- Pew interviewed 565 Latter-day Saints and 316 former members from July 2023 to March 2024, with a 6.2% margin of error.
- Married Latter-day Saints report an 87% rate of same-faith spouses, the highest among major U.S. religious groups.
- The church’s retention rate fell from 70% in 2007 to 54% in 2023-24, among the lowest Pew measured.
- White Latter-day Saints dropped from 85% to 72% since 2007; Hispanic members doubled from 6% to 12%.
Hindus, Jewish people and Latter-day Saints are the most likely Americans of faith to rate their family lives as excellent or very good, according to a new landmark study on the Church of Jesus Christ.
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Nearly 70% of Latter-day Saints rate their family lives positively, according to a new survey released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.
The Pew data was taken from a larger survey done from July 2023 to March 2024. It found strong examples of ongoing religiosity and more diversity among Latter-day Saints, but also reported depressed retention rates.
Overall the study found that Latter-day Saints are among the most religious adults in America. Theypray more and attend church more than any other religious group in the country.
Pew interviewed 565 people who identified as Latter-day Saints and 316 former church members. The survey had a margin of error of 6.2%. Where religiosity or retention slipped, Pew said the numbers were generally in line with national trends toward secularization.
The survey did not extend internationally. The majority of Latter-day Saints live outside the United States.
| U.S. adults |
Excellent |
Good |
Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hindus | 36% | 37% | 73% |
| Jewish | 36% | 35% | 71% |
| Latter-day Saint | 31% | 38% | 69% |
| Catholic | 25% | 38% | 63% |
|
Evangelical |
24% | 38% | 62% |
|
Mainline |
21% | 41% | 62% |
|
Orthodox |
23% | 32% | 55% |
| Muslim | 22% | 33% | 54% |
|
Religiously |
21% | 34% | 55% |
The study arrives at a time when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is shattering records for new converts, setting new marks for missionary numbers and seeing unprecedented engagement among youth and young adult members.
The Pew Research Center describes itself as “a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy fact tank” that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It does not take policy positions.
Here are some of the new study’s key findings:
Marriage among current and former Latter-day Saints
Latter-day Saint adults are more likely than those in other religious groups to say they are married to someone of the same religion, Pew reported.
Married Latter-day Saints said 87% of them have spouses of the same faith. Protestants, at 81%, were the only other major U.S. religious group to report a rate of more than 75%.
Married Latter-day Saints also are more likely than members of other religious groups to say:
- Their own religious beliefs and the beliefs of their spouse are very similar.
- Religion is very important in their spouse’s life.
- They talk about religion with their spouse daily.
The difference in marital status between Latter-day Saints and former church members was striking, the Pew researchers stated.
Roughly 75% of lifelong members are currently married, compared with 42% of former Latter-day Saints. Pew found that former Latter-day Saints are more likely than lifelong members to be living with a partner or to be divorced or separated.
Overall, the share of married Latter-day Saints remained mostly steady. In 2007, 71% of Latter-day Saints were married. The new study found two-thirds of Latter-day Saints are married, within the margin for error.
Family life
Pew found that Latter-day Saints also are more likely than members of many other religious groups to engage their children in religious activities like prayer and scripture reading or religious education programs.
One major difference over the past 20 years is that church members have fewer children living at home. From 2007 to 2024, the percentage of Latter-day Saints with children at home fell from 49% to 37%, which is in line with national trends, where the numbers fell from 35% to 28%.
|
Religious |
Religion is important |
|---|---|
| Latter-day Saints | 72% |
|
Historically Black |
71% |
|
Evangelical |
69% |
| Muslim | 60% |
| Catholic | 44% |
| Orthodox Christian | 43% |
| Average1 | 38% |
|
Mainline |
37% |
| Jewish | 27% |
| Hindu | 24% |
| Buddhist | 21% |
|
Religiously |
4% |
Life in American Latter-day Saint homes is more religious than most. Pew said Latter-day Saint rates of religious engagement rival evangelical Protestants and members of historically Black Protestant churches and far exceed those of many other religious groups.
For instance, 73% of Latter-day Saint adults say they pray daily, while 72% of evangelical Protestants and members of the historically Black Protestant tradition say they do. Those numbers are far higher than Catholics (51%) or Buddhists (22%).
Retention rates
Church President Dallin H. Oaks last week offered optimism from other data sets about the future of religion in America.
“Even with falling affiliation rates and people more individually spiritual,” he said, “still more people (are) going regularly to worship, more people (are) believing in God, more people (are) holding religious values central to their identity.”
Latter-day Saints still have not been immune to patterns of decreased religiosity in the United States.
The Church of Jesus Christ’s retention rate in Pew surveys has declined from 70% in 2007 to 54% in the 2023-24 interviews. That is among the lowest levels Pew measured.
Today, 28% of those raised as Latter-day Saints are religiously unaffiliated, double the 2007 figure.
Pew found no gender difference in the adults who stay in the church (55% men and 54% women), but there was a notable difference in age groups, the study found.
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About two-thirds of older women raised in the church still identify as Latter-day Saints compared to 50% of younger women.
Overall, 61% of those raised in the church who are 50 and older continue to identify as Latter-day Saints, compared to 50% of younger adults.
The Pew surveys found evidence that Latter-day Saints have become less religious by some measures, too.
For example, compared with 2007, Latter-day Saints are now:
- 14 percentage points less likely to say they believe in God or a universal spirit with absolute certainty.
- 11 points less likely to say religion is very important in their lives.
- 9 points less likely to say they pray daily.
Pew said those numbers were in line with what the organization called “a decades-long, nationwide pattern in which Americans, on the whole, have become less religious.”
For example, Pew said 58% of Americans said in its nationwide 2007 surveys that they prayed daily. The share dropped to 44% in the latest survey. However, Pew said there is evidence that the numbers have stabilized since 2020 for Americans as a whole.
Former church members
Pew also studied former Latter-day Saints and found they are less religious than current church members.
For example, 73% of lifelong Latter-day Saints pray daily compared to 27% of former members.
Pew found that childhood religiousness was a significant separator. About two-thirds of lifelong Latter-day Saints reported religion was very important to them personally when they were growing up, more than double the rate of former church members at 27%.
Other significant gaps in religious behaviors were found during childhood:
- 90% of lifelong members say they attended religious services at least weekly when they were growing up, compared with 72% of ex-Latter-day Saints.
- 48% of lifelong Latter-day Saints say they attended seven or more years of Sunday School or some other form of extracurricular religious education when they were kids, compared with 34% of former church members.
Latter-day Saints are more diverse
The church’s members have grown more racially and ethnically diverse in recent decades, Pew reported. The percentage of White Latter-day Saints has dropped from 85% in 2007 to 72% in the latest data.
The largest growth has been in Hispanic adults, who have doubled from 6% to 12%. The percentage of Black Latter-day Saints rose from 2% to 6%.
Converts are more racially and ethnically diverse and are driving the change, Pew reported. The church had a record 385,490 convert baptisms in 2025, up 25% from the previous year, according to its latest annual statistical report. Overall, membership in the Church of Jesus Christ has grown 66% worldwide this century, with numbers increasing in 49 of the 50 United States.
Church members also say they value diversity. “About three-quarters of both lifelong and former Latter-day Saints say that having people from many different races and ethnicities strengthens the United States,” Pew stated in its report.
Latter-day Saints exhibit strong communal ties
Strong communal connections set Latter-day Saints apart from U.S. adults as a whole, Pew stated in the report.
Nearly three-quarters of church members reported volunteering in the past year, the surveys found, partially as a function of taking on roles, or callings, in their congregations and assignments to minister to each other. Missionary service as young adults and seniors also affects this phenomenon.
At 72%, Latter-day Saints are much more likely than other Americans to say they have volunteered in the past 12 months. The national average is 41%, and no other religious group reached 50%.
That voluntarism may help Latter-day Saints connect better with others, Pew found. They are more likely (46%) than many other Americans to say they feel a deep sense of connection with humanity at least once a week. The national average is 34%, with Muslims (48%) and members of historical Black Christian churches (47%) leading the way.
Social changes among Latter-day Saints
A majority of American members of the Church of Jesus Christ continue to identify as conservatives in politics, but they have become modestly more liberal on some social and political issues, such as homosexuality, Pew found.
The percentage of church members who find that having more women in the workforce is a change for the better rose from 49% in 2014 to 61% in the new survey.
Meanwhile, the percentage who say homosexuality should be accepted by society has risen in successive Pew surveys:
- 24% in 2007.
- 26% in 2011.
- 36% in 2014.
- 46% in 2023-24.
Still, only evangelical Protestants are less likely than Latter-day Saints to say homosexuality should be accepted.
Pew also found that just 2% of lifelong Latter-day Saints identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual, compared with 24% of former church members.
Latter-day Saints have maintained a stable view of abortion. In Pew’s 2007 and 2014 surveys, 27% of church members said they supported abortion. The latest data showed 31% support.
Nearly 8 in 10 Latter-day Saints say that children with two parents are better off when one parent stays home, the highest figure among U.S. religious groups.
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