Posts by slimboyfat

88

Annual Report

by St George of England in

the latest report is now available for download on our favourite website!.

george.

slimboyfat

I wonder if the slower decline of JWs is due, in part, to the door-to-door work they did for so long.

To be clear, JWs don’t have a “slower decline” than other churches. They are increasing while other churches are decreasing. That’s not slower, that’s opposite directions. And yes, door to door preaching must be part of the explanation.

Another common mistake is to say that JW growth is below population growth. But that’s not true either. World population growth is now under 1% per year. Apart from a couple of years, JW growth has been consistently higher than population growth.

I have been expecting JWs to start declining for decades, but it hasn’t happened yet. I still think they will probably start declining at some point, maybe within 10 years, everything else being equal. But then who knows what will happen in the world in general, with wars, climate change, AI, pandemics, and more, and what impact all that could have.

88

Annual Report

by St George of England in

the latest report is now available for download on our favourite website!.

george.

slimboyfat

Joe, active Mormons are as few as 20% of the official membership in many countries, and even that is taking “active” as a lower bar than JWs. Apply that to their worldwide membership and their active membership could be under 4 million. But it’s probably a little higher than that because activity rates are stronger in the US than elsewhere. Even so, there are far fewer Mormons than JWs worldwide. The most rigorous academic study of Mormons and JWs by Lawson and Xydias concluded that on a like for like basis there are 8.6 million Mormon adherents compared with 17.2 million JW adherents worldwide. That means that worldwide the JW community is around twice the size of the Mormons.

See details in their article which is available online through a google search.

Lawson, R., & Xydias, G. K. (2020). Reassessing the size of Mormons, Adventists and Witnesses: Using census data to test the reliability of membership data and accounting for the disparate patterns found. Review of Religious Research, 62(3), 413-437.

88

Annual Report

by St George of England in

the latest report is now available for download on our favourite website!.

george.

slimboyfat

That’s fair enough, Pew provides some evidence for that conclusion. It needs to be qualified because the number of JWs in the sample was very small and has a large margin of error. JWs rely on converts for growth to a greater extent than most churches, so this stands to reason.

Groups that have a stable community identity, such as the Catholic Church in Catholic countries, and Mormons in Utah, have high retention because members are surrounded by other members and social pressure is to remain a member or to identify as a member even if inactive. For JWs, outside of a few communities, perhaps in places like Guadeloupe and Zambia, JWs are always a minority in larger society, so there isn’t that same pressure on that front.

Mormons outside of the United States clearly have very low retention rates. It is common practice for missionaries to visit people for only six weeks before baptism. After baptism some new members never see the inside of Mormon church again. This is turnover on steroids and is the reason why the Mormon church ends up claiming 500,000 members in Chile while only 100,000 describe themselves as Mormons, even after missionaries have knocked on their door to try to remind them they were baptised as Mormons years in the past.

88

Annual Report

by St George of England in

the latest report is now available for download on our favourite website!.

george.

slimboyfat

Fair enough.

Have you got any evidence for your other claim? Because it would be interesting information if there is evidence for it.

JWs do also have a very high churn rate compared to other denominations

88

Annual Report

by St George of England in

the latest report is now available for download on our favourite website!.

george.

slimboyfat

What has that got to do with JWs growing while other churches are declining and your assertion that it is invalid to make this observation/comparison?

You can say it’s invalid to state the facts all you like. JWs keep growing and most other churches keep declining whether you think it’s valid to point it out or not.

88

Annual Report

by St George of England in

the latest report is now available for download on our favourite website!.

george.

slimboyfat

JWs do also have a very high churn rate compared to other denominations

Where’s your evidence for that?

You complain about my response, but what you said specifically was:

Additionally, we all know that direct comparisons with other churches are invalid where there is no (or trivial) social impediment to leaving the church.

I’m just trying to work out why you think this is a reason to discount JW growth compared with other groups. JW growth obviously is related to something(s) they do differently from other groups. You think you’ve identified shunning as the key difference is. Even if you’re right that is the key difference (no doubt it is a factor) why would that make comparison invalid? It’s basically saying you can’t compare two things if there is a good reason for a difference between the two things. But of course there’s a reason, that’s what produces different outcomes. It’s like saying one restaurant is more popular than another, and the other person responding that you can’t make that comparison because it’s cheaper than the other one. Well yeah, that might be one reason, but why does that mean you can’t compare?

88

Annual Report

by St George of England in

the latest report is now available for download on our favourite website!.

george.

slimboyfat

I like that reply slim. This particular subject fascinates me.

Joe, another interesting thing is that, as low as the Mormon numbers are in census results, the difference between Mormons and JWs might be even greater than even the census results indicate. Because various former Mormon missionaries have described how the Mormon church has run specific campaigns in various countries to encourage inactive Mormons to identify themselves as Mormons in the census. So it’s despite even those extra efforts that Mormons still come out so much fewer in number in the census compared with their official membership. Chile is one of the most blatant examples where they claimed 500,000 members yet, despite all their efforts to get people to identify as Mormon, only 100,000 did so in the census. This is in contrast with JWs who make no such effort yet many more identity as JWs than the official number.

88

Annual Report

by St George of England in

the latest report is now available for download on our favourite website!.

george.

slimboyfat

I think it makes sense given the world at the moment, wars in the middle east and the Ukraine etc

Yes, no doubt. It certainly makes me more inclined to go to the KH and to church. I suspect things in the world can get a whole lot worse too, with wars, AI, future pandemics. You name it. I think we’re in for a rough ride, and people need community in times like that.

It is true that some have incorrectly said the denomination is in actual decline. But what you seem to be misrepresenting, here and on other occasions, is that others including myself have correctly stated that their growth rate has declined.

Of course the rate of increase has declined. This is clear and I’ve never said otherwise. By contrast most other churches are trying to cope with severe declines and ultimately closure in the case of some denominations. Declining growth rates is an attractive “problem” for JWs to deal with compared with the severe declines other churches are facing.

And this remains the case in real terms despite their twiddling of the metrics.

Other churches do this too. For example some churches that required a financial contribution for membership have dropped that, and many churches now include online viewers in their attendance figures. That’s why I like the number of congregations metric more than others because it often (not always - no measure is perfect) gives a clearer picture of real long term trends across different groups.

Additionally, we all know that direct comparisons with other churches are invalid where there is no (or trivial) social impediment to leaving the church. This includes denominations that nominally ‘excommunicate’/‘disfellowship’ supposedly errant members but use the terms in a manner that does not actually involve shunning but just excludes them from attending religious services.

It sounds like you’re saying that because there is a reason for JW growth therefore the growth doesn’t count. But of course there is a reason, everything has a reason. More specifically, perhaps you’re saying that JW growth is morally tarnished because it’s accomplished by a practice you don’t approve. That’s fine as an ethical position if you want to take it. It’s not really what I’m talking about when I observe that JWs are continuing to grow while most other churches are declining. This is simply an empirical observation without saying it’s right or wrong, good or bad.

Having said that, it’s true that DFing is probably one reason for continued JW growth in among other factors, and for a complex set of reasons. In the 1990s sociologist Rodney Stark wrote a series of articles on JWs, Mormons, and growth patterns, in which he outlined a theory to explain why certain groups grow. Strictness and exclusion are factors and he identified a number of others as well. It’s not all down to one thing.

Another slightly ironic angle on the statement “JWs only grow because they disfellowship”, is that as they begin to downgrade shunning we will inevitably hear the converse claim too: “JWs are only growing because they dropped shunning”. We’ve already seen it debuted on the forum a few times and will no doubt amplify if they continue to grow, while they reduce shunning, and while other churches continue to decline.

It’s more complex than that. POMIs (etc) could be offset by families with multiple children who are counted as JWs in the census. This could also include spouses and adult children in the household who are counted as JWs by the ‘head of the house’ completing the census form.

However you explain away the high numbers of JWs in census returns, you should also explain why the same factors don’t affect Mormons or other groups. The simplest explanation is that JWs offer a modest count of their membership compared with other churches that often overstate their membership. But there is a lot of clutching at straws to try to avoid that obvious conclusion by any means possible.

88

Annual Report

by St George of England in

the latest report is now available for download on our favourite website!.

george.

slimboyfat

It’s an odd thing on this forum. Since I first joined in 2000 posters have continually insisted, year in year out, that JWs are in decline, yet between 2000 and now JWs increased from less than 6 million to over 9 million. At the same time, other churches have decreased massively across the western world, and yet some posters still insist other churches are doing better than JWs. It’s wishful thinking that allows of no empirical contradiction. Posters blithely state that black is white, increase is decline, year in and year out, regardless of the facts. I guess they’ll keep on doing so when there are ten million, eleven million, twelve million JWs, and meanwhile other churches are closing everywhere.

Here are some of the figures for the main churches in the UK according to Clive Field.

In 1970 there were 1,541,828 attending Anglican Churches in England. By 2020 this was down to 690,000.

In 1990 there were 98,878 members of the Church in Wales. In 2018 this was down to 42,441.

In 1970 there were 85,816 members of the Scottish Episcopal Church. In 2019 this was down to 27,585.

In 1970 there were 617,018 members of the Methodist church. In 2020 this was down to 164,024.

In 1970 there were 207,017 members of Baptist Churches. In 2020 this was down to 101,138.

In 1973 there were 192,136 members of the United Reformed Church. In 2020 this was down to 43,208.

In 1970 there were 20,752 members of the Quakers. In 2019 this was down to 12,498.

In 1970 there were 108,064 members of the Presbyterian Church in Wales. In 2016 this was down to 20,632.

In 1970 there were 1,154,211 members of the Church of Scotland. In 2020 this was down to 297,435.

In 1970 attendance at Catholic mass in the England and Wales was 1,934,853. By 2020 this was down to 701,902.

In 1970 attendance at Catholic mass in Scotland was 394,000. By 2018 this was down to 127,003.

In 1970 there were 11,812 members of the Seventh-day Adventists. By 2020 this was up to 39,591.

In 1970 there were 59,705 Jehovah’s Witnesses. By 2020 this was up to 130,904.

They all declined sharply. The only exceptions are the SDAs and JWs.

88

Annual Report

by St George of England in

the latest report is now available for download on our favourite website!.

george.

slimboyfat

Practically the only churches that are increasing in Europe are immigrant churches. Even if you focus on those few that are growing slightly I find it disingenuous. The fact is that many tens of millions have stopped going to church all over Europe. Finding a few isolated churches that mainly consist of new arrivals from Nigeria and Ghana that have grown by a few thousand are small by comparison and don’t contradict the overall trend.

This is all documented in Field’s book about Britain in particlar. The big churches have lost millions of members: Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian. A few small Pentecostal churches have grown slightly. It’s like losing a wallet with £100 but looking on the bright side that you found a 50 pence on pavement. The overall trend is clear.