From long profiles of wealthy homemakers to horror flicks about earnest missionaries, U.S. news media and entertainment outlets have once again focused outsized attention on a relatively tiny group: Latter-day Saints.
The age-old question pulsing at the heart of these projects: Who are these tight-knit believers who pair modern lifestyles with a belief in living prophets and secret rituals?
The various answers suggested by Hulu, Netflix, TikTok and others range from the sinister to the self-deprecating, the bloodthirsty and the brave.
Now, a massive new report, the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study, offers more answers — drawn not from history or script but from scientific polling.
Based on responses from nearly 37,000 Americans, the survey zeroed in on six Christian faith groups, in addition to Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Islam. Finally, it included atheists, agnostics and those who identified as “nothing in particular.”
In all, researchers collected responses from 565 self-identified members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The resulting snapshot depicts an increasingly male, increasingly diverse faith struggling to hang on to its flock — even as those who do remain show signs of remarkably robust activity.
Ups and downs of LDS Church membership
When it comes to the overall share of the nation’s population, Latter-day Saints have held steady at 2% since Pew released its first Religious Landscape Study in 2008. That number may not look impressive on its face, especially given the amount of resources the proselytizing faith puts toward recruitment. But when put in the context of a simultaneous overall decline in Christianity from 78% to 62%, that small, static number takes on a new sheen.
Moreover, the 2% does not reflect the number on the church’s rolls — only the estimate of those who self-identified to surveyors as a Latter-day Saint.
[Read more about the study’s findings regarding Latter-day Saint spiritual lives here, and about the apparent halt in Christianity’s decline here.]
Here are some demographic tidbits about the evolving U.S. membership:
• Of those raised in the church, a bit more than half — 54% — still identify with the faith as adults (down from 70% in Pew’s 2008 report).
• 52% of members are male (up from 44%), 47% female (down from 56%).
Pew Religious Landscape Study.
• 72% are white (down from 85% in the 2008 report), 6% Black (up from 2%), 12% Hispanic (up from 7%), 1% Asian (no change) and 7% multiethnic/other (up from 3%). Despite these shifts, the church still ranks among the least diverse.
• 29% report a household income of $100,000 or more (up from 16%), while 27% cite bringing home between $50,000 and $99,999 (down from 38%).
• 37% have children under 18 living at home (down from 49%). Despite this decline, Latter-day Saints are surpassed only by Hindus (44%) and Muslims (42%) in the latest survey.
The finding on gender makeup comes at a time when researchers are increasingly identifying a larger shift of young women, particularly members of Generation Z, away from religion. In doing so, these individuals, currently in their teens and 20s, are upending decades of studies showing women as the overperformers in faith matters.
Pew Religious Landscape Study.
Where Latter-day Saints stand on politics
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) President Donald Trump meets with top Latter-day Saint leaders in 2017 during a visit to Welfare Square.
Latter-day Saints may harbor some hesitations around President Donald Trump, but they remain overwhelmingly Republican and committed to small government, with many embracing ideas of Christian nationalism — or the belief that Christian beliefs should dictate American civic life.
• 73% identify as Republican or leaning toward the GOP, the most of any religious group studied (up from 65%), compared to just 10% who label themselves liberal (no change). Nearly a quarter, 23%, identify as Democratic or leaning that way (up from 22%).
• They are, at 63%, the most supportive of a smaller government (up from 56%).
• 65% say they support the United States declaring itself a Christian nation (question was not previously asked).
By comparison, a separate 2023 study found that 38% of Latter-day Saints qualify as Christian nationalists. While nearly 30 percentage points less than the Pew finding (a discrepancy perhaps due, at least in part, to the 2023 report’s more detailed approach to the subject), this number was significantly ahead of the 29% that report pegged as the U.S. average.
Where Latter-day Saints stand on social issues
(Illustration by Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
The latest Pew study differs somewhat from its predecessors in the attention it gives to religious groups’ views on social issues, science and other hot-button topics. Unsurprisingly, Latter-day Saints converged in almost all instances around opinions traditionally championed by Republicans, be it on climate change or gender roles.
• At 69%, Latter-day Saints are the most likely to say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases (down from 70%).
• They are, at 55%, the second most likely to say that an increase in acceptance of transgender individuals is bad (question was not previously asked).
• At 41%, they are the most likely to say it is best for the children if the mother does not participate in the paid labor market in favor of staying home (question was not previously asked). A likely contributing factor to this is the faith’s official blueprint for gender and gender roles, known as “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” which assigns men the responsibility, when possible, of providing.
• 69% say they favor a diverse, immigrant-friendly society — a similar number to many other Christian groups studied (question was not previously asked).
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Volunteers check in dozens and dozens of immigrants at a Las Vegas Welcome Center in a Latter-day Saint meetinghouse in Las Vegas in 2021.
• 74% view science and religion as compatible, nearly 10 percentage points ahead of Muslims who, at 66%, are the next most likely to take this view.
Ben Spackman, a Latter-day Saint historian who has written about members’ views on evolution, attributes this positive correlation, at least in part, to top leaders.
“The mid-20th century rhetoric from some general authorities that forced a dichotomy between scripture and science has all but disappeared in LDS discourse,” he observes, “partly due to generational shift but also better historical and scriptural research.”
• 36% say climate change is the result of natural causes, the most of any group by 6 percentage points (question was not previously asked).
This final point echoes a similar finding by a 2023 study suggesting Latter-day Saints are among the least concerned about climate change and that close to half (44%) blame rapidly increasing temperatures on natural causes — an argument that has been repeatedly debunked by scientists.
This is not, however, to say that they don’t care about the environment. Indeed, in both the 2023 and current study, Latter-day Saints rank among the most likely to say that stewardship of the Earth is incumbent upon all.
Teresa Gomez, a board member of Latter-day Saint Earth Stewardship, says there is little disagreement among her fellow church members regarding the Earth’s divine origins, but that few extend this to mean that planting a tree or helping in a community garden represents a form of worship equal to that of scripture study or temple attendance.
“There is an entire layer of worship and discipleship that,” Gomez says, “Latter-day Saints have yet to unlock.”
(Illustration by Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
As for abortion, Oregon State University religion and culture professor Courtney Campbell believes that politics, not theology, are likely the main driver behind Latter-day Saint opposition to legal protections for the medical procedure.
After all, the author of “Mormonism, Medicine, and Bioethics” notes, the church has no official stance on when the soul enters the body and, in fact, leaves room in its official policy for individuals to obtain abortions in certain cases. Instead, Campbell argues that the survey’s findings reflect “an embrace by the general membership of the conservative ‘culture war’ narrative” around the issue.
Lifestyle trends among Latter-day Saints
Finally, the new Pew study examined a range of behaviors of religious groups, particularly as it related to home life. Here again, Latter-day Saints find themselves the standouts in more than one category.
• 87% are married to someone who shares their faith, the largest of any group (up from 82% in the 2015 report). Likely contributing to this number is the faith’s emphasis on temple sealings, the ritual that solemnizes marriages for the eternities and which requires both spouses to be observant Latter-day Saints.
• 72% say they have volunteered in the past year, the highest of any group by 20 percentage points (down from 77%).
• 17% homeschool their children or send them to a private religious school (question was not previously asked).
Why the sky-piercing levels of volunteering? It could be that Latter-day Saints, who are encouraged to seek out opportunities to contribute to their communities through the church-sponsored JustServe.org website, are particularly civically minded.
An alternative answer could be that these respondents are counting the volunteer efforts nearly all members in the largely lay church are called to engage in — from helming one’s congregation or staffing the nursery while parents attend Sunday school to visiting assigned fellow members in the neighborhood.
About the study
Conducted in English and Spanish from July 17, 2023, to March 4, 2024, Pew’s Religious Landscape Study included a nationally representative sample of 36,908 respondents, who were given the option of completing the questionnaire online, over the phone or on paper.
The overall margin of error is plus or minus 0.8 percentage point. For Latter-day Saints, that number is 6.2 percentage points.
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