In SC, Mitt Romney was asked Friday at a rally, “Do you believe in the divine saving grace of Jesus Christ?”
Romney replied, “Yes I do.”
Mitt Romney’s campaign has been one of the driving forces behind the Mormon Moment. This has prompted many such questions along the way. Also, many interesting statistics have been coming out about Mormons and what other Americans think about Mormons.
A Salt Lake Tribune poll shows that Republicans are much more comfortable with a Mormon president than Democrats are. 76% of Republicans are comfortable, 61% of Independents but only 46% of Democrats. The most listed reason for why people are not comfortable is the practice of polygamy. This means that a large amount of people still do not understand our distance to the practice. However, still a quarter to a third of people surveyed do not like the idea of a Mormon president, a significant amount, meaning it is still a raw vein of feeling.
With Romney becoming a front-runner, it is easy to understand that Republicans would be more accepting of a Mormon president and Democrats much more wary. This is reiterated in another Salt Lake Tribune poll that found that 71 percent of Republicans and 65 percent of white evangelicals felt that Mormons had views that are very or somewhat similar to their own, while 66 percent of Democrats believe LDS views are very or somewhat different from their own.
Mormons also identify themselves more with Republicans. In the first major study on Mormons done by sources outside of the Church, the Pew Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 66% of US Mormons call themselves conservative and 74% are Republican or lean Republican.
These findings show that Mormons still have work to do to improve non-Mormon understanding and show that a Mormon president would not be any different from a president of a different religion. Particularly, Mormons need to be careful in the coming year to reach out in understanding to people who consider themselves liberal or Democrats. Such outreach is likely to have the greatest impact on public relations outside of the church. Listening and looking to find things in common should be our goal. This Mormon Moment is a great chance to clear up misconceptions about the church. As the Pew Study found, 62% of Mormons surveyed said that the American public knew little or nothing about Mormonism but 63% felt like acceptance of Mormonism is on the rise.
Using data from Wikipedia, we can compare the numbers for self-identified Mormons versus those who have joined the church and have not asked their names to be removed, whether or not they identify as Mormons or not. Wikipedia says there are over 14 million Mormons in the world with about 6.7 million outside of the US. This gives around 7.3 million in the US. Pew data says 1.9 % of the US population self-identify as Mormons. Using 307 million for population (2009 census) gives 5.8 million Mormons. There are of course inaccuracies here but as a rough estimate, there are about 1.5 million people who are still on the membership records of the Church because they have not asked their names to be removed but do not identify as Mormons.
We could assume that people do not attend the church or pay tithing if they do not identify as Mormons. Hence, the percentage of members attending church and paying tithing would be around 60 %. None of this is to say that either set of data is inaccurate, my science background just predisposes me to think about what the numbers really measure
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