There were some very interesting details that came out from that religious survey completed by the Pew Research Group a week or two ago. Some very surprising things.

First, the most surprising, was that the LDS Church has actually lost "religious market share" in the United States in the past decade. 1.8% of America was "Mormon" 10 years ago, 1.7% is now. I was shocked by that number. I had read in some of the national stories about the death of President Hinckley that the Church was having serious retention issues, especially amongst converts, and very especially amongst foreign converts, but I had no idea the extent of it.

Consider that of 100 Americans born into the Church, 30 have left, 22 have joined, and the Church now has 92. Shocking. People leaving the Church, to me, has always been a distant tale of people you knew a few wards back and you were surprised to hear from a friend of a friend of a Relief Society gossip that they had asked to have their names removed. (Of course, go hound people on splits with missionaries and you'll find it isn't so easy.)

So a retention rate of 70%, domestically, which is barely better than the Catholics 68%. The Catholics have remained at about 1/4 of the US population, despite 4 people leaving for every 1 that joins, due overwhelmingly to immigration of Hispanics, who are 80% Catholic.

We scored poorer on education than I would have expected. The LDS college graduation rate of 28% is 1% above the national average, but nearly every other religion scores higher. I think the mission and early marriage tendencies are the complete explanation there. Well, that and the fact that our 32% some college completed figure dwarfs anyone else's. That makes sense, 90% of my Clearfield High peers of the late 90s are living in their parents basement, playing video games all day, and pretending to go to Weber State, last I checked.

Very little Mormon poor, and low numbers of Mormon rich, speaks well of us. Very tilted towards upper middle class. Utah does have a West Side and an East side and all of that, but the income disparity here is very egalitarian, relative to a California or Texas anyway, and something to be proud of.

Largest family size still, but only 15% of us have 3 or more children. Very surprising there.

The survey on the whole definitely showed a major trend away from institutional and authoritarian institutions. A trend away from affiliations at all really. Only 2% said agnostic and only 2% said atheist, which really surprised me.

"Mainstream Protestant" used to be over 2/3, now it is 51% and falling fast. Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, all retain somewhere around 50%.

It seems like a generation and an era of individually defined religion, for better or worse.