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It was a great conference, but . . .

It was a great conference, but . . .

Last updated on: April 2, 2017 at 6:34 pm by Dan Peterson

It was a great conference, but . . . 2017-04-02T18:34:07-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Sweden, where the Stockholm Temple stands, offers an interesting case study.
(LDS Media Library)

The annual number of converts continues to drop, as it has been pretty consistently dropping for quite some time.

The figure announced at Conference yesterday was 240,131, which, I’m told, was the lowest since 1987 — thirty years ago — when there were 227,284 convert baptisms.

In 1987, we had 6,440,000 members on the records of the Church. Today, we’re nearing 16,000,000.

In 1987, we had 34,750 missionaries. Today, we have twice that. And, given small family sizes, missionary numbers have been sinking a bit.

Needless, to say, some critics of the Church are absolutely giddy with joy at those numbers.

Many are attributing the statistical drops to the internet, to increased knowledge about supposedly sordid and/or damaging truths regarding Joseph Smith and Church origins, and so forth. Some anticipate the absolute decline and maybe even the eventual disappearance of Mormonism, and they’re making little effort to conceal their enthusiasm at the thought.

I’m confident that their, umm, optimism is misplaced, and that their proposed causes are, at most, of secondary importance. I’m sure that too many members have been adversely affected by online criticisms of the Church (mostly of the secular kind, not of the Evangelical variety that we’ve known for virtually the entire history of the Church), of course, but I don’t think that such criticisms begin to account for the numbers. I’m not convinced that the issue is entirely, or even largely, Mormon-specific.

There is definitely something significant going on, and there’s no room for Latter-day Saint complacency on this matter.

The fact is that religious disaffiliation is increasingly common in the West. (Much has been written, for example, about the dramatic recent rise of the religious “Nones” — not, and this is significant, necessarily atheists, but disconnected from religious communities.) It’s not peculiar to Mormonism. In fact, we may be weathering the storm rather better than many groups. Our youth-retention figures remain relatively good, but they’re not as good as they once were. And it’s not only religious disaffiliation. More than a few observers have noted a general decline in voluntary associations — very much including marriage and the family.

Whether this is permanent or cyclical isn’t (and, for a very long time, won’t be) clear. Whether anything can be done about it or not isn’t apparent.

I’ve been thinking, for some time now, of beginning a very serious and systematic consideration of the issue. (My oft-expressed interest in Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option emerges from my broader concern here.) I won’t have much time, especially in the near term, to devote to it, but I’m finally about to get started on it. Here’s a vague sketch of what I have in mind:

There are several books and other items that I want to consult, study, and comment upon, that I think will be relevant to the issue. These include such items as Robert Bellah’s famous Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life and Robert Putnam’s equally famous Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Perhaps I’ll even go back to David Riesman’s classic The Lonely Crowd.

A very good resource specifically for Latter-day Saints is LDS Church Growth.

I also, though, want to look at certain people like Timothy Keller, who’ve been very successful, it seems, in — to use a term that’s popular with Evangelicals — “planting” vibrant and quite orthodox churches in deeply secular areas like Manhattan and western Europe, reaching people who’ve often seemed unreachable but who plainly aren’t.

I’m also interested in following up on interesting thinkers like Mary Eberstadt, whose work seems relevant. Perhaps also the late Robert Nisbet and the badly-missed Christopher Lasch.

I would appreciate recommendations for additional reading or consideration, and I would appreciate serious conversation with others — particularly with faithful others, and certainly with civil and respectful others — who are interested in the topic or who would be interested in such a conversation. It can’t be very intense or time-consuming. I have too many other obligations. But I’m resolving that I’ll give the matter sustained attention.

I’m not quite sure how (or whether) to structure this. Perhaps, if somebody competent in such things is willing, it might even be advisable to set up a special online place for ongoing discussion.

My interest isn’t purely — nor even largely — theoretical. The social and religious landscape around us is changing, and I think we need to adapt. Our message is a rich and magnificent one, deeply meaningful, profoundly comforting, and — here’s the really good part — true. But “how shall we sing the Lord‘s song in a strange land?”

My initial response to the falling numbers is pretty much what every other Latter-day Saint’s would be: We need to send out more and better prepared missionaries. We need to contribute to the missionary fund. But the effectiveness of our missionaries, in terms of converts-per-missionary, has fallen dramatically over the past decade or two. Why? What can we do to improve? How can ordinary members help?

I believe very strongly, of course, in the counsel of the Brethren to share testimonies on the Web. That’s a principal reason for the existence of this blog and of Mormon Scholars Testify. I believe that we can and should do much better in this regard. It’s one of the reasons I’m pushing the Church’s 2017 Easter Initiative. Every member really should be a missionary.

I want, though, to discuss the changing nature of the challenge faced by our efforts to preach the Gospel and build the Kingdom. I hope to have a conversation, with various books and authors and perhaps with some of you, about ways to arrest and even reverse the unfortunate statistical trend. Perhaps — here’s one of my questions — there are things that Latter-day Saint writers (and even artists and composers and others) should be doing to express our faith, to tell our story, in new ways that might appeal to people for whom our current approaches don’t work, and to whom our current image might be off-putting. The Gospel is radical in the best sense of that word. Are we radical enough in our explanations, our teaching, of it?

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