The research

An online survey of people who had once believed the LDS Church was "the only true and living church" and no longer did, recruited through Mormon-themed blogs and social media. 3,388 responded; 302 were dropped for incomplete answers or because they still believed, leaving 3,086. Respondents were 58% male, 70% married, 31% in Utah, and unusually educated (70% held a college degree or higher). They had been deeply involved: 87% of men and 77% of women had held a calling, 73% of men had served missions, and more than half of men and 40% of women had held leadership positions.

Respondents rated twenty-one general factors and twenty specific historical issues on a 0 to 4 scale. The average respondent rated fifteen factors as major (3 or 4). Doctrinal and historical reasons dominated; social explanations came last. Written comments were coded for themes, the most common being the lack of transparency about historical issues. The report also analyzed who stays active after losing belief, how open disbelievers are with family and leaders, the costs they report, and what they said would bring them back.

The only nationally representative measure of the trend, repeated over nearly two decades. Pew asks American adults what religion they were raised in and what they are now. Among those raised Latter-day Saint, the share who still identify that way has fallen with each measurement.

Pew does not ask why people leave in a way specific to Latter-day Saints, so it cannot rank reasons. What it can do is establish that the departures are real, large, and accelerating, and that they show up in a random sample and not only among people who answer online surveys about their disaffection.

The first study to use a commercial survey panel rather than volunteers, and the first to compare current and former members and to break results out by generation. Former members were asked to pick their top three reasons for leaving from a list. The result differs in emphasis from the 2011 survey: values and trust lead, and specific historical claims sit lower, largely because respondents could choose only three and because the list offered different categories.

Riess's book shows belief falling by generation among current members too: 86% of Boomers and older were certain God is real, against 68% of Millennials; 67% of Boomers were sure the First Presidency and apostles are prophets, against 53% of Millennials.

The most recent large survey, run by a foundation that describes itself as faithful. Respondents were recruited by mailers to counties where at least 15% of residents are Latter-day Saints, and by Facebook advertising. Former members ranked the importance of possible reasons for leaving. The top three were history related to Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and race; the Church's positions on LGBTQ people and women came next; local leaders and the Word of Wisdom came last.

Other findings about former members: about 44% do not believe in God or think the question unknowable; nearly 90% now have no religious affiliation; about 18% identify as LGBTQ+, against roughly 4% of current members; two thirds have kept their membership records rather than formally resigning; fewer than 8% expressed any interest in returning.

A 70-page report prepared for the Church's leadership that reframed the 2011 survey data as a management problem: who is leaving, why, what it costs the Church, and what could be done. It profiled the departing member as a highly committed, well-educated, internet-connected adult and identified the Book of Abraham, polygamy and polyandry, the priesthood ban, and DNA and the Book of Mormon as the leading historical catalysts. It recommended candor. Six months after it was delivered, the Church began publishing the Gospel Topics essays.

The moment the Church acknowledged the problem in public. Asked at Utah State University in late 2011 whether members were leaving over historical issues, Elder Marlin K. Jensen, then Church Historian and a General Authority, said: "Maybe since Kirtland, we've never had a period of, I'll call it apostasy, like we're having now." The 1837 collapse of the Kirtland bank had cost the Church a large share of its leadership. The same report quoted sociologist Armand Mauss estimating that about half of American members are active, and put worldwide active membership at as few as five million.

The Church reports total membership of record, convert baptisms, children of record, and units each April. Membership continues to grow, and convert baptisms rose sharply in 2025. What the reports do not include is attendance, resignations, or removals; a member stays on the rolls until age 110 unless they formally resign or are excommunicated. The gap between membership of record and the number of people who identify as Latter-day Saints in independent surveys is the best available measure of quiet departure.

The largest study of Latter-day Saint disaffiliation yet attempted, and the first of this size carried out by a believing member and written for believing members. Strong served as a bishop and a mission president; his own son stepped away. He assembled a research team of academics, compared his results against the Pew Religious Landscape Study, Harvard's Cooperative Election Study and the General Social Survey, and published the result to the people still inside the Church.

Its central findings match the 2011 survey on this site closely enough to be striking, given that the two were run fifteen years apart by people on opposite sides of the question. Where the 2011 respondents ranked doctrine, history, Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon first and offense and sin last, Strong finds 42% naming Church history as their primary reason, ahead of social and lifestyle factors, and reports that roughly three quarters of active members misidentify why people leave.

Two findings are new. People wrestle for about a decade before stepping away, so leaving is the end of a long private process rather than a decision. And 83% of those in a faith transition tell someone, but who they tell decides how it goes: Strong found conversations with church leaders about four and a half times more likely to go badly than conversations with a sibling, because leaders try to correct or contain rather than build trust.