Brazil. JWs up 26% in 10 Years

by Joker10 126 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  slimboyfat

  What a conveniently selective and single comparison! Select a religious group that is historically aligned to a geographical location (Utah)

  Most religions have a heartland and are not very evenly spread. Mormons are not unusual in this respect, it is JWs who are unusual in being more evenly spread across the globe!

  Most Catholics live in Europe and Latin America. Most Jews live in Israel and the United States. Most Hindus live in India. Most Anglicans live in England. Most Othodox believers live in Eastern Europe. Most Lutherans live in Northern Europe. And so on and so on. Mormons are not unusual in being skewed to one geographical region. It is JWs that are unusual because they are comparatively not skewed to one geographical region. That's the whole point!
• 

  steve2

  Most religions have a heartland and are not very evenly spread.

  And the SDA's heartland is? This is really special pleading. Someone show me the distributions of the SDAs in the USA.

  As far as we New Zealanders are concerned, the "heartland" of the JWs is America (it is frequently referred to as "an American-originated religion" - yet I am not so daft as to really believe anyone is speaking about a piece of turf the way they are when referring to the Mormons and Utah.
• 

  slimboyfat

  Earlier in the thread I already suggested that the Adventists are the most likely rival to JWs for even spread across the globe, but from what I recall they fall comparatively short in a number of regions. For example there are comparatively very few Adventists in Europe. They are strong in the Americas, some parts of Africa, and various island nations.
• 

  slimboyfat

  The United States/Brooklyn, New York is obviously the hearland of JWs historically, ideologically, and in terms of control, but not terribly disproportionately in terms of numbers. Which is what I thought we were talking about.

  You are right to home in on the Adventists because they are perhaps closest to JWs in global spread. I already stated this much earlier in the thread. Although I suspect that JWs beat even the Adventists if we could devise a method for close comparison. In any case, the fact remains that JWs are comparatively much more evenly spread across the globe than most other religious groups. Which is all I ever said. Are you beginning to get the point?
• 

  dgp

  My question would be how the Watchtower would change from being a white American, English-speaking organization to a colored, non-American organization, multilingual organization. It does not seem to me they are ready for such a change. Can anyone really envision a moment when brothers Joao from Brazil and Luis from Mexico will lead the Governing Body?
• 

  slimboyfat

  NeverKnew there are many different measures of religious adherence/membership/belonging and social scientists have explored the whole spectrum, but attendance at religious services remains among the most relevant measures for most Christian denominations. In the United Kingdom the Christian Research Institute headed by Peter Brierley has been measuring the decline of Christian denominations for nearly forty years. He has no connection with JWs and has little apparent interest in them as they are not included in his surveys. Nevertheless the key measure of support for various denominations scrutinised by his English Church Attendance Survey has been attendance at religious services on a Sunday. No measure is perfect, but across all denominations, and over the decades it provides the most useful and enlightening comparisons.
• 

  slimboyfat

  dgp going by the numbers, most GB members should speak Spanish and a more appropriate location for the headquarters might be Lusaka, Zambia. It will never happen though. So far a token African American on the GB is about as radical as they want to get in acknowledging the diversity of their membership within the power structure. Barring some sort of revolution from below it's hard to see that changing any time soon.
• 

  dgp

  Slimboyfat: That's precisely my point. In this sense, is growth in Brazil (or the Third World) only a good thing?
• 

  jwfacts

  It is unrealistic to compare JW growth with Mormons. All JWs preach, Mormons predominantly only spend 2 years preaching. Furthermore, the Mormon message is more bizarre than that of JW's and almost on par with Scientology; a lot harder sell. Neither do Mormons have the hook of never dying. The Mormon message has the standard Christian idea of a resurrection at death, so why leave a Christian religion to join them? On the other hand JWs have the message that you will never die but "soon" get to be in paradise, pretty much the ultimate message for a pyramid scheme. So I stand by my comment at the incredible inefficiency of the JW sales force.

  For those that asked, the 14% is from Joker's table, and is the difference in population between 2000 and 2010.
• 

  hijosdelawatch

  Don't forget this growth in poor countries is at the heart of the WT's financial problems.

  Increasing costs + less contributions in 1st World = Problems.

  That's why they're closing branches and reducing their operations (decreasing in WT and Awake pages, etc.).

  Plus, in a effort to adapt to this new members in poor countries, they are losing members from rich ones. Just see the WT study articles. A decades ago, they were complex. Now, these articles are "easier" and their arguments are becoming more and more "simplified". In that way, they're losing capacity to attract people in places like Europe, the US and Japan.