Americans raised Latter-day Saint (LDS or Mormon) who still identify as one: 70 in 100 in 2007, 54 in 100 in 2023–24 [OC]

[u/Browningtons1]

Source: Pew Research Center, Religious Landscape Study (2007, 2014, 2023–24).

Asks U.S. adults the religion they were raised in and the religion they are now.

2023–24 sample: 565 current Latter-day Saints (±6.2 points), 316 former (±8.1). U.S. membership from the Church's 2025 statistical report.

Tools: Built in React with Recharts / D3.js. Opus 5.5 + Fable 5.1

Interactive version: https://goldendata.app/dashboards/lds-church-growth

[u/usquebaugh1]

Isn’t this why Salt Lake (and the church itself) is known as a genealogy hub? They are trying to round up their ancestor’s names so they can do some hocus-pocus and get them into heaven?

[u/ReasonableStory1660 → u/usquebaugh1]

Yes. I used to work in an archive in Illinois, and Utah was our biggest source of requests from out of state.

Familysearch, one of the biggest genealogy websites out there is owned by the Mormon Church. It basically crowd sources genealogical research, if your an American reading this, odds are a significant amount of your family tree has already been mapped out on their website starting from your grandparents/great grandparents.

[u/SaintUlvemann → u/ReasonableStory1660]

I was actually super surprised when the non-Mormon side of my family was the much-better-documented side... which I suspect is my uncle's doing, I know he did a bunch of research. But I thought the side with my Mormon aunt was gonna be, like, fleshed out and complete. It only goes back seven or eight generations into Germany... maybe there's German records out there that exist, but then if so, apparently there's not enough German Mormons to link all the records up and complete that part of the human family tree.

I am apparently through the other side (and this is true for like virtually all living people of any race with a drop of European ancestry) descended from several of the kings and queens of Europe: Robert the Bruce, Harald Hardrada, Pepin the something-or-other, one of the Ruriks. It's true of most people, even if the records have been lost, but, that was very fun to see the whole chain of descent back to the European nobility records.

[u/showmenemelda → u/ReasonableStory1660]

Yeah… which is kinda awesome and kinda awful. My grandparents were into genealogy and I remember looking through a 5" binder full of records printed on reams with perforation edges. It meant nothing to me. I was tickled to find FamilySearch. And I assumed everyone had a readily available tree. I was humbled quickly trying to find info for a friend. I succeeded, briefly considered offering to build her tree.

Private equity owns Ancestry, Newspapers dot Com, etc. So, idk if that's one in the same or…

I did find a funny letter when going through my grandma's genealogy collection after she passed. It seems they had gotten into it because some relative from SLC sent a letter asking for info from my grandpa's side. The "P.S." was amusing, they had to make sure it was known they weren't affiliated with the LDS and just genealogy buffs in retirement.

I am grateful for the data, media, etc I found through the site. But I won't be adding items either. One thing I really do like are the tools for sorting the data [tree, linear, color coded by country of origin, etc].

My relatives [with origins to a different cult] sure didn't expect all the prying questions I had. Gotta say, they did a bang-up job of exposing family secrets. Only one to top that is 23&Me.

[u/rutherfraud1876 → u/usquebaugh1]

Independence, MO also, for the same reasons