Mormons don’t switch religions unless they become atheist

* This essay is related to Statistics for Atheists which covers many additional statistics showing positive effects of religion, especially Mormonism, as well as studies indicating the existence of the supernatural.

My Research

Long ago, I thought I saw statistics implying that when normal Christians switch religious affiliations, often this is to a different Christian denomination, but when Mormons switch affiliations it almost always is to go straight to atheism. Indeed, I don’t know of any Mormons who have switched to being typical protestants, but I know of many who have completely left Christianity. Since I couldn’t find said statistics, I generated my own from this data from the USA (interestingly, in the newer dataset here, pew says the variable for family religion is “restricted” – so I had to use the 2014 dataset. Why would they now hide that variable?).

The point is to illustrate the thesis that:
Mormons doctrine is much more complete than typical protestant doctrine. Firstly, because we have the Book of Mormon, which though taking place during the same time period as the Bible is without much of the tampering and translation errors that the Bible has gone through. And secondly, because we also have modern day revelation as recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants. I have tried to illustrate some of these differences in doctrine in 7 Essential Principles from Mormonism for you to understand.

Thus, compared to other Christian denominations, Mormons tend to see other religious doctrines as unappealing and illogical – and thus are much more likely to go straight to atheism compared to other religions.

So here is the table I produced illustrating which religion people tend to be, given their childhood religion (and all my code is here).

I also produced the following table providing more condensed information for each religion. And to note – I created the column “Equilibrium Share” by extrapolatign the equilibrium population of each religion if we assume the proportion of people who leave one religion to another as described in the above table holds (using the basic logic behind markov chains):

Some notes before conclusions

A note on forecasted growth: My model of course is very basic, and doesn’t account for how more people are likely to join a religion if it becomes bigger due to higher exposure to the world (especially with regard to Mormonism due to our missionary culture). Thus, the values in the column “Forecasted Growth” (which simply compares the equilibrium population share to the current population share) are probably less extreme than they should be. Likewise, this model also fails to account for birth rates – as I show later in this article Mormons have much higher birth rates than other denominations. By virtue of these two facts, the projected growth of Mormonism (27%) which is higher than all other Christian religions, is likely even higher.

Regarding proportion of the population with a mormon childhood religion. The astute reader is probably wondering how the model could forecast growth in the Mormon church, when apparently the proportion of the population born Mormon is higher than currently identifying as Mormon. Well, the short answer to that question is – I have triple checked all my math, and by virtue of the nature of Markov chains, there is only a single equilibrium population share, and all other types of populations will converge in the long run to that equilibrium – thus if the proportion Mormon is projected to grow, then there must be hidden variables explaining that. One hidden variable might be that Mormon converts tend to come from non-Christian backgrounds more than other religions, and religiously unaffiliated is expected to hugely grow. Another variable might be that mormons stay in their childhood religion at a higher rate than all other Christian religions.

At any rate, it’s likely just an artifact of the data that proportion of children born Mormon is .1% lower than proportion of the population identifying as Mormon, because most statistics show that Mormonism is growing in the USA (which I will discuss later in this article).

Larger Conclusions

As the numbers show, the original thesis that Mormons tend to go straight to not believing in God at all is correct: 65.8% of those who leave Mormonism go directly to not believing in Christianity entirely, compared to 45.1% of evangelicals; I suspect the difference in populations here is even larger if you specifically look at active Mormons. As said, I believe this corroborates the idea that Mormons tend to view their theological ideas as nearly “perfect” compared to other religions (speaking in terms of population averages), thus from the Mormon mind, if he is going to leave Mormonism, he might as well go entirely to atheism.

Is the Mormon Church Growing

Utah has 2.2 Million Mormons, which is 68.55% its population. Overall, the US has 6.8 million Mormons. There are 17 million mormons worldwide.
Mormon church official statistics show growth across the world (source).
Mormon church official stats also show growth just within the USA (source).
Of course, just because membership grows doesn’t mean a church is true. This person appears to have analyzed the numbers much more than me.
Pew Research reported 1.7% of the US population was mormon in 2007, 1.6% in 2014, and 2% in 2023.

Education and the Church

More educated Mormons are less likely to leave the church (source).
Mormons are the only religion in which church activity and attendance increase with education – all other religions have members who become less active as they receive more education.
“In national studies, higher socioeconomic status, as measured by income and education, often has a negative relationship with fertility rates. Among Mormons, however, family income and wife’s education both have a positive relationship with fertility” (source).
Among Mormons, those with higher levels of educational attainment are more likely than those with a high school degree or less to say that being a good parent, having a successful marriage and being very religious are among their most important goals in life. Similarly, the more educated Mormons are, the more likely they are to prefer a lifestyle where the wife stays home, a relationship which is the reverse for the average US population (source).

Family values and the Church

The divorce rate among protestants is 51% and among Mormons is 7% (and this number is even lower for Mormons who get married in Mormon temples – source).
73% of U.S. Mormons believe having a successful marriage is “one of the most important things in life,” compared to 34% of the general public. Likewise, 81% of Mormons said that being a good parent is one of their most important goals in life, compared to 50% of the public (source).
When asked whether they prefer a marriage where both partners work, or one where the husband provides and the wife stays home, 58% of Mormons prefer the wife staying home option compared to 30% of the general public. Moreover, Mormon men and women express similar views on this question, and there is no difference in views across age cohorts (source).

This (source) also has good statistics on Mormon values:

In 1985, “17% of the Mormon students reported premarital sexual experience, compared with 48% of Catholics, 51% of those with no religion, and 67% of Protestants.” Moreover, this difference persists even after controlling for Church attendance.

Mormons are also more likely to agree with the following two statements than the average US population: “A preschool child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works” and “It is more important for a wife to help her husband’s career than to have one herself.”
Likewise, Mormons have less egalitarian definitions of who should take the roles of provider, housekeeper, caring for children, socializing children and home repair then do other religious groups. Similarly, Mormon moms of young children are less likely to be employed full time than national averages.

This source is also good:

“In the family survey, 74 percent of Mormon respondents disagreed with the statement that premarital sex is acceptable. Only 55 percent of conservative Protestants and 47 percent of Catholics disagreed with the statement.”
“Only 8 percent of Mormons said they had lived with a member of the opposite sex before marriage, compared with 20 percent of conservative Protestants and 45 percent of people with no religious affiliation.”