Comments on: Pentecostals, Witnesses, Mormons growing

By: Jolene Howard

Jolene Howard — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:17:10 +0000

The Saviors true church will continue to grow, until it has penetrated every continent, visted every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, Till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:33:46 +0000

I am pretty sure that the agnostics is the fast growing belief system in the world; especially in the USA.

By: John

John — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 03:23:45 +0000

I believe the Catholics and Baptists are much smaller than they report. If you consider only active members the Mormons are probably largert than the United Methodists.

By: Caleb Powers

Caleb Powers — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 18:42:33 +0000

Thus my choice of words, David; I said the Mormons were taking over the world, not necessarily the US. I suspect the markets are better for their product overseas; in the US, I imagine, traditional Christianity is pretty well here to stay.

By: David Duke

David Duke — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 03:02:07 +0000

We are taking over the world, Caleb. Glad you heard! JK! Actually, the LDS church is growing much more rapidly outside of the US than domestically, I believe.

By: Gene

Gene — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:57:43 +0000

Numbers for the Churches of Christ are hard to establish since there is no denominational headquarters, but the 1.6 million figure given by the NCC is too high. The latest (December 2008) and most reliable numbers put the C of C at 1,224,525 members and 1,578,400 adherents. The adherents number is often used since unbaptized children are usually not counted in the membership number.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:06:13 +0000

I learned once upon a time that anyone can prove anything with numbers. Looks like that might be happening here as Caleb has already pointed out. Being a retired pastor of one of these mainline denominations the most interesting part of this blog to me was that both Catholics and Southern Baptists were considered something other than mainline denominations – which I had always thought they were.

By: marty

marty — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:30:54 +0000

No matter what anyone tells you, the mormons are a cult and worship outside of the Bible. Even though they prop up the Bible and qute it,they are not bible believing christians. They know how to grow and it’s done under deception and populist tactics. The new thing for mormons is the boy scouts. They have infilitrated the organization and very patiently try to recruit you. they are very clever and go out of there way to sound mainstream, but they are not. Beware of this cult.

By: SharperIron » Recent Denominational Membership Stats Posted

SharperIron » Recent Denominational Membership Stats Posted — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:21:16 +0000

[...] BibleBeltBlogger- “Pentecostals, Witnesses, Mormons growing” [...]

By: Caleb Powers

Caleb Powers — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:13:43 +0000

When you look at these numbers in context, what strikes me is that none of the denominations listed has had much of a change in membership, up or down. Everyone says that the Episcopal Church is dying, but it lost only 1.76% of its members, which ain’t bad given the turmoil that we’re in with those pesky conservative dioceses and parishes.

The Roman Catholics are down a half a percent, when all the news reports talk about Catholic churches in most cities being full to the rafters with newly arrived hispanic congregants. The Mormons are supposed to be taking over the world, but they grew less than 2%, and there are only five million of them. I know that’s twice the size of my own church, but it’s less than ten percent of the size of the Catholics and a third of the number of Southern Baptists; they’re only slightly larger than the Church of God in Christ, whatever that is.

All in all, it looks like we’re a pretty diverse group, and amazingly stable.

By: José

José — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:47:09 +0000

The Jehovah Witness numbers surprised me. I don’t meet nearly as many of them as in years past, and figured that their growth may have stagnated.

It would have been interesting to see the statistics on non-denominational Christian churches. Despite the name that classification has many characteristics of a denomination, and they probably have a much greater growth rate than any other major group. Remember, too, that there are other religious groups not listed here. There are millions of Jews in the USA, and the Muslim population is growing rapidly.