by Balaamsass2 7 Replies latest watchtower bible
I found this PEW data of passing interest. It flies in the face of what I have seen in English congregations, but when I think of all the Spanish congregations, it made sense. JWs show fewer senior members than mainline churches. Additionally most of the "Apostates" I know personally, are Baby Boomers who are more aware of the 1975, Franz, and "Generations" scandals.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/11/which-u-s-religious-groups-are-oldest-and-youngest/
Good observation. The younger the JW members are, the bigger the chance they will discover TTATT (by using internet), which is good of course! And for the baby boomers themselves, who shouldn't want the best for their children, right?
Quite promising expansion expectations for Hindus, Muslims, agnostics and atheists. JW's are in the middle of the range, but these statistics don't and can't factor in the myriad of problems the JW leadership is facing right now. I think JW's are going to move up rather rapidly towards the top of that table in the coming decades.
Perhaps this does not factor in the rapid new growth of the Kevinly Class.
Doc
The whole study is interesting, but that's only one angle, by religion.
It does seem the Christian religions are having a harder time as they have fewer young ones than atheists, Hindus, Judaism, Islam.
I look at the Hindu one and I'm probably making some assumptions. Most Hindus are Indian. Their number significantly drops off the older they get. Is this because of the HUGE number of Indian contractors over here? I worked for a Fortune 500 company and there are plenty of major headquarters where I live. So I've worked with contractors and have seen a huge spike of Indians in the area. The contracting firms tend to send younger people as it tends to make them look youthful and full of energy. But they don't send too many older contractors. So that may explain the skew towards the youth. Because many of the Hindus are over here as contractors and the young ones get sent.
I think Balaamsass2 is right. Spanish speaking congregations are propping up the JWs. I have a family of Mexican JWs living right next door to me. The couple is in probably their late 30/s, the husband maybe early 40's. Her brother's in his 30's. The couple has 2 young kids. My son's best friend is a JW from another Spanish speaking congregation.
Could it also be that the older you get as a JW, you die off? How many people forsake college and good jobs and then when they're older, they can't cope with health care issues and spiral down and don't live as long?
Aren't there similar churches (like the Christadelphians), who - at this point - pretty much have just old-times that are dying off?
The information in the report appears to be based upon data from the 2014 Pew Report, but further extracted and expanded.
Both the 2014 report and this report states the median adult age of a JW in USA is 50. This is more important that I think people realise. The median age for JW increased dramatically between Pew's 2007 and 2014 reports. History shows that an excellent early indicator of a religion or population in decline is when its median age increases over a certain level. It appears the religion in USA has reached that level.
To put it in context, the reports define adults as those over 18, so "50" is equivalent to a population median age of around 41. In the last few years, the median age in Japan has reached that level, and Japan's population is now in decline.
Although JW appears in around the middle of the chart, you have to remember the 2014 Pew Report showed that most Christian religions were losing members and aging, with "mainline" Protestant religions faring worst. So being in the middle of that chart is not a sign of health.
