JWs are bigger and more successful than the Mormon church

by joe134cd 48 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  slimboyfat

  Don’t take my word for it, the latest research confirms that JWs generally underestimate membership, Mormons grossly overestimate membership and Adventists are pretty accurate.

  Worldwide Adventists are the most numerous, then JWs, and Mormons trail a distant third.

  Lawson, R., & Xydias, G. K. (2020). Reassessing the Size of Mormons, Adventists and Witnesses: Using Census Data to Test the Reliability of Membership Data and Accounting for the Disparate Patterns Found. Review of Religious Research, 62(3), 413-437.

  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13644-020-00408-z

  “This study has compared official memberships of Mormons, Adventists, and Witnesses with estimates based on self-identification in census data from 54 different countries and a census proxy estimate for the United States. Official data show that the Adventist membership is the largest of the three groups, followed by Mormons, and then Witnesses. However, while the census data also show Adventists as the largest, Witnesses are second and Mormons trail as a distant third. The US census proxy for Mormons is the only category where the official data and the census proxy show reasonable agreement. For other countries, Mormon self-identification is less than a third of official statistics. Self-identification for Adventists exceeds their official data by almost a third, while those identifying as Witnesses are more than twice the official numbers. These data demonstrate that official membership statistics do not necessarily provide a reliable way of quantifying size: close attention must be paid to what categories are counted as members, and how accurately membership turnover is acknowledged.”
  
• 

  LV101

  Yes - SDA's have been leading the pack for few yrs. now. Growing in nos all over the world. Fact they're one of the Blue Zones (Loma Linda, California) doesn't hurt. They're either #1 or #2 for longevity in the world. It's impressive but as far as I know some strange beliefs - probably not more so than WT but I don't know. I'd assumed they were similar to JW religion -- apparently not. I think they accept the trinity now? They do believe in blood transfusions and stress education/science - always a win-win. They're quite the vegetarians.

  They aren't considered a toxic religion like WT. Many in the medical arena are SDAs and run a successful hospital - renown Loma Linda Hospital in Redlands, (Loma Linda), California, at the edge of San Bernardino, Calif. Beautiful area, perfect weather and live in flip-flops and shorts yr. round. Redlands was the 'Palm Springs' yrs. ago. Non- SDA friends love the area - wouldn't think of living anywhere else and adore the SDA neighbors/friends in community. They've great respect for the SDAs.
• 

  Jeffro

  LV101:

  SDA's have been leading the pack for few yrs. now.

  More than a few. The memberships were similar until something happened to the JW membership around 1975. I wonder what that could have been? 😂

  
  
• 

  Jeffro

  LV101:

  It's impressive but as far as I know some strange beliefs - probably not more so than WT but I don't know. I'd assumed they were similar to JW religion

  JWs is an offshoot from Adventism (parallel development to the SDAs in the late 19th century, both based on Millerism). Though their beliefs have diverged in various areas, their core eschatology, including their interpretations of Daniel, is Adventism.
• 

  LV101

  Jeffro - thanks for the good info. I'd read they were both off of Millerism or JWs off of 2nd day Adventism. That's why I always assumed they were very similar. I was shocked when someone told me they'd read a book an SDA had given them and they are not the same/different but she's no biblical scholar. I was shocked.

  You're over my head re/interpretations of Daniel = Adventism but I'll take your word for it.
• 

  resolute Bandicoot

  For anybody not up with he SDA / JW common ancestry - https://youtu.be/h_c-PdT0SsE
  
• 

  TD

  If raw membership is your only yardstick, I guess...

  In almost every other meaningful metric that I can think of, (Median income, average level of education, community/volunteer service, charitable activities, etc., etc.) there isn't much of a comparison. At least not here in the the American SW.
  
• 

  joe134cd

  If the SDA do have a bigger membership, the difference would only be by a couple of million at the most. As Slim commented the more accurate size of the JWs would lie between the publisher amount and those attending the memorial. I think the truer JW membership would be around the 16 million mark. If you were to factor in the attendance of those who truly believe the writings of Ellen G White you could also come to the same figure for the SDA. Let’s just take a rough estimate and say they are the same.

  The point that really comes home to me with the JW / LDS comparison, is that having more money doesn’t necessarily mean more members. Think on this for a moment. Mormonism had a 50 year head start on JWisim. By the time of the first printing of Zions Watchtower, Utah had been granted statehood by the US government. So Wt in the course of 200 years since the inception of Mormonism, not only closed a 50 year gap, but was able to increase its activity rate by 200%. They also done it on a fraction of the money that both the LDS and SDA has. In the last 20-25 years Wt is certainly in decline, but over the course of its history, with all its scandals and false doctrines, their performance would probably make Microsoft or apple computer green with envy.

  I also think Mormon members are more prepared to put up with the nonsense of their leaders e.g fudging numbers, and hiding facts. Could you imagine the outrage, if Wt opened a $5 billion dollar, church funded, shopping complex. While Tony Morris, cutting the ribbon on the opening day said “let’s go shopping.”
• 

  slimboyfat

  joe I think that historically JWs have been pretty accurate in their reporting. Every census seems to confirm this because more people identify themselves as JWs than JWs claim as publishers.

  However I think there are indications that Watchtower are not as conservative in their counting as they used to be, because the number of publishers continues to go up in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, while the census returns appear to show small declines. This may be due to the fact that Watchtower now promotes the idea of counting everybody, even elderly JWs who can only preach for 15 minutes. It might also be that there is a larger number of nominal JWs these days who do not choose to describe themselves as JWs in the privacy of the census form.

  On top of all that, I have reason to believe that the memorial figure compiled over Zoom this year was grossly inflated to the point of being fraudulent. It will be very interesting to see if there is a huge increase worldwide when the figures are released. If so, then I suggest the figures for this year’s memorial attendance are not reliable.

  Diogenesister I don’t disagree with you that many JWs who attend the memorial don’t believe it. But you seem to be making the unwarranted assumption that other churches are not the same. There are people who attend Baptist churches who don’t believe in God. There are Pentecostals who only go along because of family pressure. There are Mormons who think the Book of Mormon is complete fantasy but they don’t want to lose their friends and family. There are Episcopalians who don’t know what they believe but enjoy the singing. There are Seventh-day Adventists who reject the unique claims of the group about prophecy and the Sabbath, but who enjoy the community and the food. And so on. If we are going to start discounting JWs who don’t fully believe it, are we going to do the same with the numbers from other groups too?

  Someone also brought up the fact that JWs count unbaptised publishers and this makes their membership figures inaccurate. In fact JWs don’t have a concept of “membership” as such, as most other churches do. They talk about baptised and unbaptised publishers, they don’t talk about members. There was perhaps an implicit acknowledgement of the idea of membership in the mid 1990s when they stopped the practice of effectively disfellowshipping unbaptised publishers for wrongdoing. The very fact that they did formally expel unbaptised publishers at the time probably indicates they viewed them as “members” in some sense, and therefore accountable to the organisation for their behaviour, but perhaps had to retract their policy for legal reasons.
• 

  TD

  The point that really comes home to me with the JW / LDS comparison, is that having more money doesn’t necessarily mean more members....

  ..... their performance would probably make Microsoft or apple computer green with envy.

  I was going to take another stab at untangling the assumption of ceteris paribus by explaining a few of the philosophical and historical differences between the two faiths, but then got to the part about Apple and Microsoft and threw up my hands.

  Carry on...