LDS Church Claims Growth — Data Says Otherwise

Mormon Discussions Podcasts – Full Lineup

Bill Reel

Religion & Spirituality

4.3 • 618 Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2025

⏱️ 120 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on The Mormon Newscast, we lead with new data from sociologist Jana Riess showing that Gen Z and younger Millennials are leaving the LDS Church at significant rates, raising serious questions about the Church’s repeated claims of strong growth. We break down what the data actually says, what it does not say, and… Read More »LDS Church Claims Growth — Data Says Otherwise

The post LDS Church Claims Growth — Data Says Otherwise appeared first on Mormon Discussions Podcasts - Full Lineup.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome everybody to the Mormon newscast. I'm Bill Real. I'm joined by Rebecca Biblioteca, Radio Free Mormon. It is December 15th, 2025. We're almost to Christmas, almost to the end of the year. RFM. Rebecca, how are the two of you doing tonight? Fantastic. Excellent. I'm festive. I just don't have any po that he is in my office, but I've got pretty much everything else.
0:25.0	You probably got a few things today, though.
0:27.7	Do you think so?
0:28.9	There are some things that came in the mail, but I've been so busy with tonight show.
0:32.5	I haven't had a chance to look at them.
0:34.5	Well, my Amazon Alexa said they arrived, so I'm excited for you to open them. Okay, well, I may get to that by the end of the week. All right. Sorry, my lips. Did I open them live on Mormonism after dark on Friday? You could do that if you would like to. That would be lots of fun. I'm just going to warn the audience. I do have shiny lips. I've got a cracked lips, so I've got some chapstick stuff on it. So sorry that I look a little weird in the face. But, hey, it's probably
0:59.3	an improvement. Let's bring up what we've got going tonight. This is the thumbnail LDS, Latter Day
1:05.4	shrinkage, retention falling, Gen Z Millennials. This will be the main story tonight, and that would be brought to
1:11.8	us by Rebecca Bibliateca. And so it says data shows young LDS are jumping ship. We also have,
1:20.9	there's a new temple coming to Maine. We have a Mormon arrested for molesting grandkids.
1:27.4	Who would have thunk more sex abuse in
1:29.0	the Mormon church almost on a weekly basis at this point uh another one is if parents
1:34.4	stay righteous kids will be saved no pressure yeah and influencers called to top LDS young men's
1:43.5	position uh this is a new council that the church is called.
1:46.6	We'll go into that as well, and I've got that story. Now, before we get into all of our
1:50.8	news stories for the night, we have a news story about the Brody Awards that we brought you last
1:56.0	week. And this week, we have Carol Hamer, who is here to talk about the Brody Awards.
2:02.0	Carol, if you'll tell us what your involvement with them is, the Brody Awards,
2:07.2	and then let folks know how they can participate to make this year bigger than ever.
2:13.8	Thank you so much.
2:15.0	And thanks for inviting me on to help promote the Brodie Awards this year.
2:18.6	So this is something that we've been doing every year since 2009.
	...

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