1.7% Have Horns
On July 24th, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released A Portrait of Mormons in the U.S. It is a generally interesting statistical survey, so go ahead and click if you're so inclined. I'll just point out a couple things that relate to our blog demography. First Mormons have grown to 1.7% of the U.S. population, exactly the same as Jews. Look for more Other Side of Heaven coming to a box office near you. Jehovah's Witnesses are at .7%.
Mark and I are both in the minority here, I don't call myself Mormon and I'm pretty sure Mark calls himself a Jehovah's Witness (correct me if I'm wrong Mark.) I'm curious if Sam and Ben would call themselves Jews, I would guess they do, but I think that identifying as a Jew is a little bit different than identifying as almost any other religion in this country.
Next there's this graph which reflects feelings on the "Importance of Religion"
This is typical of a similarity in devoutness of Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses that is seen in the study's numbers on church attendance, scripture reading, prayer, receiving answers to prayer, sharing faith and belief that their faith is the one true faith.
As a former Mormon, or forMo as the kids are saying these days, I can understand why the devoutness numbers and the retention numbers are relatively high. I would think that the two are corollary. But if I rely on that as an explanation I'm confused about the Jehovah's Witness' high devoutness numbers but sort of surprisingly (to me) low retention numbers. Anyone have any hypotheses? Does the no birthday party thing really leave that big a scar?
Mormons have a relatively high retention rate of childhood members compared with other major religious traditions. Seven-in-ten of those raised Mormon (70%) still identify as Mormon, a figure roughly comparable to that seen among those raised Catholic (68% are still Catholic) but somewhat lower than among those raised Protestant (80% are still Protestant and 52% are still in the same Protestant family). Jehovah's Witnesses, by contrast, have a relatively low retention rate (only 37% are still Jehovah's Witnesses).
Mark and I are both in the minority here, I don't call myself Mormon and I'm pretty sure Mark calls himself a Jehovah's Witness (correct me if I'm wrong Mark.) I'm curious if Sam and Ben would call themselves Jews, I would guess they do, but I think that identifying as a Jew is a little bit different than identifying as almost any other religion in this country.
Next there's this graph which reflects feelings on the "Importance of Religion"
This is typical of a similarity in devoutness of Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses that is seen in the study's numbers on church attendance, scripture reading, prayer, receiving answers to prayer, sharing faith and belief that their faith is the one true faith. As a former Mormon, or forMo as the kids are saying these days, I can understand why the devoutness numbers and the retention numbers are relatively high. I would think that the two are corollary. But if I rely on that as an explanation I'm confused about the Jehovah's Witness' high devoutness numbers but sort of surprisingly (to me) low retention numbers. Anyone have any hypotheses? Does the no birthday party thing really leave that big a scar?
posted by b r christensen at 8/04/2009 10:25:00 AM
4 Comments:
I'm Mark's sister and also one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Here's a reason: the number of Jehovah's Witnesses represent the number of people that go door to door and talk to people about the bible regularly. You can be attending our meetings, and reading the bible but if you aren't involved in the preaching work you aren't officially one of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Ok, I guess I could see that. Are you saying there's one standard for saying you were raised in the religion and a higher standard for calling yourself a Witness. (Is it okay to shorten it like that?)
Brad, that's actually a pretty good summary. Part of it is the basic idea that you aren't born a Witness, it's something you have to choose to become. Since you have to be active in the preaching to be counted, you can't just be a Witness without doing anything. (For comparison, there are about 7 million Witnesses in the world right now [1 million in the U.S.]. But at the annual memorial of Jesus death in 2009, we had about 16 million people attend. Some of those were raised Witnesses and left. And others have studied the Bible with Witnesses, but haven't started preaching yet.)
I'd also say another part is that there isn't a grey area when it comes to activities defined by the Bible as sinful (i.e. sex before marriage or sex outside of marriage, etc.). In other words, when you’re raised as a Witness, there isn’t a separation between choosing to do one of those things and choosing to no longer be a Witness. So if you’re an adult and you’re an active Witness, you have to be devout enough to follow all of the Bible’s moral requirements and spend time evangelizing every month.
Natch, I could explain this better in person if you have any more questions.
I think I get it. . . I don't think there's much gray area (grey area? are you talking about the Queen's hair colour?) in the LDS religion for most moral questions either, but I do think that someone who isn't living by those moral requirements might still call herself a Mormon, just one that isn't active, or "temple-worthy." You're saying that a person in similar circumstances in your religion would likely not call himself Jehovah's Witness. Right?
Even if I do have a good grasp on your explanation we should hang out sometime soon anyway. If you have time between all the bible study and spreading the good news that is. :)
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