The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints membership history
Through its final edition, which was published for 2013, the Deseret Morning NewsChurch Almanac gave information on historical membership records of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The church's reported membership as of December 31, 2019 was 16,565,036. The growth of 1.21% in 2018 was the lowest annual percentage growth since the 0.93% in 1937. Though a relative slowing of the growth rate continues, although it slightly increased in 2019, church membership growth continues to outpace the world population growth rate, which is currently around 1.05% in 2020. Reports of rising membership, however, have been called into question.
The records of the LDS Church show membership growth every decade since its beginning in the 1830s. Following initial growth rates that averaged 10% to 25% per year in the 1830s through 1850s, it grew at about 4% per year through the last four decades of the 19th century. After a steady slowing of growth in the first four decades of the 20th century to a rate of about 2% per year in the 1930s, growth boomed to an average of 6% per year for the decade around 1960, staying around 4% to 5% through 1990. After 1990, average annual growth again slowed steadily to a rate around 2.2% for the ten years ending 2015, approximately double the average world population growth rate of 1.1% for the same period. The growth rate has not been greater than 3% per year in the 21st century and has declined steadily since 2012. The rate has not been above 2% since 2013. In May 2019, however, Phil Zuckerman, Ph.D., of Psychology Today expressed skepticism of how the Mormon Church reports growth in membership, noting that while church membership was reported to be rising, separate analysis conducted by journalist Jana Riess showed that reports of Mormon retention, religious participation, teachings and belief have been declining since 2007. By 2019, Mormons represented 51% of the population in their longtime stronghold of Utah, in contrast with 75% in 2000. Riess made her research public in her book The Next Mormons. Brigham Young University book reviewer Stephen Cranny stated in his review of The Next Mormons that the book "fill the need for a large, representative Latter-day Saint sample." Cranny also stated that "Media outlets and others will occasionally perform one-off surveys that gather Latter-day Saint responses to specific issues, but generally social scientists, the media, and the public are flying in the dark when it comes to finding representative numbers about Latter-day Saint attitudes and beliefs. Furthermore, the few surveys that do have large numbers of Latter-day Saints are generic religion surveys, so questions do not reflect concerns, language, or concepts specific to Latter-day Saints."
