Their success is mostly down to prosyletisation, in addition to any endogenous growth (due to fertility) that was the topic of the previous post.
So why are they so successful, and perhaps more importantly where are they successful? Is it something intrinsic to what they offer, or is it more to do with finding fertile soil and a receptive, willing audience? That’s what Ryan Cragun (University of Tampa) and Ronald Lawson (CUNY) set out to discover.
They analysed how these three religious had grown in different countries around the world, to see what kinds of countries saw the most rapid growth, and also whether growth was self limiting.
The graphic shows this for the Mormons. The 'Human Development Index' is a standard measure, developed by the UN, which combines life expectancy, adult literacy, and per capita GDP. Mormons grow fastest in countries mid-way along the index.
It’s hard to say why this might be, but it may be linked to the social upheaval that goes hand in hand with modernization. Perhaps people turn to these new, highly active religions to help deal with the stresses and uncertainty that this upheaval can cause.
The other important finding is that growth appears to be self limiting. After an initial burst (the ‘growth momentum’), then growth slows in proportion to the number of people already converted. It’s as if there is a certain pool of people who are attracted to these groups and, once they’re in, recruitment falls away.
What’s intriguing, however, is that there doesn’t seem to be competition between groups. In other words, the growth rate of Mormons is slower if there are already a lot of Mormons in the country, but it’s unaffected by the numbers of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
That suggests that these groups appeal to different kinds of people – although an alternative explanation is simply that the hotspots of each group is separated geographically within a country.
Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses have both seen a significant slowdown in growth in recent years, although for Seventh Day Adventists the slowdown is less significant. This is probably because most current Mormons and JWs today live in relatively wealthy countries, where prospects for conversions are poor. In Europe, the number of JWs is actually falling!
Cragun, R., & Lawson, R. (2010). The Secular Transition: The Worldwide Growth of Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Seventh-day Adventists Sociology of Religion DOI: 10.1093/socrel/srq022
This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
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"Among the great American exports to the rest of the world, there are a bewildering variety of religious cults and sects."
ReplyDeleteYeah, sorry about that.
I'm in Cape Town, South Africa, and many of my colleagues happen to be Seventh Day Adventists. One of the curious things about them is how much less extreme they are than American Adventists.
ReplyDeleteAll but one of them smoke, they eat meat (but not pork), they have extra-marital relationships fairly openly. Yet these are people heavily devoted to their religion as their primary source of meaning and social activity.
They are all middle-class people from ethnic groups that were discriminated against by Apartheid. I can't offer any insight, however, as to how they originally came to that sect.
Having not read the original paper, I don't know if this is actually a problem with the data or not, but... in the case of Mormons, self-reporting should not be trusted. The LDS church claims a much higher expansion rate than independent data supports, and it's believed that they do so largely by means of counting all of their increases but discounting all of their decreases. For instance, someone who is baptized but then goes inactive within a few weeks and ultimately self-identifies with another church will still be counted, unless they jump through significant hoops to have their name removed from the rolls. Worse yet, there have been suggestions that the numbers claimed by the LDS church even include the deceased... not the recently deceased where their data might just be out of date, but the long deceased.
ReplyDeleteIf you've ever been a member, even for a minute, they are probably counting you towards their totals.
Independently-obtained data does exist, at least in some countries, though, so maybe the authors were able to use that...
If I may address James Sweet's comment... You're absolutely correct that the Mormon data are inflated. I do address that in the paper. However, I don't think the inflated data undermine the findings for a rather complicated reason: The dependent variable in the analysis isn't the size of the population of a given religion in a country but rather the rate of growth of that religion in any given country/year. If I tried to predict the size of the Mormon population, the inflated numbers would likely undermine the statistical models.
ReplyDeleteBut I believe predicting growth rates is less susceptible to this criticism. Here's why: Growth is probably fairly accurately reported (and by growth I mean the total increase in the Mormon population in a given year). But given the inflated numbers of the religion, the growth rates are actually under-estimated in my analysis, not over-estimated. Why? Because the starting population is inflated, meaning a smaller base is actually generating the growth than it appears. If that is the case, then growth rates are higher than those I calculated. So, the growth rates I use for the dependent variable are likely off by a little bit, but they are also actually under-estimates of growth.
This doesn't solve the problem, of course. Mormon numbers are inflated and, until there is either a new approach employed by the religion or a reliable set of third-party statistics (there are some using census data), it's the best data available.
So, I guess in short, you're right, but I tried to account for it not only by mentioning it as a limitation but also by predicting growth rates rather than population sizes.
On a related note, JW data actually has the opposite problem as they only report Publishers. SDA data is the most accurate of the three.
Oh, and props to Tom for not only writing about my paper but for this awesome blog!
Jehovah's Witnesses used to only count baptized persons in their faith. Now they count in-active ones who are not disfellowshipped.They fudge the numbers to make their work look successful. Actually there are more people who have left Jehovah's Witnesses, than are still attending.
ReplyDeleteHigh fall out rate.
Jehovah's Witnesses have largest turnover of recruits,have one of the highest attrition rates of all denominations.
Seventy percent or more of all children born / brought up Jehovah's Witnesses will leave,often in the state of 'disfellowshipped' which means they are considered dead to God and shunned by their own family.
So this is NOT a fast growing religion actually losing slightly in western countries and some gains in 3rd world as is most other new religions.
There actually are now twice as many former Jehovah's Witnesses as there are active ones with thousands leaving every month.Baptisms at assemblies is often mostly family member children who have grown up JW.
Jehovah's Witnesses *Gospel message* creed is that Jesus had his return to power October 1914 and that he appointed them (the Watchtower people) as sole inheritors of all God's assets.
I have no doubt that the rise of the internet, and it's ability to help you research the truth about these sects, has been key to the declining rate of growth. The internet will tell you what the visitors at your door will not.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how much of a factor the willingness of the missionaries contributes to the low end. It is much more comfortable to work in an industrialized country as opposed to an impoverished one. I was working in Volgograd 1996-7 and the local economy was very unstable. There were very few Mormons on the streets, and those we met were very unhappy to be there.
ReplyDeleteInteresting theory.
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