by davidl7 52 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
SLIMBOYFAT - they do fare quite well in westernized countries in "keeping their numbers up"<<<<<< that's what it's all about!
. . . but why? Part of it is guys like me who have families with guns pointed to their heads - one bad move and YOU LOSE IT ALL.
Those are interesting figures, but the NCC report does not indicate how (or if) they vetted the data. The phrase "reported a membership of..." suggests these are figures various churches reported to them. They could be the total (baptized and unbaptized publishers) minus total (disfellowshipped or diassociated). Or it could be the total enrollment in their congregations. Or it could be estimated attendance at this year's Easter service. Others may be counting diifferent names appearing on checks in the collection basket.
I think it would be better to report the number of active members, information more meaningful than counting names on baptismal records.
If one was to retrospectively consider the fact that the WTS/JWS has been recruiting door to door for over 100 years, it becomes perfectly clear that
the JW organization as a religious organization is an abysmal and enormous failer world wide.
Only 7 million members of proselytizing for over 100 years.
It seems the general public has become aware of dubious religious cults who are nothing but an exercise of commercialized fraud around a religious
publishing house.
So David7 are you going to join the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World since they are the fastest growing religion in America to date ?
You know the fastest growing religion has to be the true and uprightly honest religion chosen by god himself.
At first I couldn't figure out why Dave would post information about JW membership statistics on the child abuse issues forum. But maybe it is a Freudian Slip on his part. Since most of the JW membership increase is due to children born in, perhaps Dave wants us to be aware of that we can expect an increase in child abuse within the congregations.
If I remember correctly the figure used for JWs in this comparison is the peak publisher number from the Watchtower Yearbook.
This thread got me curious, so I went Googling.
Here were some of my findings:
Statistics for JWs did have them the fastest growing denomination in the U.S. in 2008.
GLTirebiter made a good point that the numbers reported in the NCC Report are numbers reported by the denominations, not an independent survey. An ABC news analysis of that report for 2011 (which was numbers from 2009 reported in 2010) said the figure for Jehovah's Witnesses was misleading because they only report "active" members rather than attendance. They said a more accurate indication growth would be a comparison of attendees to their annual Memorial observance.
Also, the report stated that 10 of the 25 top denominations (of which JWs are listed as 20th) do not report.
So the report appears to be numbers from 2009-2010.
The latest reports from 2011 figures say that the fastest growing denominationin the U.S. is LDS, followed by Islam. (Some reports have it the other way around.) And the fastest Christian religion in the U.S. is "non-denominational" churches, away from mainstream religions.
Here's the link:
http://www.standard.net/stories/2012/05/04/religion-census-lds-church-fastest-growing-group-us
All in all, from this rudimentary Google search, it appeared that JWs were the fastest growing denomination in the world in the mid-1960s, faring well in 2008, but nothing apparent for 2011 to the present. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life did report the numbers from the NCC report, but also stated in the most recent report that JWs have the lowest retention rate of all groups.
I guess people can find stats to support any agenda they want to support.
Cedars: Thanks for your comment above. Just thought I might be confused. :-)
~Binadub
The 2012 Religious Congregations and Membership Study, released here Tuesday, shows that the mainline Protestants and Catholics who dominated the 20th century are literally losing ground to the rapid rise of Mormons and, increasingly, Muslims.
The study is conducted once every 10 years and can track Americans' religious affiliation down to the county level, from the largest ( Los Angeles County , where Mormons grew 55% while Catholics shrank by 7%) to the smallest (Loving County, Texas, which is home to 80 people and one nondenominational evangelical church).
Romney's Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported 2 million new adherents and new congregations in 295 counties where they didn't exist a decade ago, making them the fastest-growing group in the U.S.
Mormons were the fastest-growing group in 26 states, expanding beyond their historic home in Utah to the heart of the Bible Belt and as far away as Maine.
Muslims came in second, with growth of 1 million adherents in 197 new counties, to a total of about 2.6 million. Overall, non-Christian groups grew by 32 percent over the past decade.
"Mosques have multiplied at a growth rate of about 50 percent," said Dale Jones , a researcher with the Church of the Nazarene who worked on the study as part of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. "They have more religious centers, and simply moving into the suburbs puts you closer to where a lot of your folks are living."
Muslims saw the greatest growth rate among the five main religious groups studied. Their numbers increased by 66.7 percent in the 2010 census from a decade earlier. Latter-day Saints saw the next highest growth at 45.5 percent, followed by evangelical Protestants at only 1.7 percent. The number of Catholics decreased by five percent and the number of mainline Protestants decreased by 12.8 percent.
Notably, when combined, nondenominational and independent churches are now the largest faith group, with over 12 million adherents, according to the report.
Evangelical Protestants and Latter-day Saints saw their greatest growth in the nine most populated metropolitan areas. These areas each have over 5 million people. Evangelical Christians increased their numbers by 12.3 percent and Latter-day Saints increased their numbers by 66.9 percent in these areas. Muslims, by contrast, grew at a faster rate outside of the major metropolitan areas.
The census also shows an increase in religious diversity in the United States. In the 2000 census, at least one non-Christian religious congregation was found in 21 percent of America's counties. In the 2010 census, that had risen to 31 percent, a nearly 50 percent increase.
ASARB's U.S. Religion Census is the most thorough study of its kind. County-level data is collected for 236 different religious groups. The first census was taken in 1952, to be followed up in 1971, 1980, 1990, 2000 and, now, 2010.
I found the source. There's a more recent publication, 2012, with 2009 numbers (Stats are always two years behind). I went back several years to compare the big growths and declines.
http://www.ncccusa.org/news/120209yearbook2012.html
| Church | YB 2009 | YB 2010 | YB 2011 | YB 2012 | Membership 2009 (YB 2011) |
| Catholic | -0.59% | 1.49% | 0.57% | -0.44% | 68,500,000 |
| Southern Baptist Convention | -0.24% | -0.24% | -0.42% | -0.55% | 16,160,088 |
| United Methodist | -0.8% | -0.98% | -1.01% | -1.22% | 7,774,931 |
| LDS (Mormon) | 1.63% | 1.71% | 1.47% | 1.62% | 6,058,907 |
| Evangelical Lutheran | -1.35% | -1.92% | -1.96% | -5.9% | 4,542,868 |
| Assemblies of God | 0.96% | 1.27% | 0.52% | 3.99% | 2,914,669 |
| Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) | -1.44% | -1.92% | -1.08% | -1.45% | 2,312,111 |
| Presbyterian Church (USA) | -2.79% | -3.28% | -2.61% | -3.45% | 2,770,730 |
| Episcopal Church | -1.76% | -2.81% | -2.48% | -2.71% | 2,006,343 |
| American Baptist | -0.94% | -2% | -1.55% | -0.19% | 1,310,505 |
| Jehovah's Witnesses | 2.12% | 2% | 4.37% | 1.85% | 1,162,686 |
| United Church of Christ | -6.01% | -2.93% | -2.83% | -2.02% | 1,080,199 |
| Church of God (Cleveland, Tn) | 2.04% | 1.76% | 0.38% | -0.21% | 1,076,254 |
| Seventh-Day Adventist | 4.31% | 1.61% | 1,043,606 | ||
On the 2010 news release, the editor offered this explanation for the accelerated decline for some denominations: " ..many observers have attributed accelerated membership decline of some churches to 'an increasing secularization of American postmodern society, and its disproportionate impact on liberal religious groups.'"
I think Mormons can be discounted. Their statistics are simply not reliable as census after census has demonstrated.
