In the four weeks since “The Next Mormons” was published, I’ve received a number of questions related to the research, many of which have to do with retention. How many people — especially young adults — are leaving The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and why?
There’s no one definitive study that can answer our questions about retention, so in the introduction to the book I triangulate data from three different sources to describe the changing landscape.
The most optimistic picture comes from data from the Pew Research Center, which has surveyed Latter-day Saints as part of its Religious Landscape Study in 2007 and 2014, as well as a separate and more focused study during the “Mormon Moment” in 2011–2012.