Mormonism & the Mormon church

The Economist has a good article about the Mormon church. It mentions that the church has grown tremendously since it was first founded in New York by Joseph Smith and now has more members outside the U.S. than inside. There’s also the debate of whether to call it a worldwide church or a U.S. church with foreign adherents.

Rodney Stark, an American sociologist, pronounced 20 years ago that the Mormon faith was on the way to becoming the first world religion to be founded since Muhammad; he thought the number of adherents might exceed 260m by the second half of the 21st century.

Since then, the rate of growth has eased a little, though it remains impressive compared with many Christian denominations.

The article mentions Mitt Romney and Brandon Flowers as prominent Mormons.

It also mentions that church membership in Brazil (where I spent two years as a Mormon missionary) and Mexico constitute 1 million of the Church’s almost 13 million members.

Good article.

Source: Economist.com

Via: Sustaind.org

The Church recently released a new beta version of its Newsroom site. It includes lots of statistics and information about several countries and each state in the U.S. Here is some info on Nevada:

In 1852, three years after the discovery of gold in California, seven members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon church) established a trading post in what is now Genoa (near Lake Tahoe)…. In 1855, 30 men were called to establish a mission at the Meadows in southern Nevada…. In the late 1920s, many Utahns moved to Nevada in search of better economic conditions. The Las Vegas Nevada Temple was dedicated in 1989 as “an oasis of peace and light.”

The Reno temple was dedicate in April 2000. Of the 2.4 million people in Nevada, 167,822 are Mormons (6.9%). Nevada has 2 missions, 2 temples, 5 family history centers, and 304 congregations (ward/branches).

Famous Mormons in/from Nevada include Brandon Flowers, Gladys Knight, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Source: LDS Newsroom, statistics on Nevada and Wikipedia