The 2020 Census of American Religion 07.08.2021

by AndersonsInfo 18 Replies latest jw friends

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  Vidiot

  smiddy3 - "Really, it just goes to show you how ineffective their witnessing is if in the birthplace of Jehovah`s witnesses the USA is 1% or less... All of those years of going D2D with SFA results."

  I think it's pretty clear by now that the D2D work was never really about "being effective in witnessing".

  It was busywork activity to shore up group solidarity...

  ...and more importantly...

  ...provide a tangible paper trail to help maintain the Org's charity status in order to keep its tax exemption.
• 

  joe134cd

  
  

  Activity does not mean growth. Last year they went backwards and i expect this year will be the same.

  I won’t repeat myself.

  https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5748058095616000/jws-bigger-more-successful-mormon-church
  
• 

  slimboyfat

  We won’t know what impact the 2020 pandemic has had for years to come. I suspect that short term church growth will be followed by renewed decline. But who knows? Perhaps other, larger crises will follow this one, and there will be a widespread return to religious belief and practice.

  
  JWs declined in Britain in 2020 by a whopping 3%. I suspect they will rebound heavily in 2021 because they really got into gear with their online preaching arrangements late in 2020 and that won’t show up until the 2021 service report. Watchtower has already announced their highest ever Memorial attendance—by a considerable margin—in Britain in 2021.
  What will happen if and when life returns to normal and JWs return to the Kingdom Hall? That’s when decline might set in.
• 

  smiddy3

  Their is always a spike in JW growth / attendance when a natural disaster hits ,or the nations start rattling Sabres against one another .

  And once the dust settles and no GT or the big "A" happens their is a few less members than before.
• 

  slimboyfat

  Smiddy what is your evidence that JWs end up with fewer members following such world events? JWs have grown throughout the past hundred years. The only exceptions have been brief periods of decline following prophetic failures in 1925 and 1975. JWs tend to emerge robustly from periods of warfare or persecution.

  JWs are likely to begin declining in numbers overall within a decade or so, because of declining conversions, fewer children staying in the religion, the average age of members increasing, and the secularisation of modern societies in general. The number of congregations has already declined slightly in the past few years—an early indicator.

  But coronavirus does destabilise some assumptions about long term trends. Other “events” may also come along and alter the trajectory, either external (wars, climate change) or internal (financial pressures, defections).
• 

  Beth Sarim

  I wouldn't be surprised if we see an incremental increase in publishers, hours and meeting attendance. Like the months/years following 9/11, that seemed to be the case. To be captain obvious, the Borg never ceases to exploit and piggy back such catastrophic events.
• 

  shepherdless

  The median age of the US is not 47 it is 38.5. So Median age of JWs is significantly higher than average.

  I haven’t read the report, but I recall from reading the footnotes in earlier Pew reports that Pew only interviews adults (over 18) and the median age quoted by Pew is the median of those adults, not the entire population. That is almost certainly the reason Pew refers to such a high median age of 47.
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  Balaamsass2

  Thank you, Barbara! I always enjoy your posts and information. :)

  While I take all self-reported numbers from the borg with a HUGE grain of salt, I look forward to 2022 and 2023 activity reports. While it has become much easier to be counted as a "regular" publisher recently, I find it hard to believe that with all the extra time these last few years to read "outside" information on the internet, more members have not become aware of the truth about the truth.

  Will the more "woke" members become officially inactive...or simply turn in a couple of hours to not rock the boat with family and friends....only time will tell.
• 

  LongHairGal

  VIDIOT:

  I totally agree.

  I also considered the door-to-door work a visible yardstick by which JWs would measure somebody else’s ‘spirituality’ 🙄. It gave them a standard by which to judge.. And they are all about judgmentalism!

  It was their ‘claim to fame’..But, I never considered it to be of any real value and secretly thought it rather silly and a waste of time and gas. I wasn’t reached by this method. As far as it being a ‘lifesaving work’, I never believed this either. Any REAL important lifesaving work would use the media.

  The only thing I got out of door-to-door was the enjoyment of seeing people’s beautiful landscaping and property especially in the Spring - and the visit to the diner afterwards!