Affirmation: Gay & Lesbian Mormons

Who Is Affirmation? The 2008 Affirmation Survey

Dave Melson
January 2009

Who are the members of Affirmation? Anecdotally, we know that Affirmation members are a diverse lot, including both current members and former members of the LDS Church, that they include young and old, that many have served full time missions for the church, but then we also hear that things are changing. So what is the real story?

The only quantitative analysis, and the one that has been relied upon since it was taken, was from a survey taken at the 1991 Affirmation Conference in Palm Springs:

Affirmation Membership Makeup (1991)
Current Church Members	46%
Disfellowshipped	4%
Excommunicated	14%
Voluntary Withdrawal	30%
Non-member or N/A	6%

In the same survey, 22% of participants said they attend church “regularly,” 22% said “occasionally,” 20% said “rarely,” and 34% said “never.” For more information, see Affinity, Dec. 1991, pp. 2-3, 5.

Things Have Changed

The Executive Committee of Affirmation thought some newer data might be of value, and so a new survey was conducted of 104 Affirmation members attending the 2008 Affirmation Conference in Los Angeles. Compared to 1991, more Affirmation members are current members of the LDS church, but there are also 30% more who have been excommunicated, while the number who have resigned their membership has dropped by almost two-thirds. 14.4% of those surveyed attend LDS services on a regular basis, 85.6% attend rarely or not at all.

These are some highlights of the new survey:

Affirmation Membership Makeup (2008)
Current Church Members		56.7%
	Holds Temple Recommend		3.8%
	Attends Regularly		10.6%
	Does Not Attends Regularly		42.3%
Removed Name		11.5%
Excommunicated		19.2%
Never Been a Member		12.5%

By Age

Of those who are current LDS Church members and who attend LDS Church services on a regular basis (at least once each month), 63.7% are between the ages of 23 and 39. For those current Church members who do not attend regularly, almost 60% (59.1%) are between the ages of 40 and 59. Of those who have been excommunicated, the overwhelming majority, 80%, are over the age of 50. For those aged 23 through 49, 70.6% state that they are members of the Church; for those 50 and older, 58.8% are not members of the LDS Church.

I Hope They Call Me on a Mission…

Of those surveyed who have been members of the LDS Church, 69.2% have served a full-term full-time mission for the Church, 28.6% have not served a mission. For those from age 30 through age 59, the number completing full-term full-time missions stays steady at 75% for all ages; but for those under 30 or over 59, missionary service drops to well under 50%; this would correspond with the time periods in which the church’s missionary numbers were highest.

Born or Converted?

76.9% of those surveyed said that they had been baptized at age 8; of these, 24% have been excommunicated, another 15% have resigned, for a total of 39% of those baptized at age 8 who have left the Mormon Church. Of those who were converts to the Church between the ages of 8 and 18, over 90% have left the Church. But of those who were convert adult baptisms (age 18 and over), a full 60% remain members of the church, 20% have resigned, and 20% have been excommunicated.

More complete analysis of the data will be needed before drawing too many conclusions, but it appears that there is a trend toward staying in the church rather than resigning, and a greater tolerance among local leaders. The polling sample here is not large enough, nor the methodology strict enough, to be statistically accurate.