Showing posts sorted by relevance for query MORMONS. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query MORMONS. Sort by date Show all posts

Monday, February 27, 2006

Mormonism Cult of the Political Right

White patriarch with multiple wives, survivalist stocking the cellar for the second coming, armed to the teeth, ascending to heaven to become gods on their own planets. This is the cult of Mormonism, a rip off of Masonic fraternal secrets, with some pseudo Egyptology occult symbols cobbled together by a former table rapper and spirituralist named Joseph Smith.

There are thousands of Mormons in Canada, the majority of them live in Southern Alberta.

Cardston
own (1991 pop. 3,480), SW Alta., Canada, near the U.S. boundary. It was founded in 1887 by Mormons from Utah under the leadership of Charles Ora Card, son-in-law of Brigham Young. The chief Mormon temple of Canada is in the town. It is a ranch and irrigation agriculture center. Nearby is the Blood Reserve, the largest reserve for Native Americans in Canada.


The Alberta PC's (Party of Calgary) and their government are riddled with them. They make up the right wing rump in cabinet and the back benches.

I went to the University of Lethbridge and during my time there the Moromons on campus along with other right wing nuts that populate this most Americanized section of the province, organized a petition to make mandatory student union fees, taxes as they called them, voluntary. Can you imagine if these guys had gotten into power in Ottawa, wait they have. Anyways they bankrupted the SU for a couple of years.

The Mormons base in Canada is Southern Alberta, it was their second home after the persecution and attacks on them in Utah. Like most of Southern Alberta it is home to many American based religious pioneers who moved north, such as the Christian Reformed Church. It is also a strong base for reactionary and conspiracy minded right wing fascists.

But Mormons disproportionately make up the right wing in North American politics. Which is ironic as this article explains.

The march of the Mormons

The Latter-day Saints are on the rise in the US, and a Republican named Mitt Romney has hopes of becoming the first Mormon president. But the church has one serious image problem: polygamy. Which is why HBO's new drama, about a man with three wives, is stirring up controversy. By Julian Borger


Oh did I mention their connection to the CIA or their taking over of Howard Hughes estate, or the fact that their sacred texts don't exist. And did I mention that they believe that when they die the elect men, not women, become the Gods, plural, in heaven.


KINGDOM COME
SALT LAKE CITY WAS JUST FOR STARTERS
The Mormons' True Great Trek Has Been To Social Acceptance
And A $30 Billion Church Empire




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Friday, January 31, 2020

'Get out of the country!' Mormons massacred by Mexican cartel face backlash from president’s supporters.

After a deadly November attack, Mormons who have spoken out against Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have drawn the ire of his backers

NOT LDS MORMONS BUT HERETICS, APOSTATES, POLYGAMISTS KICKED OUT OF UTAH
Supporters of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador shout slogans at people participating in a march for peace in Mexico City, on January 26, 2020. - The march for peace, led by Mexican poet and activist Javier Sicilia and Mormon activist Julian LeBaron, reached the National Palace at Zocalo square to demand the government to modify its anti-crime strategy amid the wave of violent crimes that shakes Mexico.PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images

Reuters and National Post Staff January 27, 2020

They were the focus of global sympathy in the wake of a deadly November attack that saw many family members killed. Now, though, Mexico’s Mormon community is coming under pressure from supporters of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who accuse them of backing his enemies.

November’s gangland attack on a remote stretch of road in northern Sonora state killed three mothers and six children from the LeBaron and Langford families, who settled in the region decades ago. Their vehicles came under heavy gunfire and were torched, with security experts saying evidence suggests the massacre was carried out by a Juarez Cartel faction known as La Linea, and may have a been a case of mistaken identity. Factions of the Sinaloa and Juarez armed groups fight over lucrative cross-border smuggling routes in the area in question.

In the attack’s aftermath, many local Mormons fled back to the U.S., unconvinced that Mexican authorities could guarantee their safety. Others, though, stayed and became vocal critics of both the cartels and Lopez Obrador, who is under increasing pressure amidst a surge in nationwide violence. On Sunday, the AP reported that a pilgrimage by relatives of murdered Mexicans, led in part by Mormon families, was accosted by backers of the president, who loudly heckled marchers.
Mormons Julian (L) and Adrian LeBaron, relatives of victims of an ambush in northern Mexico in November, take part in a march for peace and honour Mackenzie, a girl who survived another massacre in which three women and six children were killed, by taking off a shoe, in Mexico City, on January 26, 2020. PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images

“Leave the country!” they shouted at the Mormon contingent of the Caravan for Truth, Justice and Peace. The caravan had intended to leave a letter for Lopez Obrador at the National Palace in Mexico City. Instead, his supporters accused caravan members of being in the pocket of the president’s opponents.

The AP reported that near Zocalo plaza, in the city centre, hundreds of Lopez Obrador supporters shouted at the peaceful protestors: “It’s an honour to be with Obrador” and “Get out!”

Among the marchers was Adrián LeBaron, whose daughter perished in the attack, as did four of his grandchildren. In recent months LeBaron and a handful of Mormons have become strident critics of government policy. Julian LeBaron, Adrián’s cousin, told the Guardian recently that the Mormons who dared to remain feel a degree of protection because of their links to the U.S. Nearly all of the family members are both U.S. and Mexican citizens, meaning they can easily travel, or relocate, between both countries.

However, the family’s critics have now apparently grown tired of their increasingly outspoken views, which — as dual citizens with freedom of movement — come from a position of relative privilege.

 
A supporter of Mexican Oresident Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador shouts slogans at people participating in a march for peace in Mexico City, on January 26, 2020. 
PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images

“We have dual citizenship. We have the protection of the FBI and Donald Trump’s tweets that scare the bejesus out of some people. Who the hell else is going to say something?” LeBaron told the Guardian. In the aftermath of the Mormon killings, Trump had tweeted that it was time to declare war on the drug cartels.

“They kill four women yesterday in Ciudad Juárez and tomorrow it’s not going to be news. (But) they killed three women and some kids from our family and it’s international news,” LeBaron said.

Earlier this month, Lopez Obrador pledged that those behind the massacre will be punished and that the truth surrounding the crime will eventually come out. But his fledgling administration has floundered amidst a renewed cartel bloodbath.

Mexico suffered its worst year for homicides in 2019, with a record 34,582 victims, official data shows, underscoring the challenge Lopez Obrador faces. He assumed the presidency in December 2018 pledging to pacify the country with a less confrontational approach to security, but violence has continued rising, with the number of homicide victims 2.5 per cent higher in 2019 than a year earlier, according to the security ministry data.
Adrian LeBaron (4-R), father of Rhonita Miller -one of the nine Mormon victims of an ambush the past November- speaks during a gathering after a march for peace at Zocalo square in Mexico City, on January 26, 2020. 
PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images

Mexico has used its military in a war on drug cartels since late 2006. But, despite the arrest or killing of leading capos, the campaign has not succeeded in reducing drug violence and has led to more killings as criminal groups fight among themselves. Already, Lopez Obrador has seen several spectacular security setbacks play out on his watch.

In a speech before extended Mormon family members near the U.S. border earlier this month, Lopez Obrador promised to keep relatives appraised of the investigation into the ambush.

“There will be justice,” he declared, addressing the small crowd from an outdoor stage set against the rugged mountains that surround the town of La Mora, home to the victims.

Lopez Obrador said the investigation was making progress, but did not give details. Earlier in the day, he met privately with relatives of the victims for about an hour, after traveling nearly four hours by car to the town.



Hundreds of mourners gather for the burial of a mother, her months-old twins and two other children on the fringes of a township founded by breakaway Mormons in Mexico, in a second funeral for the victims of a brazen armed ambush https://t.co/LPZBpNMozM pic.twitter.com/BI7WnSEqhg— Reuters India (@ReutersIndia) November 9, 2019

Founded

La Mora, like other northern Mexican settlements where relatives of the large families live, was founded decades ago by breakaway Mormon leaders who fled the U.S. seeking a safe haven for their polygamist beliefs. Lopez Obrador was warmly received during his visit.

“Thank you for being here at such a painful time,” said Margaret Langford in brief remarks in Spanish, describing her family as broken.

“I love this country,” she added, “and it hurts me to my soul that I can’t live here.”

Langford recently left La Mora, like many other relatives who have fled. Loretta Miller, grandmother to four of the children killed, estimates that 80 per cent of her brothers — and sisters-in-law and their families have left and do not plan to ever return.

Mexican authorities has so far arrested seven suspects in the case. At least two other arrests of suspects linked to La Linea have been made in the U.S., but it is unclear if they are connected to the massacre.

Two months after tragedy struck, beefed-up security has helped calm the holdout residents. Today, roads in and around La Mora are patrolled by hundreds of heavily-armed soldiers, helicopters buzzing overhead. But with only a few families staying put, at least one village is being hollowed out, with homes lying vacant. The ambush left a once-strong faith deeply shaken in the picturesque hamlets the families have called home for generations.

“La Mora will never be the same,” said 27-year-old Kendra Miller, whose brother Howard lost his wife Rhonita and their four children in the attack. “There are families that will come back to visit, but they’re not going to live here again because they don’t feel safe.”

Some locals complain that the police presence before November’s attack was almost non-existent, but since then army soldiers and National Guard troops have flooded in, along with FBI and Mexican investigators.
Members of the Lebaron family watch the burned car where some of the nine murdered members of the family were killed during an ambush in Bavispe, Sonora mountains, Mexico, on November 5, 2019. HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images

The large families that have populated this part of northern Mexico, nestled among rolling hills and gurgling rivers, stem from breakaway Mormon communities that began fleeing the U.S. more than a century ago in search of safe havens for their polygamist beliefs.

They built ranch-style homes with orchards where the young children of growing families could ride their bikes and play all day outside.

Like Miller, many wax nostalgic about care-free childhoods, even if their own kids might be raised elsewhere.

“I was set to get married one week after the massacre,” she said, “and now my fiance wants us to live in the United States.”  
 
Members of the LeBaron family watch the burned car in which some of the nine murdered members of the family were killed during an ambush in Bavispe, Sonora mountains, Mexico, on November 5, 2019. HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images

On an impromptu tour of the area, Miller points out the many homes that sit eerily empty, once tidy gardens overrun with weeds.

Other family members describe how kids suffer from recurring nightmares, and those relatives who have left fear coming back.

While they are a distinct minority, there are those among the families who argue against leaving.

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Mateo Langford, whose sister was killed in the attack.

“Bad things happen in every corner of the world, including in the United States. We just can’t run away,” he said.

As he sorted pecans from last year’s harvest, Mateo’s brother Steve Langford, whose sister Christine was killed, said he will stay put as well. He said his immediate plans are to help his cousin David with the harvest, and try to convince him to stay too.

David lost his wife Dawna and two of their children in the attack.

Another remains hospitalized with a gun shot wound to the jaw.

“I’ll never leave here,” said Langford.

Friday, July 09, 2021

Understanding QAnon’s Connection to American Politics, Religion, and Media Consumption

PRRI Staff,
05.27.2021

Three Components of the QAnon Conspiracy Movement

The far-right conspiracy theory movement known as QAnon emerged on the internet in late 2017 and gained traction throughout former president Donald Trump’s time in office. QAnon’s core theory revolves around Satan-worshipping pedophiles plotting against Trump and a coming “storm” that would clear out those evil forces, but the movement has also been described as a “big tent conspiracy theory” that involves a constantly evolving web of schemes about politicians, celebrities, bankers, and the media, as well as echoes of older movements within Christianity, such as Gnosticism.

To understand how this loosely connected belief system is influencing American politics, religion, and media, we fielded three questions, each containing a tenet of the QAnon conspiracy movement.


QAnon Beliefs and Partisanship

A nontrivial 15% of Americans agree with the sweeping QAnon allegation that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation,” while the vast majority of Americans (82%) disagree with this statement. Republicans (23%) are significantly more likely than independents (14%) and Democrats (8%) to agree that the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.

Similarly, one in five Americans (20%) agree with the statement “There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders,” while a majority (77%) disagree. Nearly three in ten Republicans (28%), compared to 18% of independents and 14% of Democrats, agree with this secondary QAnon conspiracy theory. Trends among demographic groups are similar to those of the core QAnon conspiracy theory.

Fifteen percent of Americans agree that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” while the vast majority (85%) disagree. Republicans (28%) are twice as likely as independents (13%) and four times as likely as Democrats (7%) to agree that because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence.
QAnon Beliefs and Media Consumption

The sources that Americans turn to for news are closely linked with openness to QAnon views. Americans are most likely to say the television news sources they trust most to provide accurate information about politics and current events are the major broadcast networks (17%), such as ABC, CBS, and NBC. One in ten or more report most trusting local television news (13%), Fox News (11%), and CNN (10%). Fewer rely on public television (8%), MSNBC (5%), and far-right news networks (3%) such as One America News Network (OANN) and Newsmax. Three in ten (30%) say that they do not watch television news, and 2% report turning to some other source.

Around four in ten Americans who say they most trust far-right news outlets such as OANN and Newsmax (40%) for television news agree with the statement that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.” Around one in five Americans who do not watch television news (21%) and trust Fox News (18%) agree. Around one in ten Americans or less who trust local news (12%), CNN (11%), broadcast networks such as ABC, CBS, and NBC (8%), public television (7%), and MSNBC (5%) believe this core tenet of QAnon.

Nearly half of Americans who trust far-right news (48%) and one-third who trust Fox News (34%) agree with the statement that “There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.” About one in five who do not watch television news (22%), those who report trusting local news most (18%), and those who report trusting CNN most (17%) agree with this theory. Fewer Americans who trust MSNBC (14%), broadcast news (12%) or public television (11%) agree.

Around four in ten Americans who most trust far-right news sources (42%) and around one in four who most trust Fox News (27%) agree that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Less than one in five Americans who do not watch television news (19%) or who trust local news (16%) agree, and less than one in ten who trust CNN (9%), broadcast news (8%), public television (7%), or MSNBC (7%) agree.


QAnon Beliefs and Religion

Generally speaking, across all three questions, white evangelical Protestants, Hispanic Protestants, and Mormons are more likely than other groups to agree with each of these tenets of the QAnon conspiracy movement.

Hispanic Protestants (26%), white evangelical Protestants (25%), and other Protestants of color (24%) are more likely than other religious groups to agree that the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.[1] Less than one in five Mormon (18%), Hispanic Catholic (16%), Black Protestant (15%), other Christian (14%), non-Christian religious (13%), white Catholic (11%), religiously unaffiliated (11%), white mainline Protestant (10%), and Jewish Americans (8%) agree with this statement.[2]

Approximately one in four or more Hispanic Protestants (29%), Hispanic Catholics (27%), white evangelical Protestants (26%), Black Protestants (25%), other Protestants of color (24%), and other Christians (24%) agree that there is a storm coming that will sweep away the elites in power. Fewer Mormons (22%), white Catholics (19%), white mainline Protestants (18%), and members of other non-Christian religions (17%) agree. Religiously unaffiliated (12%) and Jewish Americans (6%) are the least likely to agree with this statement.

With the exceptions of white evangelical Protestants (24%) and Mormons (24%), less than one in five members of all other religious groups agree with this idea, including white mainline Protestants (18%), other Protestants of color (17%), Hispanic Catholics (17%), white Catholics (16%), other Christians (15%), Black Protestants (12%), Hispanic Protestants (12%), religiously unaffiliated Americans (12%), and members of other non-Christian religions (11%). Jewish Americans (6%) are the least likely to agree that true American patriots may have to resort to violence.



A Profile of QAnon Believers

The QAnon Conspiracy Scale

PRRI created a composite measure from the three questions that acknowledge the core tenets of QAnon beliefs. Responses to these questions were combined into an additive scale, which was then recoded into three groups: 1. QAnon believers: Respondents who completely or mostly agreed with these statements (14%); 2. QAnon doubters: Respondents who mostly disagreed with these statements (46%); and 3. QAnon rejecters: Respondents who completely disagreed with all three statements (40%).

Republicans (23%) are notably more likely than independents (12%) and Democrats (7%) to be QAnon believers. A majority of Republicans (55%), nearly half of independents (48%), and over one-third of Democrats (35%) are QAnon doubters. A majority of Democrats (58%) are QAnon rejecters, compared to 40% of independents and 21% of Republicans.



About one in five white evangelical Protestants (22%), Hispanic Protestants (21%), and Mormons (21%) are QAnon believers. Fewer Hispanic Catholics (17%), other Protestants of color (16%), other Christians (14%), Black protestants (13%), white Catholics (13%), and members of non-Christian religions (12%) are QAnon believers. Religiously unaffiliated Americans (9%) and Jewish Americans (2%) are least likely to hold these beliefs.

Conversely, Jewish Americans (60%) and religiously unaffiliated Americans (57%), are the most likely to be QAnon rejecters. Pluralities of members of non-Christian religions (46%), white Catholics (45%), and other Christians (44%) are also QAnon rejecters. Four in ten white mainline Protestants (39%) are QAnon rejecters, as are about three in ten Black Protestants (32%), Hispanic Catholics (30%), Hispanic Protestants (30%), and other Protestants of color (29%). Fewer Mormons (24%) and white evangelical Protestants (21%) are QAnon rejecters. Majorities of white evangelical Protestants (58%), Mormons (55%), other Protestants of color (55%), Black Protestants (55%), and Hispanic Catholics (54%) are QAnon doubters.



Americans without a college education are three times as likely as Americans with a college education to be QAnon believers (18% vs. 6%).

Notably, those who trust far-right news sources most (48%) are by far the most likely to be QAnon believers. One in five of those who most trust Fox News (20%) or do not watch television news (18%) are also QAnon believers, compared to fewer of those who most trust local news (12%), CNN (10%), public television (8%), broadcast networks (5%), or MSNBC (5%).

Americans who trust public television (65%) are most likely to be QAnon rejecters, followed by those who trust MSNBC (60%), broadcast networks (55%), and CNN (51%). About one-third of those who trust local news (35%) and do not watch television news (32%) are QAnon rejecters, compared to only 14% of those who most trust Fox News and 12% of those who most trust far-right sources.
Modeling Those Most Likely to Agree With QAnon Conspiracy Theories

PRRI constructed a logistic regression model to explain which characteristics are independently associated with QAnon conspiracy beliefs. In the table below, the dependent variable is the QAnon believer category from the QAnon Conspiracy Scale above.



The independent variables are grouped into four categories: political orientation, media consumption, religious affiliation, and socioeconomic and demographic traits. Table 1 shows the statistically significant results.

Interestingly, even after controlling for partisanship and ideology, media news consumption is by far the strongest independent predictor of QAnon beliefs. Remarkably, those who report most trusting far-right media sources are nearly nine times more likely to be QAnon believers compared to those who most trust broadcast networks such as ABC, CBS, and NBC. Those who most trust Fox News and those who do not watch television news are 2.3 and 2.5 times, respectively, more likely than those who watch broadcast networks to be QAnon believers.

Even with a range of controls in place, Republicans and conservatives are twice as likely as Democrats and liberals to be QAnon believers.

Accounting for everything else, Hispanic Catholics (2.9) and Hispanic Protestants (2.7) are about three times more likely than the religiously unaffiliated to be QAnon believers. Similarly, white Catholics (1.8), white evangelical Protestants (1.6), and white mainline Protestants (1.6) are nearly twice as likely as the religiously unaffiliated to be QAnon believers.

Americans of other races and Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to agree with the conspiracy theories, but this is likely due to the fact that race, party, ideology, and religious affiliation are also in the model. Lower education, male gender, lower income, lower age, and living in rural areas are also associated with higher likelihoods of QAnon beliefs.

The Association Between QAnon Beliefs and Other Conspiracy Theories

Those who believe in QAnon conspiracy theories are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories generally. While 29% of all Americans agree with the “big lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, 73% of QAnon believers say this is true. QAnon doubters (37%) are still more likely than average to believe the election was stolen, but only 7% of QAnon rejecters agree that the election was stolen from Trump.

About four in ten Americans (39%) agree that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was developed intentionally by scientists in a lab, but 85% of QAnon believers think this. That drops to under half of QAnon doubters (47%) who believe the virus was created intentionally in a lab. Only 16% of QAnon rejecters think the coronavirus was created intentionally.

A small segment of Americans (9%) agree that the COVID-19 vaccine contains a surveillance microchip that is the sign of the beast in biblical prophecy. This figure jumps to 39% among QAnon believers, but only 6% of QAnon doubters and 1% of QAnon rejecters agree.



Survey Methodology and Citations
Methodology

The survey was designed and conducted by PRRI and IFYC among a random sample of 5,149 adults (age 18 and up) living in all 50 states in the United States and who are part of Ipsos’s Knowledge Panel and an additional 476 who were recruited by Ipsos using opt-in survey panels to increase the sample sizes in smaller states. The full sample is weighted to be representative of the U.S. population. Interviews were conducted online between March 8 and 30, 2021.

Respondents are recruited to the KnowledgePanel using an addressed-based sampling methodology from the Delivery Sequence File of the USPS – a database with full coverage of all delivery addresses in the U.S. As such, it covers all households regardless of their phone status, providing a representative online sample. Unlike opt-in panels, households are not permitted to “self-select” into the panel; and are generally limited to how many surveys they can take within a given time period.

The initial sample drawn from the KnowledgePanel was adjusted using pre-stratification weights so that it approximates the adult U.S. population defined by the latest March supplement of the Current Population Survey. Next, a probability proportional to size (PPS) sampling scheme was used to select a representative sample.

To reduce the effects of any non-response bias, a post-stratification adjustment was applied based on demographic distributions from the most recent American Community Survey (ACS). The post-stratification weight rebalanced the sample based on the following benchmarks: age, race and ethnicity, gender, Census division, metro area, education, and income. The sample weighting was accomplished using an iterative proportional fitting (IFP) process that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables. Weights were trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results. In addition to an overall national weight, separate weights were computed for each state to ensure that the demographic characteristics of the sample closely approximate the demographic characteristics of the target populations. The state-level post-stratification weights rebalanced the sample based on the following benchmarks: age, race and ethnicity, gender, education, and income.

These weights from the KnowledgePanel cases were then used as the benchmarks for the additional opt-in sample in a process called “calibration.” This calibration process is used to correct for inherent biases associated with nonprobability opt-in panels. The calibration methodology aims to realign respondents from nonprobability samples with respect to a multidimensional set of measures to improve their representation.

The margin of error for the national survey is +/- 1.5 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence, including the design effect for the survey of 1.4. In addition to sampling error, surveys may also be subject to error or bias due to question wording, context, and order effects. Additional details about the KnowledgePanel can be found on the Ipsos website:

https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/solution/knowledgepanel

Appendix
Table 1. Demographic, Political, Religious, and Geographic Subgroup Sample Sizes

(Unweighted)
N=
Total Sample 5,625

Male 2,604
Female 3,021

Republican 1,656
Independent 1,746
Democrat 1,762
Other/Don’t know 461

White, non-Hispanic 4,136
Black, non-Hispanic 480
Hispanic 602
Multiracial 167
Other 240


Age 18-29 538
30-49 1,552
50-64 1,742
65+ 1,793


White evangelical Protestant 921
White mainline Protestant 960
Black Protestant 329
Hispanic Protestant 113
Other nonwhite Protestant 151
White Catholic 911
Hispanic Catholic 343
Mormon 105
Other Christian 161
Jewish 139
Other non-Christian religion 176
Religiously unaffiliated 1,275
Don’t know/refused 41


[1] “Other Protestant of color” includes all Protestants who are not white, Black, or Hispanic (including Asian American or Pacific Islander, multiracial, Native American, and any other race or ethnicity). Categories were combined due to sample size limitations.

[2]“Other Christian” includes all Christians who are not specified in any other category, including Catholics who are Black, Asian American or Pacific Islander, multiracial, Native American, and any other race or ethnicity; Jehovah’s Witnesses; Orthodox Christians; and any other Christian group. “Other non-Christian religion” includes those who are Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Unitarian Universalist, and any other world religion. Categories were combined due to sample size limitations.

Recommended Citation

“Understanding QAnon’s Connection to American Politics, Religion, and Media Consumption” PRRI-IFYC (May 27, 2021). www.prri.org/research/qanon-conspiracy-american-politics–report/

Sunday, December 31, 2023

Utah is no longer majority Mormon, new research says

Jonathon Sharp
KTVX
Fri, December 29, 2023 


SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Since Utah became a state in the late 1800s, most of its residents have been members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But according to a new study, Utah isn’t majority Mormon anymore.

A paper published this month in the Journal of Religion and Demography estimates that the percentage of Utahns who identify as members of the LDS church, otherwise known as Mormons, is about 42%.

That’s markedly lower than previous media reports citing the church’s numbers, which put the percentage of Mormons in Utah at around 60% as recently as 2020.

“We’re not trying to say that the LDS church is wrong, it’s just we’re using very different approaches to get to gather this information,” said Ryan T. Cragun, lead author on the study, who teaches sociology at the University of Tampa.

The method

To get their numbers, Cragun and his fellow researchers contracted a survey of roughly 1,900 Utahns, with quotas for age, sex and ethnicity aligning with official census data for Utah. This method is called “quota sampling.”

Michael Wood, assistant professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, who was not connected to the study, said quota sampling is commonly used in the field with accepted limitations, which he noted that Cragun and his co-authors acknowledged.

“It is a provocative study with compelling arguments,” Wood told ABC4 in an email, adding that “further research with a more robust sampling method is needed to confirm the findings.”

The Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac, File)

In the survey, which was conducted in the summer of 2022, the nearly 2,000 participants were asked a variety of questions, and among them was how they identified on religious grounds.

Initially, Cragun and his fellow researchers weren’t interested in religious self identification but rather how Uthans thought about science. But when the researchers got the results on religious self identification, they were surprised.

“This seemed like a newsworthy little finding for us, because we actually have data to show the state is not actually majority Mormon anymore,” Cragun said.
The church’s numbers

According to the paper, the figures released by the LDS church are not reliable for the purposes of determining the percentage of Utahns who actively identify as Mormon.

This is because, so the researchers say, the church basically counts members as anyone who’s been baptized.

“Aside from a few who are excommunicated or formally ask to have their name removed, members remain on church rolls until they die, or until their 110th birthday if their whereabouts are unknown,” the paper states.

ABC4 reached out to the church for comment on this story, but they declined.

Ryan T. Cragun, the lead author of research paper suggesting Utah is no longer majority Mormon. (credit: KTVX)

While the paper states that the church’s numbers are accurate for the number of Mormons baptized and living in Utah, they don’t account for those who leave the church and just don’t notify the Salt Lake City-based faith.

And more and more people, particularly young Mormons, are leaving the church, the researchers say.

Reasons for decline

The paper lists three main reasons why it’s likely Utah is no longer majority Mormon. Chief among them is migration, as people from other states (particularly California) have moved to Utah in great numbers over the last few decades. Most of these people are not Mormon.

The second major trend is secularization, as evidenced by the proliferation of coffee shops and breweries in Utah. In the late 1980s, LDS members would retain 95% of their children in the church, Cragun said. Today, that figure is now around 67%.

“Almost a third of people who are raised LDS today leave the religion,” he said. “That’s our current best estimate.”

The third factor is fertility, as Utah no long boasts the highest birth rate in the nation. Fewer children growing up in the church — along with more of them leaving the faith — results in Utah becoming less Mormon over time.
Will the trend continue?

Over the next decade, Cragun expects to see the percentage of Utahns who identify as Mormon continue to decline. Meanwhile, he also expects to see an increase in the percentage of Utahns who report no religious affiliation at all.

He noted that the secularization trend currently underway is self-reinforcing.

“As the percentage of LDS declines, it becomes easier for people to leave,” Cragun said.

While he expressed confidence in the figures his team published, Cragun noted that others would need to do a true probability sample in Utah to verify the findings.

Ex-Mormon Speaks Out - Why'd He Leave?

Peter Santenello
 Dec 16, 2023  MESA
Many people have left the Mormon church in recent years. 
Today we meet up with an ex-Mormon who explains to us why this is happening. 

This is the last video in our Mormon (LDS) series.

 


Wednesday, March 13, 2024

MORMONS; AN AMERIKAN KULT
Who is leaving the LDS church?
8 key survey findings

Among the findings: Most don’t join another religion after leaving but they also aren’t interested in coming back to the LDS church.


An angel Moroni statue sits atop a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

March 7, 2024
By Jana Riess

(RNS) — When Josh Coates and Stephen Cranney wanted to learn more about members and former members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they had to strategize about the best ways to reach them. More and more people aren’t answering surveys, either by phone or online. Reaching a small minority population like Latter-day Saints is notoriously difficult.

So they resurrected an old-school methodology — sending 80,000 physical postcards to randomly selected households in the Mormon Corridor — and supplemented with targeted Facebook ads to a Utah audience. Both methods led respondents to take an online survey that was then weighted to be representative of the LDS population. After they removed late and invalid responses, they had a sample of 2,625 current and 1,183 former Latter-day Saints.

Our Zoom interview about their findings has been edited for length and clarity.





1. Former members are more likely to be LGBTQ.

In the survey, only 4% of current members identified as LGBTQ, compared with 18% of former members.

“There’s a million questions to be asked there about why there’s a four times difference between current and former,” said Coates. “One theory is that if you’re LGBT and you’re in the church, it’s not 100% compatible, and you’re going to leave. And so obviously that means there’s going to be a lot more former Latter-day Saints. Undoubtedly there is a component to that. Or it’s possible that people that leave the church and then begin to identify as LGBTQ for whatever reason. We don’t know, because the survey did not explore any of that level of detail. That’s the next level.”

2. Few have a traditional belief in God, without any doubts.

The 2023 Current and Former Latter-day Saint Survey repeated a long-standing question from the General Social Survey about belief in God. Comparing the current and former members, the differences in belief are stark: Among current members, more than 7 in 10 say they “know God really exists and … have no doubts about it.” That’s more than six times the rate of certainty about God among former members.
 


Belief in God for current and former Latter-day Saints. Data from the 2023 CFLDS/B. H. Roberts Foundation.

Cranney pointed out in an article in Times and Seasons that most former members do “still have some kind of belief in something higher,” but they’re less likely to know without a doubt that God exists. “Their belief in God is characterized more by ambiguity than a firm belief one way or another,” he wrote. In this, they’re similar to the nones in the general population of the U.S., while current members resemble the General Social Survey’s “religionists,” the most devout Americans.

3. Their moral priorities look very different.

One of the most groundbreaking aspects of the survey Coates and Cranney devised was that they utilized Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory to try to understand whether current and former Mormons emphasized different aspects of morality. MFT measures values such as fairness, loyalty, authority, care and purity. In Haidt’s research, liberals tend to stress fairness and care but put less emphasis on obedience to authority or being loyal to a particular tribe.

Former Mormons, it turns out, have much in common with liberals in the general population, with high ratings for care and fairness. Meanwhile, current members look more like conservatives, but with a particularly high emphasis on purity/sanctity — something former Mormons do not stress much at all.

“That was surprising, how defined that difference was,” Coates said. “Current Latter-day Saints are off the charts on purity and sanctity. And for former members what’s interesting is that in in-group loyalty, they’re significantly lower even than the liberals.”


Moral Foundations Theory scores for current and former Latter-day Saints compared with conservative, moderate and liberal groups in the national population. Data from the 2023 CFLDS/B. H. Roberts Foundation.

Cranney said that makes sense. “This is a relatively high-tension faith that, oftentimes to survive, has had to have fairly strict binding norms. People who have decided that it’s not for them are going to score lower because they have rejected those very intense binding norms.”

4. They are more likely to have been divorced.

For survey respondents who were still members of the LDS church, the divorce rate for first marriages was 18%, while for former members it was 39%. The former members’ rate is closer to the national average for divorces in the United States.

Coates said the rate of temple divorces is especially low, between 14% and 20%, while “marriages between members that are not sealed in the temple are closer to the national rate of about half of marriages ending in divorce.”

5. They have smaller families.

Coates cautions that the data on this is still provisional because accounting for age will make a major difference in the findings, but in terms of the raw numbers, current Latter-day Saints appear to have almost one child more per family (3.4 children) than those who’ve left the church (2.5 children).

6. Many say they left the church because of historical issues.


The top three reasons for leaving in the 2023CFLDS were 1) history related to Joseph Smith; 2) Book of Mormon; and 3) race issues.

However, Coates says he is somewhat skeptical, comparing these questions to asking divorced couples why their marriages failed. He says it’s difficult to know what potential conscious or unconscious biases are at play.

“We think this portion of the survey is only useful in answering the question ‘What do former members prefer to respond when asked on a survey why they left?’” he said.
7. The vast majority have no interest in returning to church activity.

More than 4 out of 5 former members say that returning is “very unlikely,” with an additional 10% saying it’s unlikely.



A strong majority of former members surveyed said it was very unlikely that they would return to LDS church membership. Data from the 2023 CFLDS/B. H. Roberts Foundation.

A majority has very negative feelings about the church. “Three out of 4 said they dislike or strongly dislike the church as an institution,” Coates reported. In brighter news, “they had a neutral to positive disposition toward the people.”

Cranney performed a regression analysis to see if he could isolate predictive factors that might shed light on which former Mormons were most likely to return to church. “The one thing that is associated with being more likely to say that you’ll return to the church is if you are married to a member,” he said.

That situation describes about a fifth of the former LDS sample: 20% were married to believing members, and 30% were married to fellow former members.
8. Most don’t join another religion after leaving.

Seventy percent of the former members selected “none” when asked to describe their religion now. However, Coates observed that the actual percentage could be even higher, because an additional 19% chose “other” and then hand-wrote responses that were sometimes compatible with “none.”

“They’re not joining another religion,” Coates said. “It’s possible that means they’re Christians without a congregation, but the question only asks ‘Hey, are you affiliated? Do you identify with a religion?’ And no, they don’t. I think that was our intuition about former Latter-day Saints, so that finding didn’t surprise us.”

Related content: Study: Utah is no longer a Mormon-majority state

Saturday, December 03, 2022

Why Americans are leaving their churches

For sociologist Stephen Bullivant, the question is why it took so long for the religious exodus to happen.

(RNS) — As many as a third of Americans now claim no religious affiliation, and British sociologist Stephen Bullivant has some ideas about why.

In his new book, “Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America,” due this week from Oxford University Press, Bullivant reflects in often highly entertaining fashion about the trend lines. Although it’s full of statistics, “Nonverts” remains a lively read for ordinary people — a rare feat in a sea of dry data-driven books.

As a researcher, Bullivant wanted to know why Americans, once considered the exception to the secularization that has happened in Europe and elsewhere, are suddenly losing their religion.

And it is sudden, he notes. “This kind of religious change in a society doesn’t normally happen in the space of 20 or 30 years,” he told Religion News Service in a Zoom interview. “It’s been within the space of one or perhaps two generations that we’ve seen a sudden surge.”

In the 1990s, nonreligion began climbing from its baseline of around 7% of the population to what is between three and five times that figure now, depending on the survey. (All national surveys show the same rising trendline, but they differ as to the degree.)

From "Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America" by Stephen Bullivant.

From “Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America” by Stephen Bullivant

Bullivant says the majority of this shift is caused by people actively leaving the religion of their childhood (the “nonverts” of the title), not because they were born into nonreligious families (though that trend is coming).

“So there is a story about why there is this rise of the nones. But to me, the more interesting story is why it didn’t happen earlier.” Why did this change start not in the 1960s, when American culture was in a state of upheaval, but in the ’90s?

Politics, say other scholars, who see nonreligion as a backlash against the GOP’s “Contract with America” and the rise of the religious right. That’s likely part of it, Bullivant said, pointing to how quickly the American public changed its mind on gay marriage. But he looks to three other developments to help us understand why people are leaving the fold.

"Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America" by Stephen Bullivant. Courtesy image

“Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America” by Stephen Bullivant. Courtesy image

First, there was the end of the Cold War. For decades, “there was a big threat of ‘godless communism,’” making it hard for anyone with religious doubts to admit to them publicly. The social cost of being considered un-American was just too high, keeping the numbers of religious nones artificially low.

“Then suddenly the Cold War ends, and you have people able to admit to being nonreligious. In fact, by the time the New Atheists rise up in the mid-2000s, it’s no longer people with no religion who are the existential threat, but people with too much religion, especially extremist religion. The New Atheism is really interesting in how it positions itself as patriotic.”

A second factor is the sudden appearance of the internet, which made it possible for like-minded people to meet each other. “If you were brought up in small-town Kansas, you probably weren’t going to find other people who were having religious doubts. The internet opened up those spaces for people to play around with ideas, hang out with other people, and get really deep into various subcultures.”

The internet has been particularly important for people leaving conservative religions such as evangelical Protestantism or Mormonism. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is actually the first main example Bullivant uses in the book, which is surprising because it’s such a tiny percentage of the population, around 1.5%.

Bullivant chose it because it’s a “canary in the coal mine” story — if even the Mormons are starting to bleed members, “that shows what a big issue this is for everyone else.” The erosion of Mormon attachment, he said, indicates “the breakdown of religious subcultures,” which has been especially profound in places such as Utah and southern Idaho where, in decades past, a person’s entire social and religious life could be spent around members of the LDS church.

The internet chips away at that enclave. “This was important for many of the Mormons I interviewed, who were encountering new things about Mormon history online. But even more than this, they’re starting to hang out with non-Mormons and ex-Mormons, people who are very much in your boat, and that becomes this other world you can inhabit.”

Around two-thirds of all nones in the US are nonverts (dark gray), meaning that they left a religion, rather than "cradle nones" (light grey), who were raised without religion. Over time, Bullivant expects cradle nones to become a larger share of the none population, as more Americans are born without a religion and don't switch into one.

Around two-thirds of all nones in the U.S. are “nonverts” (dark gray), meaning that they left a religion, rather than “cradle nones” (light gray), who were raised without religion. Over time, Bullivant expects cradle nones to become a larger share of the none population, as more Americans are born without a religion and don’t switch into one.

The third factor sounds like circular logic: The nones are rising because the nones are rising. But human beings are herd creatures, Bullivant explains in the book; we tend to do what our neighbors are doing. With every headline (like the one above) that heralds the seismic shift the nation is experiencing, more people become comfortable being nonreligious.

Bullivant himself bucks the trend. The 38-year-old researcher came from a family with no religion — “I wasn’t baptized, and that’s normal in Britain” — but deviated from that path by slowly coming to Catholicism as a student. He was doing the first of his two doctoral degrees (one in theology, the other in sociology) when he became friends with some Dominicans who would regularly invite him for dinner.

“In order to come to this guest dinner with loads of wine on a Sunday evening, you had to have gone to the Mass beforehand,” he said.

So he began attending Mass. He was impressed by the people he met, who were bright and kind. It was obvious that they lived what they believed and had made great sacrifices in order to become priests. Eventually, one of those friends offered to baptize him. So after a three-week research trip to Rome for his dissertation, Bullivant officially joined the Catholic Church. His wife is now also a member, and they are raising their four children as Catholics.

“So it’s strange: I do a lot of work on people leaving Catholicism. For every person in Britain who is raised nonreligious who becomes Christian, there’s something like 26 people who go the other way.”

It’s a helpful reminder that while social science charts trends that are sweeping and very real, each individual story is complex.

Related content:

“Allergic to religion”: Conservative politics can push people out of the pews, study shows

For US Mormons, religiosity has declined over time

Thursday, March 16, 2023

ABRAHAMIC RELIGONS THAT IS
Most Americans view mainline religious groups favorably, survey says

By Matt Bernardini

A new report from Pew Research says that most Americans view large religious groups favorably. Photo by Africa Studio/Shutterstock

March 15 (UPI) -- Americans hold a favorable view of some of the country's largest religious groups but have a negative view of Muslims, according to a new poll by Pew Research.

Thirty-five percent of poll respondents said that they had a somewhat or very favorable view of Jews, while just 6% said they had an unfavorable view. Fifty-eight percent of people said they had neither.

Protestants also had a net favorability rating of 20 points, and Catholics had a net favorability rating of 16 points. However, these groups are also largely represented as Pew notes.

"The patterns are affected in part by the size of the groups asked about, since people tend to rate their own religious group positively," the Pew report said. "This means that the largest groups -- such as Catholics and evangelical Christians -- get a lot of favorable ratings just from their own members."

However, just 17 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Muslims, compared with 22 percent of Americans who have an unfavorable view. Only Mormons were rated more unfavorably, with a net unfavorability rating of 10 points.

Americans also have an unfavorable view of atheists, even though more people today say they know atheists.

"In 2019, 65% of Americans reported that they knew an atheist; in the new survey, 71% say the same," Pew said

Overall Pew found that, knowing someone who is from a particular group, leads people to have a more positive view of that group as a whole.

"Across the board, those who know someone from a religious group (but are not members of that group themselves) are more likely than those who do not know someone in the group to offer an opinion of the group -- and usually to express more positive feelings," Pew said.

PROTESTANTS AND CATHOLICS ARE NOT SEPARATE RELIGONS BUT SECTS OF THE SAME RELIGION; CHRISTIANITY

Americans like Jews, Catholics and mainline Protestants. Evangelicals, not so much.

A new Pew Research poll finds that only 18% of nonevangelical Americans had favorable opinions of evangelicals; 32% had somewhat unfavorable views.


Image by David Peterson/Pixabay/Creative Commons

(RNS) — What do most Americans think of faiths not their own?

Not much.

That’s according to a new Pew Research survey that asked 10,588 Americans if they had positive or negative feelings toward other faiths. Between 40% and 60% answered “neither favorable nor unfavorable” or “don’t know enough to say.”

“It may speak to people not liking to rate entire groups of people,” said Patricia Tevington, the lead researcher. ”Maybe there’s some fear of stereotyping.”

But some religious groups ranked higher in Americans’ estimations. Jews, for example, scored fairly positively: 35% of Americans expressed a very or somewhat favorable attitude toward Jews, with only 6% expressing an unfavorable attitude. Catholics, too, got good marks (34% favorable vs. 18% unfavorable), as did mainline or ecumenical Protestants (30% favorable vs. 10% unfavorable).

"More Americans view Jews, mainline Protestants and Catholics favorably rather than unfavorably" Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center

“More Americans view Jews, mainline Protestants and Catholics favorably rather than unfavorably” Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center

Atheists and Muslims scored overall negative views. At the bottom of the list? Latter-day Saints, or Mormons. Only 15% of Americans had a favorable opinion of Mormons, while 25% said they had unfavorable views of them.

As for evangelicals, Americans were divided: 28% had favorable opinions of evangelicals while 27% had negative opinions (44% felt they didn’t know enough to say). But as the study points out, there’s a big difference between the way evangelicals are rated by all Americans (including roughly 20% of U.S. adults who describe themselves as evangelicals) and the way they are rated by Americans who are not evangelicals.

That’s because most religious groups rate themselves highly, including 60% of evangelicals who have favorable opinions of themselves. But when evangelicals were excluded from the question, only 18% of Americans had favorable opinions of this group; 32% had somewhat unfavorable views (49% didn’t register an opinion).

By contrast, mainline or ecumenical Protestants are viewed far more positively than negatively (only 11% of nonmainline Protestants viewed this religious group unfavorably).

"Outside of self-described 'born-again or evangelical' Protestants, views of evangelical Christians are more negative than positive in the U.S." Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center

“Outside of self-described ‘born-again or evangelical’ Protestants, views of evangelical Christians are more negative than positive in the U.S.” Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center

Political partisanship may explain why evangelicals are viewed negatively by non evangelicals. The overwhelming majority of evangelicals identify with the Republican Party and this bloc is usually highly correlated with the so-called religious right.


RELATED: Five charts that explain the desperate turn to MAGA among conservative white Christians


Democrats and Democratic leaners, the survey found, view evangelicals much more negatively — nearly half (47%) had an unfavorable view of evangelicals. Only 14% of nonevangelical Republicans had unfavorable views of evangelicals, by comparison.

Evangelicals aside, Americans’ views of other faiths may be influenced by whether they personally know people of other faiths, the study concludes. Some 88% of Americans know someone who is Catholic, for example. But few personally know a Muslim or a Mormon, which may account for why they view these groups negatively. (The balance of nonevangelical opinions toward evangelicals is the exception; it was negative regardless of people’s personal familiarity.)

The survey found that an increasing number of Americans personally know an atheist. In 2019, 65% of Americans reported they knew an atheist. By 2022, it was 71%. That may account for why Americans view atheists has moderated somewhat and why Muslims and Mormons are viewed less favorably.

“There’s a big distinction on whether or not you know someone of that religious group,” Tevington said. “That tends to increase favorability.”

The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.


RELATED: 3 big numbers that tell the story of secularization in America