Church Growth in Latin America

“Clutching the Book of Mormon and dressed in a white starched shirt and neatly pressed charcoal colored slacks, Willy Guzman walked across the cracked sidewalks of Zona 6 in Guatemala City to the shiny, white church that rises above the modest and mostly shanty flats of the neighborhood.

As it neared 8:00 a.m. Sunday morning, the streets were bustling with men dressed in Western-style suits and women in skirt suits pushing baby strollers, all making their way towards the church. ‘Everyone walks to church,’ Guzman explained, ‘so as not to make anyone work on this day of worship.'”

Sound like a paragraph or two from the church news? Nope — it’s the lead-in to a very nice article on MSNBC, titled “Mormon Conversions Surge in Latin America.”

50 comments for “Church Growth in Latin America

  1. The article states:

    “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded in Utah in 1838 by Joseph Smith.”

    Oops…

  2. That wasn’t their biggest mistake.

    “Guatemala, a country whose Catholic roots stem to the 18th century when Spanish Conquistadors set out to Christianize most of Latin America.”

    Er, only about 200 years off there.

  3. It’s always disheartening to see the news screw up on basic facts and figures on a subject you know intimately — it shows you how little you can rely on them to adequately educate you.

  4. Having served a mission in Quito Ecuador (88-90), this is a subject I’m pretty fond of. While there are many baptisms in Latin America, the activity rate doesn’t look very good in most wards and branches. This morning I just happened to have a conversation with a professor in my department who has presented two papers on LDS growth in Ecuador at geography conferences this year. I hope the Church has social scientists looking closely at missionary work down there–tens of thousands of former missionaries would love to know how their efforts have fared, and how the Church is working to improve its missionary efforts and effectiveness. I would give up my bird conservation career in a heartbeat to be a global missionary work analyst for the church to use my geography and social science training and talents to help build the kingdom.

  5. Rob says: “I would give up my bird conservation career in a heartbeat to be a global missionary work analyst for the church to use my geography and social science training and talents to help build the kingdom.”

    What a wonderful and sincere testimony, Rob. Thank you.

  6. As a former misionero Guatemalteco, I thoroughly enjoyed this link and reading about Guatemalan saints. Thanks for providing it. I of course stole the link and put it on a post at my blog. And now I’m remembering that I forgot to credit the Times and Seasons …

    By the way, since this article was about missionary work in Guatemala I thought it was an appropriate time to share an odd Guatemalan mission experience.

    There was a possum (in spanish, tocquasin — ok, I can’t be sure on the spelling here) that lived in our roof in one area (Esquipulas, right on the borders of Honduras and El Salvador). This possum drove my companion mad because it would walk around inside the roof in the middle of the night and make all kinds of noise (I’m a sounder sleeper than that).

    We of course told some of our investigators about this and a local coffee farmer we were teaching volunteered to lend us a trap we could use to catch and kill the animal. I tested the trap with a ball-point pen and the metal clamp came down so hard and fast that it shattered the pen into bits before I could even think about yanking it away. As a result, I was extremely confident this contraption was going to work. The farmer, who was kind of an odd old duck, wasn’t lending us the trap entirely for free. He was hoping if we trapped the animal that we’d give it to him to eat. That was a price we were willing to pay.

    So we loaded that trap with a salchicha (small hot dog) and in the middle of the night we both woke up to a very loud sound as the trap was sprung. Well, that possum was very speedy and very smart because somehow he still got the salchicha out of the trap without getting seriously mangled. When we looked to see if he was trapped he sat there in the corner of the roof just glaring at us, his eyes glowing yellow, with the salchicha in his claw.

    He must have been really really mad because he came down from the roof later the next day while we were gone and peed all over my suitcase. The stink was simply unimaginable. I had to use a full bottle of the Guatemalan version of Lysol to clean that thing off and get rid of the smell.

    So that’s my story. But now, after what I’ve learned from the Times and Seasons, I have to really wonder if this animal really was a possum. Perhaps it was, in fact, a …

  7. “It’s always disheartening to see the news screw up on basic facts and figures on a subject you know intimately — it shows you how little you can rely on them to adequately educate you.”

    It really is interesting, isn’t it. Almost everytime I read a news story about something that I have knowledge about, the story gets something wrong – be it basic facts, or just emphasis and tone.

    My dad was recently called “the son of Utah Senator Orrin Hatch” in an article a couple of weeks ago in the Salt Lake Tribune. Not only is he not his son, you’ve got to go back like 200 years before our family lines meet.

  8. Kaimi, I’m assuming you’re asking me which mission I served in. If not, well … I’m always the fool. :)

    Guatemala Guatemala City North Mission: January 1990 – February 14, 1992. Valentine’s day let’s me know every year exactly how long it’s been since I served. Dang I’m old.

    I left just before they created the Central mission.

  9. My brother (younger) went on his mission to Guatemala, and he married a girl he met there, Deborah.

    They have 8 children, all boys, and they’re having their ninth, a girl.

  10. D. Fletcher,

    LoL. Some people take this “multiply and replenish” thing pretty seriously. I like how it sounds in Hebrew because it rhymes: “peru va revu”.

    Actually I’m not entirely surprised or shocked as I descend from those who have had many children. I’ve got more than 30+ cousins on each side. That’s not necessarily so unusual for us LDSers.

    I sometimes wonder if the number of children people have is influenced by the Bible stories. I always feel like reminding people that yes, Jacob had 12 sons and at least one daughter (Dinah)… but he had two wives and concubines to bear them all.

    All the power to him and her though. You must enjoy being an uncle of so many. :)

  11. My own family had 8 children (I’m 5th).

    I have 40 nieces and nephews. I can’t remember their names, let alone birthdays, ages, etc.

  12. How is church growth in south/central America overall? That is including people who leave or go inactive as decreases. Church growth here in the US has been flat for the past few years and even absolute growth (i.e. growth not including people of record who’ve left the church or who are strongly inactive) has been decreasing every year for nearly 10 years.

    One worry is that the American population pays most of the tithing and that growth in other countries is starting to dominate, yet economically don’t contribute enough. (I should add that these critics unfortunately make a lot of assumptions about how much money the church *needs*. We really don’t need new lesson manuals as often as we get them nor as nice churches as we build.)

    Anyway, I wonder, given the basic derth of growth in Europe and the flat growth in the US/Canada what is going on down south.

  13. Danithew: Wait until you’ve been an RM longer than you lived before your mission. One’s mortality really kicks in.

  14. My parents wanted to have a lot of kids but God, in his infinite wisdom, realized that I and my sister were plenty enough for them to handle.

    I was always jealous of the big families when I was growing up and I still kind of admire them. I used to go over to my cousins’ house to get what I called “peace and noise”. They had something like ten kids in that family and there was always fun stuff going on at their house.

  15. “It’s always disheartening to see the news screw up on basic facts and figures on a subject you know intimately — it shows you how little you can rely on them to adequately educate you.”

    I get the same feeling when (e.g.) J. Barzun or P. Johnson, in one of their vast popular histories, screw up details about the Church. Granted, their histories are vast and covering material that primarily has nothing to do with the Church, but still, even little things like getting the name wrong (“Church of Latter Day Saints”) or mixing up the First Vision with the first appearance of Moroni, etc., suddenly make me suspect the other 1,000 topics.

  16. One statistic I heard from JWL (a poster here) suggested that the Church would run out of funds in about 2020.

  17. Sheesh Clark… you’re doing everything you can to get us back on topic. :)

    You write:

    Church growth here in the US has been flat for the past few years and even absolute growth (i.e. growth not including people of record who’ve left the church or who are strongly inactive) has been decreasing every year for nearly 10 years.

    Can that be right? I didn’t know that. I would have thought otherwise.

    There is a serious inactivity problem in Latin America… at least there was ten years ago in Guatemala in most places that I served. I remember our mission president had to pound it into us that 25% of our baptisms should be adult males, as the vast majority of conversos previously had been women and children. The women and children were often sincere converts but would fall away because the husband/fathers hadn’t been converted. Also, at that time and in many places, there weren’t really many (if any) native priesthood holders to provide leadership for the local churches.

    Isaiah 52:1
    Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean.

    It was in this context (of needing male converts) that our mission president taught us that the “beautiful garments” meant the putting on of the priesthood. And he taught us that if we did not convert mature men (hopefully with an education as well) that the Church would never be strong in Guatemala.

  18. “And he taught us that if we did not convert mature men (hopefully with an education as well) that the Church would never be strong in Guatemala.”

    Well, not until they start ordaining women, anyway :)

  19. Kent Huff’s new book “Creating the Millenium” has whole chapters devoted to Church growth. Interesting stuff. He suggests that the Church may be at its toughest decision point since its beginnings. (speaking of problems with growth)

  20. For those who haven’t seen it, http://www.cumorah.org has probably the most interesting and sobering analysis of our missionary efforts around the world. Lots of stats and comparisons with missionary work of other churches.

  21. Just trying to practice my html skills. I messed this up the last time I tried. Hopefully this will actually be a link:

  22. It seems that the article has been edited since it first appeared on MSNBC. It now reads:

    “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded in Fayette, New York in 1830 by Joseph Smith. A major chapter of church history involved the westward trek by Brigham Young in 1847 and the expansion of the church to Salt Lake City, Utah.”

    The mistake in date re: conquistadores in Guatemala is still there, though.

  23. It seems that the article has been edited since it first appeared on MSNBC. It now reads:

    “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded in Fayette, New York in 1830 by Joseph Smith. A major chapter of church history involved the westward trek by Brigham Young in 1847 and the expansion of the church to Salt Lake City, Utah.”

    The mistake in date re: conquistadores in Guatemala is still there, though.

  24. Nathan Oman is the husband of Heather Bennett, my first cousin.

    Senator Bob Bennett is my uncle.

    Julie Fletcher Sheffield is my niece.

    Heber J. Grant is my great-grandfather by his 3rd wife, Emily Wells, the daughter of Daniel H. Wells.

    Just keeping you all up to date.

    :)

  25. D.Fletcher: Yes…www.cumorah.com is the correct URL, thanks. Very much worth an hour or more reading through.

  26. The growth rate including people leaving can be found by googling for a recent survey of religious commitment. I don’t have time to do it. There’s also an analysis of recent stats by someone at FAIR. I posted the link in one of these threads but again don’t have time to look it up. There are several places, including ex-Mormon sites, that have absolute figures (the ones quoted in conference) that show the growth rate slowly decreasing from around 4% in the early 90’s. The rate decreases each year and the number of baptisms per missionary decreases each year.

    The brethren know about all this and have been doing various things to try and fix it. (For example the recent changes to the teaching program, among others) So far as I know the trend hasn’t reversed.

  27. I found the stats.

    Dave Stewart’s analysis

    An other interesting analysis done by an antagonistic ex-Mormon is at
    http://www.lds-mormon.com/churchgrowthrates.shtml

    I’m not sure I buy the sorts of statistics he uses, but it is interesting. (i.e. assuming a stable growth mathematically unrelated to social actions that might change it) But he is right that Mormons have done that and with poorer mathematics.

    I should add that I think the 4% growth rate (members of record) of the early 90’s was unusual compared to prior decades. So I think it unreasonable to expect that could continue. I think it part that was due to changes to the missionary program under Pres. Benson. A more aggressive approach that couldn’t be sustained forever. (If only because you’d get the majority of people that approach would reach after a while)

  28. It is a wonder the Church is even threatening to become a “new world faith,” given the fact that (1) it has received no state or military support (as did Christianity and Islam) and (2) it was founded, as Fawn Brodie pointed out, in the age of the printing press. That Joseph Smith and Kierkegaard were contemporaries is telling to me. The entire world was going one way, Smith and his followers went another, back to the roots of faith. It was not simply a new movement within Christendom (and thus respectable and safe), but really an entirely other thing, with a restored priesthood, new scripture, preposterous claims of angels and daylight visions, and so on. Its missionaries were goodhearted rustics with no training whatsoever, as was its leadership. Its members were hounded, hated, murdered, and finally driven out of the country and into the wilderness. It is incredible to me, not only that the Church survived, but that it survived in style—building up universities and an unrivaled seminary and institute program which have basically bucked the secularist trend while remaining vibrant, viable centers of learning. I realize I am preaching to the choir here and stating the obvious and so forth, but really, what the Church has accomplished minus the advantages of the other world faiths out there is worth at least one celebratory whoop. Whoop!

  29. What about projections in the mid-1990s that if the Church continued to grow at its current rate there would be at least 30 million members by 2025, on the low end estimation (see, Bateman speech, http://www.byu.edu/stlife/campuslife/sl/foundational_info/byu_in_new_millenium.htm), or 265 million members by 2080, for the high end estimate (see Jeffrey L. Sheler, “The Mormon Moment: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Grows by Leaps and Bounds,” U.S. News & World Report, November 11, 2000, cover story)?

    You might go to http://www.lds-mormon.com/churchgrowthrates.shtml for an analysis by Duwayne Anderson of the 265 million prediction of U.S. News & World Report. This analysis seems to be very conscientious and concludes that the U.S. News estimate drew from a 1995 study based on incomplete membership data and optimistic growth and population conjectures (which in 1995 estimated Church membership to be at 230 million in 2080). It seems that Anderson guesses that the Church will eventually have an equilibrium membership of about 30 million. Someone else can parce through the math (I was a lit crit guy before law school).

  30. I provided the link to Anderson’s paper earlier in this thread. The 265 million used a very simple analysis of growth that was inappropriate. I’m not sure Anderson’s is apt either, in that it ignores social situations. But all things being equal it is far better math.

  31. Along with Clark I just want to alert you to Anderson’s bias. On another link he tries to disprove the Book of Mormon through a statistical analysis of the distribution of dates in the book and weakly concludes that it is “likely that the dates in the Book of Mormon were concocted as part of a fabricated story.” http://www.lds-mormon.com/numbersinthebookofmormon.shtml

    The prose in his analysis of membership numbers seems more flat and unaggressive. Without any knowledge of mathematical statistics, I can’t say whether he has manipulated the numbers or results to achieve the result he wants. But it seems pretty straightforward.

  32. The basic problem with all of the new-world religion projectiosn of hundreds of millions of Mormons by the end of the century is that they assume constant exponential growth. The original mistake was interestingly not made by a Mormon, but by Rodney Stark in an article from the early 1980s. Mormons picked up the projections from Stark. The problem, of course, is that virtually no social or biological system exhibits exponential growth indefinitely. Even cancer eventually kills off its host.

  33. Clark Goble: thanks for the information… I do hope that my asking for source material didn’t come across as accusatory. I just like primary research.

    : )

  34. The problem, of course, is that virtually no social or biological system exhibits exponential growth indefinitely. Even cancer eventually kills off its host.

    I’m wondering what exactly would stop Mormonism in its tracks or cause Mormonism not to continue its exponential growth. Atheist secular Europe? Communist China? The Islamic-dominated Middle East?

    Didn’t Joseph Smith predict that the LDS Church would fill North and South America first and then fill the earth? I wonder what juncture, if any lies between the two?

    Maybe we’ll just have to cross the Berin Strait en masse. :)

  35. I guess the quote comes to us from Joseph Smith, but is reported by Wilford Woodruff (the sanad (chain of transmitters) on this hadith looks pretty good):

    “… this church will fill North and South America … it will fill the world. It will fill the Rocky Mountains. There will be tens of thousands of Latter-day Saints who will be gathered in the Rocky Mountains and there they will open the door for the establishing of the Gospel among the Lamanites … This people will go into the Rocky Mountains; they will there build temples to the Most High.

    From what I found on-line, Wilford Woodruff quoted Joseph Smith as saying this. The date Wilford Woodruff provided the quote was April 26 1834 in Kirtland, Ohio.

    I have to admit I’m kind of surprised at the order in which this quote provides areas that will be filled. First North and South America, second the World and then third the Rocky Mountains? Perhaps it should have been Rocky Mounains, then North and South America and then finally the world. However, the final emphasis at the time must have been that a prophecy had come true, that the Saints had settled in the Rockies, as Joseph Smith had said they would.

  36. Of course, any projected growth rate for mormonism is, in the long term, problematic if it exceeds the long-term population growth rate, because we would run out of people to convert.

    But on to Anderson, he basically says that assuming exponential growth gives one answer, but one could also try to fit the projected rate to a curve that flattens, based on some idea about carrying capacity or a steady state where the population growth ends. So far, this is fine, because we may well feel that we are in the exponential growth phase of a process that will diminish in the long term as we approach world religion status. But note that by long term, we aren’t talking about 150 years, because we’ve had pretty consistent long term growth throughout our history.

    The second part of his analysis is completely uncompelling. He tries to match the observed growth experience to a function that is forced to have a long term steady-state. The steady state is assumed to occur, but the attempt is to estimate the eventual carrying capacity. In principle, this is fine. We all understand that there may be a change that causes the numbers to be off due to a dramatic shift in social institutions or whatever, but this is just as true with the Stark numbers.

    The real problem is that, since our growth over the last 150 years actually is fairly well estimated by exponential growth, there is almost no useful information coming from the data about the carrying capacity he wishes to estimate. You would be as well off guessing the carrying capacity as going by his numbers.

    To see the problem, notice that he provides a table where he adds additional years of data. If some fundamental carrying capacity was coming through from his data in a clear way, as opposed to being basically garbage, this number would be reasonably stable. It isn’t. It bounces around from 30 million to a high of 333 billion (!). These changes result from adding only ten years of data. Based on this, in ten more years, the numbers may bounce around to 500 billion or down to 20 million. Translation: His method is completely uninformative about the carrying capacity of the Church. The reason is obvious, he needs data from years where the slope is steadily falling as part of the transition to steady state. We simply have no idea at this point if we have those data points available. Before the transition occurs, his numbers are no more informative than a wild guess. Careful statistical analyses always work hard to provide information about how informative their number is. This is usually summarized by a standard error.

    If he were to report sampling error to his estimation, and correct for the dependence across observations, it would show a massive amount of uncertainty in his estimates of carrying capacity, which can be inferred from the way even a little more data causes massive changes.

    On the same note, the Stark numbers also can’t tell us about whether or not there is a steady state. Stark’s article is reasonably clear about the limitations of what he is doing, and I think most of us understand that things may change. Anderson’s discussion of a steady state is fine, but his attempt to estimate that steady state is useless.

  37. since we’re talking about how worldwide growth rates look, I’ve put a table I put together earlier this year from the statistical reports in conference up on my blog.

  38. In recent years two Latin American countries allowed respondents in the census to indicate their religion. These countries were Chile and Mexico. Significantly, the numbers of self reported Mormons in these two places differed tremendously from the numbers the Church claimed.(See linked Ensign article claiming 1 million members in Mexico)

    A detailed breakdown of the numbers for Mexico follows; if anyone is interested in the Chilean numbers email me.

    Mexico has 1348 wards, 40 districts, 478 branches, and 179 stakes, according to the Cumorah report. It takes 8,283 men with the MP to man those up just with stake and district presidencies, bishoprics, branch presidencies. That is 18% of the total of self-identified Mormon men ages 25 and up.

    Taking the self-identification numbers, we have an average of 112 people of all ages and sexes in every ward and branch in Mexico. Any of you who have been there probably saw considerably less than 100 people. That should give you a clue about activity rates.

    A negative difference indicates more women than men. Overall there were some 16,900 more women than men who self-identified as Mormon.
    This sex differential also puts paid to Dr. Vasquez’s notion of the Church appealing to Latin American men, an appeal he chalks up to the atavistic, macho attitude of the Church and its counterpart in lower class Latin Americans. (Dr Vasquez is the professor cited in the MSNBC article who mentions Mormonism appeal to men)

    Note too that 12% of the Mexican numbers are children between the ages of 5 and 9.

    Mexican Total Number of Members (census)
    205,229
    Men: 94,132
    Women: 111,097
    Difference: -16,965

    Age 5-9: 23,851
    Boys 5-9:12,105
    Girls 5-9: 11,746
    Difference: 359

    Age 10-14: 26,875
    Boys 10-14: 13,318
    Girls 10-14: 13,557
    Difference: -239

    Age 15-19: 27,267
    Boys 15-19: 13,002
    Girls 15-19: 14,265
    Difference: -1263

    Age 20-24: 23,128
    Men 20-24: 10,670
    Women 20-24: 12,458
    Difference: -1788

    Age 25-29: 20,276
    Men 25-29: 9,136
    Women 25-29: 11,140
    Difference: -2004

    Age 30-34: 17,602
    Men 30-34: 7,829
    Women 30-34: 9,773
    Difference: -1944

    Age 35-39: 15,836
    Men 35-39: 6,893
    Women 35-39: 8,943
    Difference: -2050

    Age 40-44: 13,766
    Men 40-44: 5,873
    Women 40-44: 7,893
    Difference: -2020

    Age 45-49: 9,915
    Men 45-49: 4,214
    Women 45-49: 5,701
    Difference: -1487

    Age 50+: 26,713
    Men 50+: 11,092
    Women 50+: 15,621
    Difference:-4529

    Links referenced:
    Ensign magazine
    http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/2004.htm/ensign%20july%202004.htm/one%20million%20in%20mexico.htm?f=templates$fn=document-frame.htm$3.0$q=$x=$nc=4789

    Mexican census click Ver Cuadro
    http://www.inegi.gob.mx/est/librerias/tabulados.asp?tabulado=tab_re01b&c=738

    MSNBC report on Mormonism in Latin America
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5378318

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