“Who Is Leaving the Church?” (Part Three)

Today’s installment of my bi-weekly column in the Deseret News:

“How Mary’s ‘Immaculate Conception’ is about her origin: The Virgin Birth and Immaculate Conception can be commonly confused, yet are quite distinct”

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I offer a final note — a quotation — drawn from Stephen Cranney, “”Who Is Leaving the Church? Demographic Predictors of Ex-Latter-day Saint Status in the Pew Religious Landscape Survey,” BYU Studies Quarterly 58/1 (2019): 99-108:

Because there is no information [in the Pew Religious Landscape Survey on which he’s basing his conclusions] on when people left the Church, it is difficult to speculate about why ex-Latter-day Saints tend to be divorced more than those who remain in the Church.  It is theoretically plausible that the trauma of undergoing a divorce led to a loss of faith, activity, and ultimately identification with the Church; it is also possible that a loss of faith led to intermarital strife with a member spouse; finally, it is possible that Latter-day Saint marriages tend to have lower divorce rates overall. . . .

Similarly, there are a number of theoretically plausible stories for why ex-Latter-day Saints tend to be less educated and have lower income.  It could be that there is a Latter-day Saint emphasis on education and occupational success that leads to higher incomes and more education, or it could be that people are more likely to stay in the Church if the lifestyle is working out for them socioeconomically. . . .

While on their face the political findings support the familiar narrative of liberal Latter-day Saints leaving over social issues, the fact that only a minority of ex-Latter-day Saints identify as liberals and that hardly any of them switch to liberal Protestant denominations nuances this perspective.  While social issues are undoubtedly salient for some people’s exodus from the Church, it is likely that this narrative receives a disproportionate amount of attention in informal and online discourse on this subject, and the size of the liberal Latter-day Saint exodus over social issues should not be exaggerated.  (107)

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Here’s an interesting article by two members of the faculty — David Dollahite and Loren Marks — in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University:

“Romantic Love and Religion – A Match Made in Heaven?”

“For most of the couples who have allowed us to visit their homes over the years as we conducted research on their time-tested marriages, their relationships embrace a shared marital vision that include a loving God who in turn taught them to love each other deeply and, Heaven willing, eternally.”