Even the GOP governor who is mormon thinks this will mean more strength for the Democrats in the future. "We will become more balanced between Republicans and Democrats eventually," he said, which he later added was a good thing of which he has always been supportive.
Much more on the flipside.
To me, this story sounds strangly like those "Whites will be in the minority in California by 20XX" stories, with the same undertone that such an event is something to fear and not welcome.
I think having LDS folks in the minority in this state will only bring good things, and not because I dislike mormons, but because it will ease the stereotypes about the state and about the religion itself. Everytime someone meets me from out of state and I tell them I am from Utah, the first question they ask is: "Are you Mormon?" Maybe some day it will be "Do you ski like every weekend?" or something less centered about the dominant religious group of this state.
According to Church membership documents only 62.4% of the state's population is LDS. That is a lot lower than I have been telling friends from out of state (I thought it was 70%), but it doesn't mean Utah will become a cosmopolitan any-where USA state any time soon.
Professor Tim Heaton, who studies LDS demographics for church-owned Brigham Young University, says the county numbers probably come from church membership rolls, and that between half and one-third of those people are not active in the faith. If that's true, then, at most, 41.6 percent of Utahns are church-going Mormons.
This gradual change does mean that my children will grow up in a much different place than I did. And maybe Pioneer Day [State/LDS holiday celebrating the day Bringham Young and Co. arrived/settled in the Salt Lake Valley] won't be big-to-do it is these days.
This article is the shocker opening to a series that I will summarize below for Kossacks. Like how the fertility rate has nearly halved since the 1960s in this state-- 4.3 to 2.6 kids/woman makes me think many LDS women are either secretly using birth control, or they are gaining more say over the family than they did 40 years ago.
Today, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has more than 12 million members on its rolls, more than doubling its numbers in the past quarter-century. But since 1990, other faiths - Seventh-day Adventists, Assemblies of God and Pentecostal groups - have grown much faster and in more places around the globe.
And most telling, the number of Latter-day Saints who are considered active churchgoers is only about a third of the total, or 4 million in the pews every Sunday, researchers say.
The 4 million number comes from counting the people on the Church rolls for every continential region and multiplying by the average Sunday attendance. In the early 1990s, Canada, the South Pacific, and the United States had between 40 percent and 50 percent. Europe and Africa, the average was 35 percent. Attendance in Asia and Latin America hovered around 25 percent.
This sounds like LDS Missionaries are having a tough time keeping converts converted, or at least keeping them active in the Church. Experts in the article say 70-80% are lost. Never the less, don't feel bad, there are more Mormons than Jews, and last time I checked, Judism is a major world religion.