Brazil. JWs up 26% in 10 Years

by Joker10 126 Replies latest jw friends

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  Theocratic Sedition

  I'm not much of a numbers man, but this little going back and forth is interesting and it's raised some good questions. Gotta love the internet!!!

  http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-01-17/mormon-beliefs-Americans-uninformed/52776870/1

  According to the link above, Mormons represent 2% of the US population totalling 6 million, with 76% of of that population residing exclusively in a handful of Western States including Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, and of course........Utah. 4% of the Mormon population resides in the North East, 7% in the midwest, and 12% in the South.

  Simply reading that leads me to believe SBF's statement about JWs being more evenly spread is quite frankly, truth.
• 

  Theocratic Sedition

  Here's the flipside to the Mormon statistics, that being JW statistics according to the PEW Forum which we often refer to when talking about JW's dismal retention rate of young people.

  http://www.watchtower.org/e/statistics/worldwide_report.htm

  According to the world report, there are over 1, 200,572 JWs in the U.S..

  http://religions.pewforum.org/portraits

  According to the above link, that 1, 200, 572 is spread out accordingly.........

  16% reside in the NorthEast

  19% in the MidWest

  36% in the South

  29% in the West

  Now granted, we're talking over 2 million JWs vs 6 million Mormons, however 3/4 of the latter reside exclusively in the West equating roughly 4.5 million Mormons situated in Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, California, Arizona, and of course Utah.

  On the other hand, 4% of the Mormon population resides in the NorthEast, so we're talking roughly 240,000. JWs on the other hand have 16% of their population in the NorthEast, roughly 192,091. So I guess ratio wise considering JWs are 3 times less the size of Mormons here in the States, going by ratio they are more evenly spread out.
• 

  steve2

  16% reside in the NorthEast

  19% in the MidWest

  36% in the South

  29% in the West

  So, let's get this straight: The fact that twice as many JWs reside in the south (36%) as reside in the Northeast (16%), tells you the JWs are "more evenly spread" than the Mormons? Really??! When does the phrase "more evenly spread" start to become meaningless? The spread is not more even; instead it is more acurate to describe it as "less skewed" compared with the Mormon statistics.

  Besides, why not do comparisons with other relatively similar Bibilical groups to the JWs such as the US distribution of Seventh-Day Adventists or even charismatic groups. I suspect what we'd find is that the respective memberships would be overly represented in the South (the so-called Bible Belt).

  And while we're on the topic, the US is one country. It is no surprise to find a skewed distribution of Mormonism in the States, their country of origin. As a founding religion, they were vividly connected to Utah so I guess it's a no-brainer there'd be more Mormons in that state than elsewhere in the USA.

  And speaking of skewed distributions: I'd guess that in third world countries the JWs would also be skewed according to social strata with lower socio-economic groups overly represented among their ranks. The JWs attract so few moneyed sections of society that those they do manage to attract readily stand out as unusual.
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  jgnat

  slimboyfat, I understand you are attempting to lay out some unpleasant numbers out for us. I appreciate your efforts, I really do. Would it be more correct to say that in the countries where Jehovah's Witnesses are represented, they have more even spread than other religious groups? You make the case for Russia.

  When I looked at the data, the Jehovah's Witnesses are virtually non-existent where there is state mandated religion or state-banned religion. This includes many of the Muslim nations and China, of course. The map would be pretty spotty in these countries.

  Here in Canada when investigating a new community, I have very accurately predicted the local Witness population as one in a thousand. This has been pretty steady.
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  NeverKnew

  Wow... this discussion has certainly been interesting to the non-jw (me). So that my position is known, please realize that given the pain in your collective voices and the pain of a person who is incredibly important to me, I'm celebrating stalls and declines of membership where this organization is concerned right alongside ya'. :)

  Respectfully, I'd like to shed some light on a variable that nobody seems to have taken into consideration. Please don't turn my insight into an "Us vs. You" dialogue - that truly is not my intent. We're talking about numbers.

  Statistically the attendance numbers being used to evaluate growth and decline in the non-JW world mean absolutely nothing and cannot be used to truly evaluate the number of those subscribing to a denomination. Three elements of many should be considered:

  1. In my world, attendance is far from mandatory - and we're lazy. Our spirituality/salvation/faith is not so intricately linked to our attendance or performance within our denomination. Fluctuations in attendance could be based on things such as personal circumstances (divorce, death, personal challenges) or regional circumstances (unemployment, economic collapse, civil war, etc). I suspect that some triggers would have the potential to produce exponential attendance increases that could statistically blow away any increase in correlative JW attendance/membership.

  I may be wrong, but I get the impression that this is unlike the JWs. If you're MIA, you run the risk of being off of the invite list.

  2. It is okay to attend a Baptist church one week and a Presbyterian another. There are no barriers that prohibit these crossings. Most are comfortable and remain with a certain denomination and church but unlike what I've read if subscribing to the JW faith, there's nothing prohibiting anyone from floating. Individuals are expected to take responsibility for their own salvation and are not obligated to respond to the admonition of man whether he be a priest, deacon, minister, or pastor with respect to attendance. If someone feels uncomfortable with that church, they join another. That issue is between they and God. My reason for spending six months at one faith's services could be superficial (the better choirs have an impact on attendance) but I may not identify completely with that faith's doctrines. I could attend one church but doctrinally my heart may belong to the other so as soon as that choir starts to sound better..... I'm back! *giggling*

  3. I acknowledge this as my experience, but I can't think of one person in my close to 50 life's years who has been formally disfellowshipped/excommunicated/thrown out of an entire denomination. I know of those who have expressed disappointments with their congregations (stupid arguments about church menus that turn into wars) and one who left a denomination because of a doctrine they no longer subscribed to (Catholicism's stance on divorce) but can't say I know of one circumstance of a person being formally tossed out of a denomination so EVERYONE is doctrinally allowed to return! For those of you in touch with "worldlies", you may be hard pressed to find more than one in your life who may know another who was formally tossed from a denomination. Barring some bizarre circumstance, people leave because they choose to leave.... and their decision is respected (and yes, depending on the circumstances like their cooking abilities, sometimes welcomed) but generally, if one chooses to leave and then return for a week, month or lifetime, his/her return is accepted.

  Conversely, given what appears to me to be the Society's stance on:

  1. the value of attendance/service of the meetings,

  2. the assignment of individuals to congregations,

  3. the general quantification of attendance of said meetings (along with a phone-in option where you have to state the number of listeners), and

  4. their position on disfellowshipping (fairly permanent removal so we can deduct these folks),

  I can easily see how attendance could be considered a barometer that reflects rates of growth or decline but to use that same barometer in a world that does not leverage this requirement with absolutely no interdenominational accounting you could end up with some really skewed results.

  I respect all of the poster's opinions on this board and appreciate the diversity of thoughts. Remember, my goal is just to warn against the statistical models used along with some examples for consideration.

  I'd really suggest that the only true statistical comparisons that could be drawn would be annual WT to WT comparisons. Even then it gets fuzzy when things like requirements for benchmarks (aux pioneer) are different but that's the better gauge.
• 

  Theocratic Sedition

  Ok, here's Mormon's in the US............

  Ok, now here's the JWs................

  Notice the butter is a little bit more spread out upon the bread with a smidgen here or there being a little bit more thick. You'll probably need a micrometer to measure the minor differences in the thicknesses of the spread.
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  jgnat

  NeverKnew, I'm not a JW either. I married one instead. You will notice that Joker10 quoted statistics that are significantly higher than the membership recorded by the WTS. You are right about membership more strictly counted by the Witnesses. One isn't truly counted unless one is counting time as a "publisher". This is lower than the "professed" counts which may include adult children of Witnesses who never attend, and those who studied and believe but never committed all the way.

  Statisticians have praised the integrity of the WTS conservative membership counts.

  This doesn't mean the WTS doesn't try to pad the numbers. They measure Memorial attendance, which might closer reflect the "professed" counts found in surveys. Witnesses beat the bushes and drag neighbours, faintly interested neighbours and faded relatives to this annual event.

  Qualifications to count as "publisher" has steadily dropped as well (fewer hours committed).
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  steve2

  What a conveniently selective and single comparison! Select a religious group that is historically aligned to a geographical location (Utah) than compare it to a more peripatetic group (the JWs) and confine your comparison to one country. From this single comparison state the JWs are "more evenly spread" - there's that nonsensical phrase again - than the Mormons. Easy as! And still nothing about the comparative distribution of 7th-Day Adventists!

  I'd bet dollars to do-nuts that the distribution of Mormons in Canada or the UK is less skewed than it is in the states for the sole reason of the US geographical alignment.
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  slimboyfat

  You might as well argue that Bill Gates is not a wealthy man, because he owns less than 1% of the wealth in the world. But he is of course hugely wealthy compared with the vast majority of other humans.

  I am not saying that Jehovah's Witnesses are perfectly evenly spread across the world, of course they are not, nowhere near it. I am saying that compared with most other religious groups they are relatively more evenly spread. I don't know why you are finding that concept so difficult.

  To take an easy example, it is very simple to show that JWs are more evenly spread than Mormons. More than 50% of Mormons live in the United States alone, compared with 15% of Jehovah's Witnesses. (The United States has 5% of the world's population) A mere 2% of Mormons live in Africa compared with 17% of JWs. (Africa has 14% of the world's population) In most regions and countries of the world, the number of JWs in the country more closely resembles the proportion of the world population in that country than the Mormon figure. JWs beat other religions too on this comparative test so far as I can see. Can you think of another religious group that is more evenly spread than JWs?
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  steve2

  And still, despite the use of the global plural - i.e., compared with most other religious groups - the singular comparison of the Mormons with the JWs continues and continues and continues.

  Given the Mormons have a fierce geographical identification with Utah, it is absolutely no surprise they'd cluster there and significantly skew their US distribution figures. Notice I use the word "skew" - a distribution can be more or less skewed, statistically speaking (which is a far more helpful term than the phrase bandied about here, the appalling "more evenly spread"). A singular comparison is not representative of comparisons with - to quote you - "most other religious groups".

  Expand the comparison to say the USA distribution of the 7th-Day Adventists and the JWs and what do you find? As I am not an American citizen, I do not know where I'd access this information. Any kind American help out here with a comparison of the USA SDA so it can be compared with the JWs?