Am I alone in believing this way??

[zil2]

9 hours ago, Anddenex said:

well-meaning but empty comments like, “Women are more faithful than men—that’s why more of them will be in heaven.”

...

The other part is, we shouldn't be frustrated with well-meaning truthful comments. The probability of the statement being shared is true. Why do we think truth is empty? All truth is from Christ.

Perhaps in today's world (literally 2025), we women are the first to see that this statement isn't as true as it once might have been?

Alternately, the comment can be made empty when spoken by a man who otherwise shows little to no interest in hearing anything a woman has to say.  If they are so much more faithful, then why on Earth would you refuse to consider what they have to say?

Back to that "perhaps", @Carborendum recently mentioned a study showing that for the first time, men outnumber women in the Church (I think the stat was for us, but maybe it was for Christianity).  He, and others (I've seen the same study discussed on X), seemed to assume that the stat indicated women were leaving the Church faster than men.  But I wondered whether it might indicate that men, who have been disenfranchised by the world, are now flocking to the Church as the only place where they are appreciated, whereas the women of the world would not be flocking to the Church, thus the imbalance.  Alas, I don't know the source of the graphic / info, so I can't go research the data behind it.

FWIW

[Carborendum]

3 minutes ago, zil2 said:

Back to that "perhaps", @Carborendum recently mentioned a study showing that for the first time, men outnumber women in the Church (I think the stat was for us, but maybe it was for Christianity).  He, and others (I've seen the same study discussed on X), seemed to assume that the stat indicated women were leaving the Church faster than men.  But I wondered whether it might indicate that men, who have been disenfranchised by the world, are now flocking to the Church as the only place where they are appreciated, whereas the women of the world would not be flocking to the Church, thus the imbalance.  Alas, I don't know the source of the graphic / info, so I can't go research the data behind it.

The study showed both.  All religions showed this pattern.  And we as LDS are not immune either.  Many women are leaving religions of all types.  So far, the numbers are not all that big.  But the fact that it has gone lower than men is a new phenomenon.  We've seen it in world history.  But in America?  This is the first time.

Men flocking to the faith?  No, I haven't heard about that.  I have heard that women are leaving.  And it seems that the driving force is modern feminism.

[Traveler]

10 minutes ago, zil2 said:

.....

Back to that "perhaps", @Carborendum recently mentioned a study showing that for the first time, men outnumber women in the Church .......

This is technically flawed and easily proven to be false.  The Church was organized on April 6, 1830.  The number of members were 6 and they were all men.

 

The Traveler

[The Folk Prophet]

3 hours ago, Carborendum said:

And it seems that the driving force is modern feminism.

Meaning...it's Disney's fault.  

[LDSGator]

4 hours ago, Carborendum said:

Men flocking to the faith?  No, I haven't heard about that.  I have heard that women are leaving.  And it seems that the driving force is modern feminism.

Almost all religions are experiencing a decline in membership and activity rates. Everyone wants to think their religion is immune to this, and that’s fine, but it’s not true. Religions all across the board are struggling right now. 

[NeuroTypical]

In 2024, we had 17.25M members.    Today we have 17.51M members.   1.2% increase.   We're not losing members, we gained 250,000 members in the last year.   It is true that our yearly growth numbers continue to slow, but that's true for global population rates as well.  2025 saw only a .9% increase in humans, so we're growing at a faster pace than humanity in general. 

So yeah, Gator is right that almost all religions are declining in membership.  Across the board.  But not the Latter-day Saints - we continue to grow.  I think most of it is growth across the world and not in the US.   Probably why way over half of the announced temples are not in the US.

[HaggisShuu]

44 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

In 2024, we had 17.25M members.    Today we have 17.51M members.   1.2% increase.   We're not losing members, we gained 250,000 members in the last year.   It is true that our yearly growth numbers continue to slow, but that's true for global population rates as well.  2025 saw only a .9% increase in humans, so we're growing at a faster pace than humanity in general. 

So yeah, Gator is right that almost all religions are declining in membership.  Across the board.  But not the Latter-day Saints - we continue to grow.  I think most of it is growth across the world and not in the US.   Probably why way over half of the announced temples are not in the US.

I think Islam is doing pretty well at the moment. We are reporting growth, but I don't think this is true for most of Europe, on paper my ward has grown (with converts and children) - in reality attendance has seen a pretty severe drop off. 
 

Although I'm not sure how much this is due to dodgy record keeping. I went through our records, and a huge chunk of people on our records were unbaptised COR, now adults, or people who moved years ago, or dead people. Thanks to a bit of diligence our ward attendance went from 30% to 50% overnight, while decreasing in membership

 

Edited Tuesday at 07:28 PM by HaggisShuu

[Carborendum]

It is difficult to see exactly what is happening on the global level.  But in the US we can compare some interesting numbers.

• The US birth rate is below replacement.
• The US population keeps growing at 0.5%(2023) due to immigration (both legal and illegal).
• The Church growth rate in the US is at 0.9% (2023). 
  • A lot of this is because we're still one of the leading demographics for large families. We average 2.8 children per woman vs 1.6 for the nation as a whole.
  • Some is through missionary work.  We had around 250,000 convert baptisms in 2023.  This is approximately 0.03% of the rolls (not necessarily active). (only 3% to 4% of the total growth).
  • So, the overall growth of the Church in the US is largely driven by child-of-record births and immigration. 

Any way you slice it, we appear to be growing at a faster rate than the US population at large.

EDIT: To address activity rate, we must understand that 50% is 50% for both the membership numbers as well as growth numbers.  So, comparing apples-to-apples, the growth rate numbers shown above remain the same.

Edited Tuesday at 08:32 PM by Carborendum

[LDSGator]

18 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

To address activity rate

I’ve always thought there’s a simple cure for low activity rates: be happy.
 

It does not take great insight to grasp that people are seeking a happy place to be in this world. If we created an environment where people left happy, we’d have no issues with retention and activity. 

[HaggisShuu]

21 minutes ago, LDSGator said:

I’ve always thought there’s a simple cure for low activity rates: be happy.
 

It does not take great insight to grasp that people are seeking a happy place to be in this world. If we created an environment where people left happy, we’d have no issues with retention and activity. 

This is definitely something I could personally do better. I have a habit of trying desperately to avoid other people while at church. 

I think this is only 50% of the equation though, I think the remaining 50% comes from the individual. Our ward lacks priesthood, and we had a 20 year old man convert from just hearing the missionaries talk about the saviour in the library. He was very enthusiastic, welcomed, loved and celebrated because "Yay - an enthusiastic man has come to save the day". He left after about 2 months because his previous baptist minister told him THE TRUTH about old Joe Smith. 

A sad loss really. 

Edited Tuesday at 09:10 PM by HaggisShuu

[LDSGator]

27 minutes ago, HaggisShuu said:

I think this is only 50% of the equation though,

Oh, of course. There‘s no easy answer.

 

28 minutes ago, HaggisShuu said:

He was very enthusiastic, welcomed, loved and celebrated because "Yay - an enthusiastic man has come to save the day"

I’ve seen the same thing happen. Once the enthusiasm wears off (and it did because the ward used him as a workhorse-he was the only one under 65) you’ve got someone with nothing to do and no meaningful connections.