I have updated the list of the countries with the
most
members
without a temple using year-end 2024 membership totals. Temples
that service stakes, districts, and mission branches in each country are
identified. Previous lists are also available for April 2024, May 2023, April 2022, March 2022, November 2020, April 2020, April 2019, October 2018, April 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2013, mid-2011, late 2008, and late 2007. Countries in Italics
do not have a
stake. Uganda was removed from this list given the
announcement of the Kampala Uganda Temple in October of 2024.
Malawi has since ascended to the list to replace Uganda. Benin is the
country on the list with the most recent Church establishment. The first
branch created in Benin was organized in 2005. Countries that may
ascend to this list in the coming months and years include (in order)
Tanzania, Botswana, Armenia, Trinidad and Tobago,
Cameroon, Albania, Romania, the Czech Republic, Rwanda, and Ethiopia.
- 11,341 members
- 0 stakes, 5 districts
- 24 congregations (24 branches)
- Bangkok Thailand Temple (Singapore Republic of Singapore Temple announced)
2. Togo
- 7,684 members
- 3 stakes
- 28 congregations (19 wards, 9 branches)
- Ghana Accra Temple
3. Zambia
- 7,072 members
- 1 stake, 2 districts
- 20 congregations (6 wards, 14 branches)
- Johannesburg South Africa Temple (Harare Zimbabwe Temple under construction)
4. Benin
- 7,071 members
- 2 stakes, 1 district
- 32 congregations (22 wards, 10 branches)
- Accra Ghana Temple (Lagos Nigeria Temple announced)
5. Guyana
- 7,033 members
- 0 stakes, 2 districts
- 12 congregations (12 branches)
- Manaus Brazil Temple
6. Jamaica
- 6,871 members
- 1 stake, 1 district
- 18 congregations (6 wards, 12 branches)
- Panama City Panama Temple
7. Marshall Islands
- 6,660 members
- 2 stakes
- 13 congregations (12 wards, 1 branch)
- Suva Fiji Temple (Tarawa Kiribati Temple announced)
8. Malawi
- 5,937 members
- 2 stakes, 1 district
- 20 congregations (10 wards, 10 branches)
- Johannesburg South Africa Temple (Harare Zimbabwe Temple announced)
9. Federated States of Micronesia
- 5,915 members
- 1 stake, 1 district
- 22 congregations (5 wards, 17 branches)
- Yigo Guam Temple
10. Belize
- 5,688 members
- 2 districts
- 12 congregations (12 branches)
- Coban Guatemala Temple
13 comments:
I was wondering about this list. Thank you, Matt, for this remarkable update. There are a few unexpected changes. Interesting.
Just a couple of notes: The Lagos Nigeria Temple has a groundbreaking scheduled, and the Tarawa Kiribati Temple is now technically under construction, as it had a groundbreaking a short time ago. Under Zambia, it's correctly noted that the Harare Zimbabwe Tempole is under construction, but under Malawi it is only noted that the Harare temple is announced. Hope that's not too nitpicky. As the son of a proofreader with some degree of editing experience, these anomalies just jumped out to me.
The quite significant consolidation / contraction of units in Malaysia over the past 10-15 years is surprising (and saddening) to me. I am hopeful that the moves to consolidate to 1 district in West Malaysia from 2 and the decision to transfer the 2 branches in Johor Bahru from the Singapore Stake are with the end goal to improve the likelihood of making a stake out of the KL District.
But on the whole, the area has contracted by 25+% as far as units go (had reached a high point of 32-34). Although some of these were shrinking from 2+ branches in the same city (like Kuching going from 5 to 4), it appears that multiple cities in West Malaysia no longer have a dedicated church presence (Butterworth, Sandakan, and Malacca).
With the distance from WestMalaysia to Singapore, a temple in West Malasia may not occur for a while. East Malasia would benefit with a temple. However few temples since 1960 have preceded stakes.
It is interesting that Benin has so many more units than Zambia.
Cotonou and Lome seem strong candidates. The one drawback is neither city puts the other much closer to the temple. It may partly depend on how bad Lagos traffic is. I think overall a Lome Trmole on the east end of the city is the best option, but realistically both countries need a temple.
The other question is will Malawi or Zambia get a temple first. My guess is now on Malawi, but developments over the next few years will show for sure.
The Marshall Islands are I think a counterder. Yes, Tarawa is a much closer location than what thry had before, but distances across the ocean are still huge.
With more and more countries getting temples, is it time for a list of the top ten countries with only one temple?
Well, it's been about a year since the last post. Since the last two conferences, four of the ten have been taken off the list with the announcement of a second temple: Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Uruguay, and Portugal.
https://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/2024/04/list-of-countries-with-most-latter-day.html
Would still like to start a discussion sometime with people or see a post by Matt about recent survey data. Pew's latest suggests a significant decline in the proportion of women to men in the last 7 years. The smaller sample size makes me wonder if that's to be relied upon.
But even more recently, the CES annual survey results came out, which on even years has double the sample size of the Pew survey. Self-affiliated members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the US:
2010 1.85%
2012 1.84%
2014 1.64%
2016 1.41%
2018 1.26%
2020 1.29%
2022 1.18%
2024 1.14%
In 2010, these numbers track to 5.72 million members (self-affiliated).
In 2024, the numbers track to 3.90 million members.
The report also asks about attendance. Roughly 67% of self-identified members attend at least once or twice a month, suggesting active membership of 2.6 million in the U.S. (0.7% of U.S., an activity rate of ~37%).
What I partially take from this is that the drop since 2010 was substantial - an approximate 40% drop in the proportion of self-identified members. In contrast, Protestants saw in the same time period an approximate 20% drop.
Finally, the "Nothing in Particular" crowd grew from 18% in 2010 to 23% in 2022, but then dropped back down to 21% in 2024. Apart from marginal gains in those claiming "something else," Hindus, Muslims, and Atheist/Agnostics, most groups either declined very slightly or stayed stagnant in proportional terms to U.S. population.
I'd love to continue this discussion, I had posted my analysis of the Pew Survey about a week ago, but it got swept aside with all the other recent posts. TLDR I think the sample size is very small and the shifts over a decade are too great to take it very seriously. I didn't touch on the gender ratio but I think it's similar to the racial breakdown issue. I'd love to hear your, and anyone else's, thoughts regarding this, as it is important to note the swings in survey data over time.
I found the Pew data to be rather screwy, for lack of a better term. There were such huge swings in every bit of demographic data presented regarding Latter-day Saints (for better or for worse) that I am having a hard time accepting the results at face value, especially when considering how small the sample size is in the survey (around 600ish). My three biggest sources of concern with the veracity of the data are below:
1. The Pew survey showed that the proportion of self-identified LDS in the surveyed population is essentially unchanged from the 2014 survey, at 1.5%. I think we can all agree that the proportion of self-identified LDS is overrepresented in the survey population; with nominal membership comprising roughly 2% of the population, I don’t believe that 3 out of 4 LDS on the rolls self-identify as LDS. This is not a new trend, and previous surveys have shown LDS as 1.7% in 2007 and 1.6% in 2014, so we have consistently been overrepresented, with a more accurate representation probably being closer to 1% even. If taken at face value, while the data show the proportion of the population identifying as LDS shrinking, the numerical amount (if extrapolated to the entire population) would be the same at roughly 5.4 million across all 3 surveys, which again I believe is too high. Similar issue with the CES survey, I don't believe that roughly 93% of members on the rolls self-identified as members back in 2010, so it seems to be another issue of heavy over sampling in the past.
2. Retention of those born in the faith saw a 12 point decrease from 66% in 2014 to 54% in the 2023/24 survey, dropping the LDS from 6th highest (3rd highest amongst Christian faiths) in 2014 to the second lowest in the 2023/24 survey. I found this to be the strangest of all the strange findings in the survey, as the percentage of the surveyed population who were born and still identify as LDS remains the exact same, at 1.1%. Rather, this shift came about exclusively with a 25% increase in the surveyed population that said they were born in the LDS faith. In the 2014 and 2007 studies, the percentage of the population raised in the LDS faith was 1.7%. In the 2023/24 survey, it was 2.1%, with that additional 0.4% exclusively contributing to the disaffiliated population, which increased from 0.6% of the surveyed population to 1.0% between 2014 and 2023/24. Taken at face value and extrapolated, this would mean that there are more individuals in the US who were raised in the church than there are current members on the rolls. Given the relatively low level at which records are removed even for those who disaffiliate, I find this extremely unlikely. If anyone can provide a convincing argument or datapoint as to whether there was a 25% increase in the population that was raised in the church between 2014-2024 I would love to hear it, however I believe this is just an additional overrepresentation of those with LDS affiliation.
3. The percentage of non-white LDS increased by 75% between 2014 and 2023/24, from 16% in 2014 to 28% in 2023/24. This is an additional massive swing, with Black LDS increasing from 1% of LDS surveyed in 2014 to 6% in 2023, Hispanic increasing 50% from 8% to 12% in 2023, and a 40% increase in Other/Multiracial members from 5% to 7%. However much I would love for this to be the case, to have such a huge shift in a decade does seem very extreme to me, especially with no noticeable shift in geographic distribution between the surveys.
JPL, It appears Alex was talking about the hopes of making it a stake with the consolidation of units.
With only 600 or so people in the survey I think this leads to lots of percentage changes being within the margin of error.
A few points though. Self-identifying as a Katter-day Saint and ever going to Church are not the sane issue. More to the point, people can and in some cases do self-identify as Latter-day Saints and not get baptized. We have one woman in my branch who has been regularly coming for a few years but is not baptized.
One think to keep in mind about the data is the survey only covers people age 18 and up.
I think this makes racial data changes more volatile.
I also say that we need to look at the racial breakdown of the entire population in both data sets. There are people who answer racial questions inconsistently over time. Some of this is because the questionnaires ask the questions in inconsistent ways and give inconsistent answers. At my job I regularly use 3 different racial and ethnic identifier forms to fill out data on people, each with different options. Our city system form allows people to identify as Middle Eastern as well as Hispanic/Latino as an identity. The state form and the test do not allow Middle Eastern Identity. The city form does not allow someone to identify as both Middle Eastern and Hispanic. Since my primary teacher when I was 9 was a Mexucan man with a wife of Lebanese descent, and his daughter was at that time one of my fiends, I know this is a failure that elides people.
There are other factors that cause people to be inconsistent in racial identification over time. So while I think it is clear the number of Latter-day Saints in the US who are Latino and also who are of African descent has significantly increased over the last decade, it is hard to read too much into one survey.
My other take away from the 1% to 6% for African-Americans, 8% to 12% for Latinos and the 5% to 7% for people who are not classed as white, Latino or black is that one of 2 things is going on. Well 2 things are going on.
The Latino numbers only make any sense if we assume this is tracking Latino like the census does in most reports. In most reports Latino covers everyone who is at least partly Latino, but other racial groups are only reported based on non-Latinos who marked that, and mixed race us non-Latino mixed race. There are historical factors that make this way of counting make sense, but there are present realities,which have been present in some ways for generations that make this way not make sense.
The black number is either just being counted as all black people who are non-Hispanic, grouping in those who are mixed black and domethong else there, or in what might actually explain the numbers even better, there are factors that caused a large number of people of black and non-black ancestry to get grouped under the 5% mixed in the 2014 survey but get grouped under the 6% black in the 2024 survey.
Of the 4 black general authorities who were residents of the US at the time of their call, 1 is a recent immigrant. As in moving to the US since 2018 and more importantly since the last survey was done.
While the changes in the percentages of non-whites may reflect issues with sampling in both 2014 and 2024 in the Pew survey, the trend indicated by the survey I think is an accurate one, even if not as pronounced as the survey indicates.
BYU Pathway projected to expand significantly (numbers-wise) later this year:
https://www.deseret.com/faith/2025/04/11/byu-pathway-worldwide-latter-day-saints-gift-to-the-world/
The continued expansion of BYU-Pathway Worldwide along with the move towards getting a medical school at BYU, thry are trying to have the first students by 2027, but that is a hugely ambitious goal that might not be doable, are two great developments.
I also just realized no new temples have been dedicated in the Pacific Area since 2003. The Yigo Guam temple is actually in the Asia North Area.
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