Many papers picked up an AP piece this past weekend about Mormon missionaries in Massachusetts.
This is the first time I have seen in a readily available source a discussion of how and why both membership and growth in the LDS faith are badly overstated. This is poorly understood among non-Mormons, and as near as I can figure it is virtually unknown among Mormons.
This has both religious and economic dimensions. It could be viewed as just rosy scenario talk for the faithful or marketing/propaganda to those of other faiths. In economics we've been pretty good about delineating roles for both of those possibilities, but the question here is why does the LDS faith choose to overstate their numbers, or alternatively why do other faiths choose to understate theirs?
'll try and stick to the facts and anecdotes which I have gotten first-hand. Measurement of faiths in the U.S. is done on the basis of two measures: members (a narrow definition) and adherents (a broad definition). Most faiths report both, and some even subdivide members into those who are active and those who are not. The choice of how to categorize the faithful is made by each church's hierarchy, sometimes at the local level, and sometimes at a centralized level. Mainline Protestant churches even request that you notify a past church where you may be maintained as an inactive member that you need to be removed from their rolls when you become an active member of a new church.
Unlike other faiths, the LDS church only reports numbers of adherents. This includes everyone who was ever baptized in the church, with the exception of those who are excommunicated, or who have successfully petitioned to have their names removed from the rolls. Since baptism occurs at age 8, many adults who were baptized as children but no longer have interest in the LDS faith are counted as adherents (that is not typical of other faiths). As in most faiths, excommunication is rare. I only have anecdotal evidence on removal from the rolls, but I know many people who have not been successful, or who have found out after many years that they were never in fact removed, and in one case a persistent person had to try for 15 years before she was finally taken off the rolls. Again, anecdotal evidence suggests that this is because joining the LDS church is an efficiently centralized and hierarchical process, whereas leaving it is a decentralized process with many opportunities for roadblocks and pocket vetos (lay clergy in the LDS church are frequently rotated). The LDS church also has no public position on whether unbaptized attendees at services are counted as adherents, although there is a strong suspicion that this is the case since attendance is a major factor in the well-known LDS practice of "splitting the ward" - a method of restricting congregations to a manageable size of about 120 families.
Let me emphasize that there is nothing wrong with any of this, but it clearly will lead to more generous estimates of the numbers of LDS faithful.
In contrast, other denominations often use substantially stricter rules. For example, many Protestant churches only count as adherents those who are both baptized and who attend at least once a year on a "normal" Sunday (i.e., one that does not have special religious significance). Baptists only count as members those who were both baptized as adults of their own free will, and who regularly attend services - children are adherents and are removed from those rolls if they do not choose to be baptized upon their majority. Catholics baptize at a younger age, but shift people from the memberhsip rolls to the adherent rolls if they stop attending regularly. More generally, given the tight ecumencial relationships between non-LDS churches there are concerted efforts to avoid double counting of adherents
The upshot is that there is a substantial probability of double-counting that can lead to inflation of LDS numbers. For example, someone baptized in the LDS faith who chooses to be baptized as (say) a Presbyterian and who attends that church regularly would be counted as both a member of the Presbyterian church and an adherent of the LDS church until successfully removed from the rolls. However, someone who was baptized LDS and is not yet baptized as (say) a Presbyterian is unlikely to even be counted in the latter as an adherent no matter how much they attend, since LDS baptisms are not recognized by other churches. The issues get even stickier, where Catholic and Protestant churches regard baptism in an LDS church as a renunciation, while it is not at all clear that the LDS church regards baptisms going the other way as anything quite as serious.
In sum, I think there is an open question here about why the LDS church hierarchy chooses to state its numbers more liberally than other faiths, or alternatively why other faiths choose to measure their numbers more conservatively.
Please note that not all publications included the section in question, for example, The Washington Times did, but The Boston Globe did not.
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