A new sociological study strongly suggests that churches that teach a fairly literal reading of scripture and that proclaim faith in a God who actually intervenes in the real world in response to prayer do better, on the whole, at retaining members and even growing than do more liberal churches:
T’hat’s not altogether surprising, of course. Already in 1972, Dean M. Kelley’s famous book Why Conservative Churches are Growing made a similar point.
Moreover, although the growth rate of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has slowed somewhat in recent years, the difference between its historical growth over the past half century and what I understand to be the rather static membership statistics of its cousin, the Community of Christ (until 2001, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), seems to offer almost a controlled laboratory experiment in support of the same idea. (The RLDS Church has moved sharply in a liberal direction since 1960.)
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