them. But it's so important to understand who that person is in front of us and at every moment, at every moment here.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: So what is the reality? What is the data saying about Latter Day Saints leaving the church? Is it true? Does it match national trends of religious decline? Where do we sit?
[00:05:19] Speaker B: So this actually matches national trends of decline in our connection with each other in general. About 20 years ago, Harvard professor Robert Putnam wrote the book Bowling Alone. Most of us are familiar with that. And what he did back 20 years ago was he noticed there was a decline in social connectivity across the board. Civic organizations, philanthropic organizations, religious organizations, all these organizations have been in decline for quite some time. He just updated the book a couple years ago and noticed the exact same thing, that since he wrote Bowling Alone, we've had the same decline. And so in the United States right now, we're in something of a decline in social connections and participation in any kind of organization. And religion hasn't been spared those general trends. What was noticed was that in the 1880s, there was very low social connectedness. Makes a lot of sense post Civil War. But then we really increased in social connectedness dramatically to the 1960s, and then after that, there was a decline in social connectedness.
So all organizations were experiencing these kinds of declines in connectedness, in participation. And religion was just one of those things that experienced that. So then what we could look at is, okay, how did the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints fit into that? And we find that we follow the same general trends that there was a decline in connectedness to the church, just like there was for almost every other religion. Now, one of the things that was also present there is that Latter Day Saints, if you will, were Retaining members at higher rates than most other religions, and particularly when you consider active participation.
So when we looked at this, when we looked at were they a Latter Day Saint as a youth and then were they still identify as a Latter Day Saint later on? That's one measure. Okay, you're still identifying, but also do you identify and are you active? Are you going to church regularly? And Latter Day Saints, based on the pew data in particular, they found that those who stayed a member of their church as well as were attending that church regularly, Latter Day Saints were the highest in that. So have we declined in retention over time? The answer is yes. Not as much as most other Christian traditions in particular, and particularly with active retention, we're at the, if you will, top of that list.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Wow. So we are actually doing pretty good compared to other religions when it comes to retaining our members and that we tend to have higher levels of activity. I thought one thing that was really interesting as I was going through your paper is you seem to indicate that in other religions, or in our religion in particular, we have a lot lower rate of people who are like more nominally religious or less religious. Like with Catholics, you might have a certain group that are very, very active and go every week. You might have some that don't identify anymore, but you also have a large group that maybe only come on Christmas and Easter or something like that. Whereas in our church there tends to be a much larger percentage of people who are actively engaged or have left the church. And that gray area is a lot smaller. Like, what does that even mean for us? Like, does that. I don't know. Is that an indication that we're like a higher demand religion? How does that.
I don't know. What do you think of that data?
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's really. That's really interesting. So in order.
So as we looked at this over time, say back in the 1980s, there were a lot more people who identified as Latter Day Saint but weren't really going to church all that much. Today that's dropped dramatically where if you're going to identify as a Latter Day Saint, you're also probably very active.
And so what we find is that in our church, people are likely not going to identify as a Latter Day Saint if they're not going to church a lot.
That might have something to do with say, high demand religion, as sometimes it's referred to as.
But there's also a really interesting thing about that is that high demand religions are more likely to actually keep their members than, if you will, the lower demand religions because there's something there for people, if you will, to grab onto. And so you might still, if you're in a low demand religion, you might still say that you're a member of the religion, but you're not really going.
But if you're more a high demand religion, then you're going to connect even more if you're identifying as that religion.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Interesting. So, I mean, people usually use that term almost pejoratively to paint it as a bad thing. But there are clear benefits in the sense that it gets people very invested in wanting to be part of that community.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, you think of a high demand education program, you know, low demand education programs. Yeah, all right, maybe I got a little bit out of it. But when they're a little more high demand, oh, that means I'm really going to derive the benefit from that. And we might talk about later that religion is related to a lot of good things in terms of mental health. And if you're really engaged in that, you're going to derive more benefits from it.
[00:10:20] Speaker C: So I think part of what I'm hearing here is that when a religion doesn't demand a lot of a person, it's easier for them to just maintain the identity or the affiliation nominally because they weren't really doing very much to participate in the first place. Whereas in a religion that does actually expect higher levels of participation, when that participation drops off, you're also more likely to kind of shed the identity. Would you say that's fair?
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. Now, at the same time, we would, I think, love to say, love to see more individuals who for whatever reason can't make it to church very often. They still make sure they can identify as Latter Day Saint. No, this is still who I am. Sure. And that people who feel perhaps on the margin still feel like, you know what I really want to be able, I really should be able to still identify as a Latter Day Saint, because that's, because that's important as well.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: So one thing your paper explored is the qualities or the attributes of people who do end up leaving the church. What would you say is the biggest predictor of someone leaving the church right now?
[00:11:23] Speaker B: So we have some data where we track kids from their teen years into their early 20s. Now, a lot of data sets, they only have people at a single time point. And so they're really only looking at, well, what are their characteristics after they have disconnected with whatever religion they were. And obviously after you disconnect your characteristics might Change a little bit. And so with these data, we can actually see, all right, before they disconnected from their religion, what were they like and what were their characteristics? And what we found is that number one thing that kept people connected with the church was daily connection with God. If they felt on a regular basis that they've been connected with God, then that helps to keep them in, which makes a lot of sense. Another thing that we actually, that we found that is a general pattern is politics, whether you identify with a particular political party, and particularly if you identify as very much that particular political party or part on the ideologic spectrum. So we actually find, as we look at this, if you have from very conservative to very liberal. So very conservative, conservative, moderate liberal, very liberal, it's actually people on the very end of things, on both sides. On both sides, that are more likely to disconnect.
[00:12:49] Speaker C: So, so in some sense, like their political identity supersedes their religious identity.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.
[00:12:56] Speaker C: And that's actually. I do think that's an interesting phenomenon. I just feel like anecdotally I've observed that happening left and right, literally.
But it's been interesting because I felt like growing up, and I grew up in Utah in pretty conservative areas and stuff like that. I felt like growing up, I did not see as much of that phenomenon, at least as it occurs on the right. But I would say the last 10 years, I feel like we've seen a massive uptick in people who are very conservative tending to place that ideology and those politics above their commitment to the church and their identity as Latter Day Saints. And I don't know, it's just been kind of interesting.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: It has been weird. I felt the same thing. I mean, 10 years ago maybe was maybe the peak of wokeness, and that was where a lot of concern was about secularism, atheism, and so more progressive and liberal ideologies bringing people out of the church. But yes, in the last 10 years, I feel like we have seen more on the right also drawing people away. If, again, if they're on the extremes. Has that been your experience with the data?
[00:14:03] Speaker B: So what's happened over the last few decades is that it seems like politics have become more important to a person's identity than their religion. In other words, their religion is starting to follow their politics. If their political leader says something that seems to have a bigger impact on an individual and their identity and what they choose than even what their religious leader said. And so the primary lens that people are seeing their world through now is politics. Whereas before it would have been more their religious orientation. So 30 years ago, if you were a religious person, I probably couldn't tell whether or not you were a Republican or a Democrat because Democrats and Republicans were equally religious. That, that, that has changed in recent years where now Republicans are far more likely to be religious than Democrats are. And so what we find is that the research that's been done during the late teen years, there's a somewhat of a decline in religious identity. At the same time there's an increase in political identity.
So people stopped identifying as much with their religion during that time period or it's a sensitive time period and start identifying more with their politics. Now again, 30 years ago that wouldn't have any implications for religion that you became more political, but now it does have some implications for you because if you become more very conservative or particularly very liberal, that is going to disconnect you from religion. Again, in the past being liberal just as likely to be religious, but now that's not the case. And so then you enter a bit of an echo chamber. And so an individual that begins to, during that time of religious decline, become more liberal. And they're going to start on their news feeds and on their social media feeds, they're going to start seeing far more things that are negative towards religion because that's the direction that that has moved. Now I want to make sure that I say that Democrats, liberals, many of them are fantastic religious people. And I don't want to paint that with a broad brush. But again, when we look at these macro trends, that's what we're seeing. And that people who tend that way are going to get more negative messages about religion. And that's where you're going to see even more bifurcation in religion today. In religion today. Because just during that period of religious identification decline, you get that upswing in political affiliation and political identity. And if it's a little bit more liberal all of a sudden, you might start into a social space, social media space where religion isn't really well reinforced.
[00:16:45] Speaker C: So how do you.
This is maybe a high level question, I don't know and maybe there isn't data to answer this. But how do you think that connects with or relates to what we were talking about earlier about the decline in social connection?
Is this maybe a part of that trend where people are now turning to their political allegiances to try and find connection because of the weakening social bonds? Or what do you think about that?
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Strong.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Certainly people are looking for something, they're looking for some kind of connection. And if they do find it within their political party. Well, that's where they're gonna, that's where they're gonna gravitate towards. Now, unfortunately, the political party and the political activism is not happening as much in groups and persons, but it's just happening online. Right. A person's political activism is happening over social media. It used to be if you want to be politically active, you actually had to show up to some location and talk to people there. Or if you wanted to criticize somebody's politics, you had to like write them a letter.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: You know, if my, you know, strange uncle had some weird ideas about politics and I wanted to criticize him, I actually had to like, go to him, write a letter, do something. But now I can do that in a public, an open public sphere.
And so we've really altered how we do our politics today. And yes, if we've been declining in religion over the last few years, we are looking to attach. Where do we find meaning in our lives? Human beings have a deep desire to have purpose, to have meaning. And if we're disconnecting from religion, we're going to try and find it somewhere. And I think unfortunately, what we've seen over the last few years is politicians trying to give people meaning through bashing the other side, through some more extreme language that makes people feel like the political position is the most important position. And of course, if somebody identifies themselves as who I am with their particular politics, well, you've got their vote.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: It creates a very emotionally charged tribe.
[00:18:54] Speaker C: Well, the us versus them impulse in us as human beings, it's really ingrained. And so people who can harness that can really drive audiences in various ways.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: And I imagine social media is very influential because as you said, people are engaging in politics online. And with algorithms being so much more interest based now, instead of like friend or connection based, I mean, people are just living in a lot of ideological silos. If you are very conservative, your entire social media feed will start to look very conservative, or if you're very liberal, the same thing. And so we can tend to get into ideological bubbles and, and not necessarily find connection with people who are different than us. And personally, that's something I do love about the church, is that the way our wards are structured, like it's just based on geography, which granted, can have political implications sometimes. But you're going to church with rich people, with poor people, with people of all different walks of life, and it forces me to get to know people who are very different than me and learn to love them. And so I love that aspect of our church.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Yeah, Showing up. Right. Having other people around you and they might have different opinions. You learn how to work with them. And again, unfortunately, today what we're finding is that if you don't like somebody, you don't like a person's political opinion, then you distance yourself. Well, how could I go to a church where brother so and so or sister so and so has this particular political opinion that makes you feel disconnected? And the online world would have you feel like you should disconnect from that individual. And so that's one reason also is that we're fracturing more as a people and that's pulling us away from religion in a lot of ways.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: So one thing that kind of shocked me when I was reading this paper was the profile of what a former member of the church or an ex Mormon might look like. Because at least in my head, partially influenced by the most vocal ex Mormons online, who are, you know, activists for being an ex Mormon or talking about the church a lot, is that they are liberal, progressive, secular atheist. And reading your paper, that sounds like that's not quite the case. So, like, what is the typical profile of an ex Mormon? Is there one?
[00:21:06] Speaker B: Well, that's something that we were actually really interested in. And we have some great data from the spiritual seismology study. This was done by Ryan Burge hundred thousand people across the United States. And so, and there was a really good sample of Latter Day Saints within there too as well. And so we could look at just those who were no longer identifying as Latter Day Saint, they were raised Latter Day Saint, but they're no longer identifying. And we used a host of different indicators in terms of how religious they are, why they said they left their religion, what their politics are, and all those kinds of things. And we're able to use some statistics to group those individuals.
And the statistics identified four different groups. And we labeled them as faith keepers, faith leaners, faith distant, and faith rejectors. Now, those first two, the faith keepers and the faith leaners, that makes up about 50% of those who left. And they still feel actually pretty warm towards Latter Day Saints. They still think that religion is important to them. They still think spirituality is important to them. They still believe in general that Jesus Christ is the son of God. They still think that religion has a place in society. The most common reason they said that they disconnected from religion was their moving or other priorities. And what you actually found is that the faith keepers and faith leaners were actually more outside of Utah and Idaho, this area and so what seems to have happened to perhaps many of these? Maybe they did live here, maybe they moved to another location and it was just too hard to kind of get started again.
You know that when you move to a new school, that's really hard, right? As you're a kid, you move to a new school, are they going to like me? All that? And so when you move to a new location, it kind of can be.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: Hard to want to make new friends fit in.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Exactly.
And so it seems like a lot of individuals simply, if you will, kind of drifted away or faded away. They still feel pretty good about church members and church and still have beliefs, but they just kind of disconnected for various life circumstances. And actually a lot of them said that they would return and if a friend invited them.
[00:23:16] Speaker C: So I read that in your Deseret News article where you mentioned many of these people would come back. And I thought, man, we've got some low hanging reactivation fruit there.
We just need to get those ministering brothers and sisters out there, get, get people going.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Well, it reminds me of what President Hinckley said like years and years ago, that every single new member needs a calling, nurturing the good word of God and a friend. And so it sounds like for those who leave the church, those same principles really do apply. If they had some more of those things, maybe they'd be willing to join us again.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And I thought that was really an important thing to say. Most individuals who no longer say that they're a latter day saint, maybe they wouldn't even frame it. Well, I didn't leave the church. Right.
I just have had a hard time getting back to it after a move, after a severe life experience that kind of derailed them. It's just sometimes really hard to get back, back into the rhythm.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: So that's actually so surprising to me that most of the people it sounds like who leave the church are still religious or spiritual in some way. Think positively of the church and maybe left for incidental reasons like moving.
But the ones that we see most vocally online tend to be the ones that have rejected religion entirely and maybe are doing vocal critiques of it. What are some factors that might lead a person to reject faith entirely? Those faith rejectors?
[00:24:40] Speaker B: So when we looked at that, we have those faith rejecters and they are the lowest you can be in terms of rating spiritual and religion as important. They think that religion is harmful to society, that it doesn't have a place in society. And one of the primary reasons they say that they left is because they don't believe anymore. So these are individuals, and that's about 10% of the sample. That is like zero on thinking religion is a good is a good thing.
Earlier, when we said that the verys are more likely to leave, it is also true that people who have more liberal leanings are more likely to leave as well. So they're more likely to leave than, say, the very conservative, even though the very conservative are more likely to leave than the conservative. So the faith rejecters are more likely to be far more politically liberal, but they're also more likely to have had really bad experiences in their lives. We were able to look at did they experience what is called adverse childhood experiences. And it's all kinds of things, such as abuse. And we're actually able to look at abuse within a religious sphere. And so these are individuals who more likely to have grown up and experienced some abuse within a religious sphere.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: And of course, then in those instances, you would be more likely to say religion really doesn't have anything good to say, and you can fully understand why a person might be coming from that position. Now, obviously, I don't want to paint people who are in that category as all having experienced that, but they were just more likely to have had to have had that kind of experience.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: I think, if I recall, like, Pew recently came out with some new findings that those who had positive childhood religious experiences were far, far, far more likely to stay in that religion when they grew up versus those who had negative experiences as a child. And that sounds just like total common sense. Like, obviously, like, you had a good experience, you're more likely to stay. But at the same time, for me, it really underscored the importance of making sure, especially our children, our youth are having positive religious experiences when they're young, and making sure to protect them from harmful religious experiences that could maybe lead them down a path where they don't feel like they fit in anymore.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Which is why primary's got to be one of my favorite callings ever. Like, one of my favorite callings ever was me and my wife as we taught the Sunbeams because.
And in the Handbook of Instructions, it outlined the purposes of primary and number one purpose of Primary, help the kids feel the love of the Lord. That's number one. If nothing else happened in church that day, help them feel the love of the Lord. We all, when we drive by a church building, have kind of an unconscious, you know, somewhat reaction to that. Some people feel warm and fuzzy. Other people feel, ugh, you know, they don't feel Good about that. And guess what? Those kinds of feelings are built up over time and get started when they're, when they're kids. Not that what happens when we're kids is our destiny by any means. Absolutely not. We're not trapped in those past experiences, but they certainly do have an impact on how we perceive.
Perceive things, including our church.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: And how does retention or identifying as Latter Day Saint play out for the youngest generations? Gen Z, Millennial, Gen Alpha?
Sometimes there's a narrative online that maybe there's a religious resurgence. There seems to be, as you mentioned, men especially, becoming Orthodox Christians, becoming Catholic all of a sudden where they weren't before.
So for Latter Day Saints, what's happening with Gen Z and Gen Alpha and millennials?
[00:28:07] Speaker B: So in the report on that, we look and see, all right across age groups, who's more likely to have stayed in the church and who's more likely to have disconnected. And what we find is that independent of age, men are being retained in the church at about the same rate.
So the younger generations, older generations seem to be retained at about the same rate. Maybe the older generation is a little bit more, but there's not much of a difference. For the women, it is very different.
For the youngest generations, the Gen Z, they seem to be disaffiliating at a much higher rate than the women of older ages.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: So when it comes to these generations, are you saying that women today are leaving or youngest. The youngest generation are leaving today at higher rates than the older generation are leaving now or the oldest generation leaving when they were that age? When it comes to generation, it just kind of gets my wires crossed a little bit.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: So there are two aspects of this, right, right now, older people staying more than younger people, but our younger people today staying more than younger people a generation ago. So are younger people staying more in the 80s than they were than they are today? And the answer is overall, yes. People in younger people from previous generations were more likely to stay Latter Day Saint than younger people today are. By gender. We really don't know. There's just too few in these data sets to really be able to see to see that. That's why in our report, we don't break it out by gender because there's just too few. We just don't have data.
If you're talking about today, men across the board seem to be staying at members of the church at the exact same rate whether you're young, whether you're old. But for women, it does seem to be that women are leaving. The younger women are Leaving at higher rates than the older, older women are today.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Right now, I've heard the claim that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has a uniquely bad problem with mental health issues like depression and anxiety. I've heard things that like, oh, Utah has the highest rate of suicide and all of these things. So since mental health is so tightly connected to retention or staying in the church, how does the Latter Day Saint church actually fare when it comes to those mental health issues?
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. So we had for quite some time this narrative that, well, suicide is really high in Utah, and therefore that must be because of the church.
And the problem that we were doing is we were missing the forest for the trees. We were just looking at Utah and we weren't looking at the surrounding states. So Utah sits in the middle of what's referred to as the suicide belt. The highest rates of suicide in terms of the states are right in this corridor. And actually, if you take our region, we're absolutely average.
We're not unique in terms of suicide rate from any other. In fact, Colorado, who, Colorado, Wyoming, who touch us and who have far lower percentage of Latter Day Saints have much higher suicide rates than Utah. So when you look at our neighbors, you actually say, oh, Utah. If you look just at Utah in our region, you say, oh, we're doing good.
But then if you look nationally, you say, oh, we're not doing so. Oh, we're not doing so good. And it just depends on the perspective that. That you're taking there.
[00:31:21] Speaker A: So interesting. And because this is a particularly sensitive issue, the narratives really can get very extreme very quickly. And so often it's like, well, this is. This is data, this is social scientists, therefore, this is objective. This is truth. So. But it sounds like the reality is it really. Perspective and interpretation of data can drastically affect the conclusions you can come.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And that's what we need to do, is we need to make sure we're contextualizing all these.
All these things. Obviously, the suicide rate, no matter what it is, is bad.
[00:31:53] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: If it's not zero, we still have work to do. And I would never want to indicate that, oh, one suicide rate is, quote, unquote, better than another suicide rate.
We need to always be working to decrease the suicide rate. But if a person wanted to implicate the church, if you will, in suicide, actually, the suicide rate, if you look at regionally, it tells just the opposite story than what people are sometimes trying to tell.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: Okay? So when it comes to.
We've talked about mental Health. But what about, like, happiness? How do Latter Day Saints fare when it comes to their sense of feeling happy, good well being, when it compares to other religions?
[00:32:32] Speaker B: So in terms of happiness, well being, those kinds of things?
Latter Day Saints from the PEW data seem to be pretty high in that. In fact, there, if you win a statistical tie with evangelicals who are the highest in saying that they feel a deep sense of spiritual peace and well being, they're also one of the highest in saying that their family life is very good or excellent.
Our millennials are also the highest in these areas as well. So when you take a look at happiness in life, well being, those kinds of things, Latter Day Saints are at the top or very near the top in experience those things. And again, the higher demand, if you will, the religion, the more you're going to be deriving benefits of that religion.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: And if I remember correctly, we're also one of the top when it comes to practices like scripture study, prayer, attending church. Is there a correlation, a causation there? I mean, what insights can we draw from the fact that we are the top when it comes to investing in your religion and, and being happy?
[00:33:34] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question.
So there certainly is a correlation there because we are the highest in terms of attending church on a weekly basis in terms of prayer, in terms of scripture study, and then, well, we're also high in the indices of well being. So we could infer that there is a causal relationship there. And what we do is we try and track people over time to see. All right, does earlier participation relate to later well being? Because that's a critical part of when we're trying to establish causality. And when we do those kinds of studies, we tend to find that that is the case the more religious you are. Earlier tends to relate to increases in well being across time, even if you.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: End up leaving the church later on.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: What do you mean by that?
[00:34:20] Speaker A: So if you have a positive religious experience as a child and you say it does affect your well being over time, is that that true? If you stay in that church and identify for a long time, or even if you leave, does it still have a positive effect on you?
[00:34:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So whatever level of religiosity you have is typically associated with better mental health. So if you leave the religion, well, that might be one, if you will, wind blowing in a particular direction. But if you're still doing your prayer scripture study, you're still connecting with God, all that, that might be a wind blowing in a different direction to benefit you in that way.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: So that seems like a lot of doom and gloom when it comes to the decline of religion in the United States. And with Latter Day Saints and all of that.
Are there any positive trends we're noticing right now?
[00:34:59] Speaker B: Well, that's a fantastic point because, yes, there's actually a lot of positive things going on within the church itself. We see higher rates of convert baptisms than ever, including in the United States in these areas. We see massive participation in our church educational system. I mean, there's just so many things that are going very well. We're set up incredibly well. In fact, Ryan Burge, in his book the American Religious Landscape, talked about Latter Day Saints and how they have high birth rates, which is really good for a religion, and we have high participation rates and we're pretty young. And so that actually those demographic features spell a lot of good things for a religion. And he actually says that it looks like in those terms that Latter Day Saints have a bright future ahead now. He also notes some of the difficulties that we face.
But when we go all doom and gloom, we are missing such an amazing aspect to what's happening with the church today, and we need to not miss that.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: Well, I know I personally have felt very optimistic about the future because I've been paying close attention to the media moment we're in that we're getting so much attention right now from various reality TV shows and in Hollywood that there's a microscope on the church and we seem to be doing better at retention than other Christian religions and religion that has been on the decline maybe is plateauing. Like, I just see a lot of things pointing towards a positive future for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So even though we need to pay attention to a lot of these concerning trends, I'm really excited. Very cool stuff.
[00:36:37] Speaker C: Well, there's a lot of things. I mean, you talk about the media moment we're in, there's a lot of exciting things going on online among Latter Day Saints. I mean, we've seen so many pro Latter Day Saint faith creators come out of the woodwork in the last few years. And this is something that, like, we talk about younger generations and stuff. We're obviously, we're millennials, right? And so we're part of this data set that people are concerned about.
Well, concerns are starting to shift more towards Gen Z, but we're getting old.
But my experience as a millennial was like, even just like a few years ago, I just felt like, man, there's like negative stories coming out about the church all the Time it feels like it felt so depressing, right? And it felt like it was hard. And I thought about what it must be like to be a teenager in that environment where it just felt like there was always negativity about the church coming out and there wasn't a lot of pro faith creators out there or people making it feel like it was cool to be a Latter Day Saint or fun or that it was meaningful, enjoyable. And I feel like we've seen a huge uptick in that sort of thing. And who's to say what kind of impact that's gonna have long term on future generations as more and more Latter Day Saints who find meaning and connection and value in the teachings of the church are getting out online and speaking up. Right. And so I think there's a lot, there's a lot of things that, like, I'm way more optimistic about how a youth might feel about their faith now than I was even just a few years ago because they can encounter so much positive stuff online now.
[00:38:09] Speaker A: For a bishop or a parent who is worried about a loved one that is leaving the church or has left, what's one thing you might want them to know?
[00:38:20] Speaker B: So the retention rate is down, right. Since the 1980s, but the story is far from being written.
Right. We still have a long way to go. Gen Z has like triple their lifetime to live still, right? They've got a long time to live. We don't know what's going to happen from day to day. As Robert Putnam says, we were low in the 1980s in terms of connectedness. We went up, now we're down. There is no reason to think that we're just going to keep going down and that there's not going to be something that might happen now. Some people are pretty skeptical by that. Oh yeah, what could happen? Well, anything could happen, really.
President Nelson talked about the greatest miracles will happen in the coming years.
And so we're down, but certainly we shouldn't count ourselves as out by any means. And there's so many great things happening in the church. The high conversion rates, the high rates of participation in the church educational system, and there's, I think, some indicators where we'd say, hey, there's a lot yet to be there. And so we don't want to burn any bridges.
We want to stay connected with individuals who might have distanced themselves because we really don't know what's going to happen in the future. And so not despairing is probably the number one thing because there's all kinds of hope that we can have moving forward.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: That's beautiful and really encouraging. And like you said, I think pews even recently released that the decline of religion has maybe slowed if not plateaued. And so to me, that's a glimmer of hope. Maybe this is just a pause in the decline, or maybe it's the portent of things to come when it comes to religiosity in the nation. Thank you, Justin, for all the insights you've helped us with today. I feel like I've had a much broader perspective of those who leave the church and how we can build bridges there. And if you'd like to read this research for yourself, we will include a link in the description to the Deseret News piece that was recently published covering this research, and you'll find a link to the full paper in that article, circle itself. So remember, you can study deeply and believe boldly, and we'll see you next time.
