Mormon Scare Headlines from the Pew Report

The Pew Research Center report on Religion is out. http://www.pewforum.org/…/americas-changing-religious-land…/  There will be talk about what this says about Mormons.

The numbers for Mormons are small (which makes sense for a group that comprises less than 2% of the U.S. population). The survey sampled approximately 35,000 U.S. adults. Of that number, 664 were Mormon, about 26% in Utah (315 interviews, approximately 55% Mormon), about 9% in Idaho (320 interviews, approximately 19% Mormon), and many of the rest in Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming (the states where more than 2% are Mormon). Altogether, these states account for about 55% of the Mormons reporting, with the rest spread throughout the U.S. in larger states with smaller percentage numbers of Mormons.

Overall, the small number of Mormons means that the “margin of error” for numbers about Mormons is +/- 4.9 percentage points.[1]

Mormons Decline as Share of U.S. Population

1.7% in 2007 became 1.6% in 2014.

But this could be flat or up or down, within the margin of error. And could be flat or an increase or decrease in absolute numbers (given that population grew from 227 million to 245 million).

Comparison might be made to Jews, who are reported as a larger percent of U.S. population (1.7% became 1.9%), where there is no obvious reason for faster-than-population growth. But all of these numbers are small and could be reversed within the margins of error.

On the other hand, the numbers for Protestants, Catholics and Unaffiliated are much larger (absolute numbers, percentages, and amount of change). For Protestants 51.3% became 46.5%, for Catholics 23.9% became 20.8%, and for Unaffiliated 16.1% became 22.8%.

The story is mostly that Mormons are not like Protestants, Catholics or Unaffiliated.

One Third of Mormons Leave

1.7% of U.S. adults identify themselves as raised Mormon. About 1/3 of that number, or 0.6% of U.S. adults, identify themselves as having left. A similar number (0.5% of U.S. adults) identify themselves as having entered or become Mormon. The drops and adds account for the 1.6% who identify as Mormon currently. To me this is the most revealing and surprising set of numbers about Mormons in the survey, with large enough effects that there is probably something there.

Where do we go? Of the third who left, more than half (58% of 36%) identify themselves as Unaffiliated. The rest are about 17% Evangelical and the balance spread across Protestant, Catholic and Other.

Where are we coming from? Of the 31% of adults identifying as Mormon who grew up in a different tradition, slightly more come from a Catholic background that any other, but the numbers are fairly evenly spread among Evangelical (19%), Mainstream Protestant (23%), Catholic (29%), and Unaffiliated (26%), with Other (3%) trailing.

Losing the Blacks

Mormons in the U.S. are overwhelmingly White (non-Hispanic) at 86% in 2007 and 85% in 2014. By comparison, Christians overall (including Mormons) were 71% White in 2007 and 66% White in 2014.

The largest non-White group among Mormons is Hispanic (7% in 2007 and 8% in 2014). Black numbers declined, from 3% in 2007 to 1% in 2014. But I find these numbers too small to make much of a story out of. To put this in perspective, Pew talked with 664 adults who reported that they were Mormon and these numbers suggest that 6 or 7 of the 664 were black.

Losing the Women

In 2007 self-identified Mormons were 44% men and 56% women. In 2014 the numbers were 46% men and 54% women.

The change (from 46% men to 44% men) is within the margin of error. In other words, 44% men means that 292 of the 664 Mormons interviewed were men, but 4.9% more (the “margin of error) would be 306 men which would be 46% of the total.

On the other hand, there does seem to be a consistent story for Mormons and Christians generally, with large and reliable numbers, that there are more women than men self-reporting as religious.

Mormon Marriages Down (and Down More than Average for Christians)

66% of adult Mormons were married in 2014. The number was 71% in 2007. The difference is mostly in the number never married (12% in 2007 up to 19% in 2014). By comparison, among all Christians (including Mormons) the married comprised 56% in 2007 and 52% in 2014. The largest change was among the Unaffiliated, dropping from 46% married in 2007 to 37% married in 2014.

The marriage rate for Mormons continues to be higher than any other group. The second highest group was Evangelical Christians, at 59% in 2007 and 55% in 2014. However, the change supports the long observed phenomenon that Mormon marriage patterns follow the general population but with a significant lag.

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[1] I am still looking for Pew’s definition of “margin of error”. It is common but not universal to use that phrase for a 95% confidence interval, or +/1 2 standard deviations. 

CaringBridge duplicate

Good news, on every front.

Linda is well and happy. Britta is married and preparing for school, and Evan is finally set up to work again. Peter is halfway through the script of his next movie. Chase is off on a three-day hiking trip, but called to tell us all is well before he left.

As for me, it has been six months since the last surgery and time for my semi-annual CT scan. When that time comes, we do it right -- chest, abdomen and pelvis, with barium and iodine for contrast.

The results today were all negative. That means nothing abnormal (except what was done by surgery). No growths, no tumor, no problems.

The blood test is the same -- no sign of any problem.
CEA at 2.2 (it was 20.6 last May, before surgery).
CA 19-9 at 6 (it was 64.7).
CA 125 at 4 (it was 176).

I'm getting stronger and more resilient every week. I'm walking and running and generally pretty active. The good days are very good. But for all that I can do at my best, the clearest indicator of improved health is consistency. For example, I've been going to work for months. That means getting up and dressed and out the door, driving to my office at Jenner & Block in Chicago (about 13 miles, or 40 minutes on a clear day), and staying for four to six to eight hours. However, until very recently there have always been days when I couldn't get out, when I couldn't make it that far.

Last week, for the first time since April 2007, I went to work every day, Monday through Friday. It wasn't a strain, not a grand effort to prove a point, but just what I could do.

Celebrating life by going to work every day may seem a bit backwards. But five or more 'good' days in a row is remarkable and wonderful.

Life is good. This is a good day. Perhaps I'll get one more. One more, and then another, and another. One day at a time.

Chris Kimball
Life days (most of them good): 19,405

Life is a Dance

Christina and Evan were married on June 29.

I danced with my daughter at her wedding.

With already six layers of meaning, nothing more needs to be said.

Showing Up

80 Percent of Success is Showing Up.
- Woody Allen, in "Life & Death"

June 22 was my 53d birthday. (Note to hackers: I can’t remember ever using my birth date as a password or even part of a password.) As usual, I spent the day recalling my sins, failures, errors and wrong choices. Then I spent the evening projecting trouble to come. It wasn’t a happy day.

The birthday blues are an annual experience. The fact is that I’ve failed at many things, made serious mistakes, and caused real harm. Also, there is much that I wish hadn’t happened. On the other hand, I have made a lot of good choices, I’ve had great experiences, and there are very good people in my life. Objectively, allowing for the fundamental limitation that I get to live only one life at a time, and accepting that the “happened to me” events were mostly non-negotiable, it has been a pretty good life so far.

I think it is time to be done with birthdays.

This is 2008 by the Christian calendar, which is in common use in most of the world. Although the year can be referred to somewhat neutrally as 2008 C.E. or common era, there is no avoiding the fact that 2008 is a count relative to the traditional birth date of Jesus of Nazareth. (We don't know that the traditional date is correct. Matthew puts the birth at a time when Herod was alive, which would be 4 B.C. or earlier. Luke puts the birth in the year of the Census of Cyrenius (Quirinius), which occurred in 6 A.D.)

There are other year counts. Many of them are religious at the core. This is 1429 in the Islamic calendar, counting 354-day years from Muhammad’s emigration from Mecca to Medina. This is 5768 in the Hebrew calendar (counting from “1 year before creation”). This is the year of the Earth Rat (year of Wù Zĭ or 戊子) in the traditional Chinese calendar. This is the 5109th year elapsed since the epoch or starting point of the Hindu calendar.

But a different year count doesn't help. No matter how the counting starts, counting by years means there will always be an anniversary day, a “birthday,” in which I will invariably sink into regrets and fears.

There is another approach. Digital devices -- computers, calculators, digital watches -- count elapsed time from a starting point, then make a calculation to display the date in the specified format. The most accessible of these for most of us is the count used in spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel. In Excel, day 1 is the equivalent of 1 January 1900. In Excel, my 53d birthday is day 39,621, allowing for the oddity that the count includes a February 29 in 1900 which didn’t exist but is counted to maintain consistency (earlier systems made the simplifying but incorrect assumption that every year ending in a 00 is a leap year).

Forget years. I'm going to count by days.

22 June 2008 is the 19,359th day of my life.

Thinking of days, I’m shooting for 30,000. When I get there I’ll revise my plan.

Thinking of days, my gifts to myself are to clear out all the slacks and shirts and coats and shoes and belts that I can’t or don’t use and give them away, to pile up all the books and magazines that I’m never going to read or look at again and throw them away or give them away, and to convert every bill that I know I’m going to pay anyway into an automatic payment.

Thinking of days, a few were not very good. But if I think of all the bad times, all the awful days, all the failures and bad choices, they don’t add up to more than a couple hundred days. Out of 19,359 days, the vast majority have been good days.

Thinking of days, out of 19,359 I showed up every time.

On June 23d, day 19,360, I discovered Psalm 118:24 running through my mind over and over again. “This is the day which the LORD has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in the day.”


(July 6, when I actually posted this, is day 19,373.)

Mann im Dunkeln, Street in Delft

Mann im Dunkeln, by Max Beckmann

Peter, Linda and I went to Germany on June 3. We spent a couple of days in Frankfurt, then drove to Koblenz, to Essen, to Dortmund, flew to Vienna (Austria), and back to Dortmund three days later, then to Frankfurt – stopping in Stiegen along the way, for lunch – to pick up Chase and Britta. All five together, we drove to Hamburg. After two days in Hamburg we drove to Lüneburg, to Leer, to Emmen (Netherlands), Appledoorn (Netherlands), and Amsterdam. After two days in Amsterdam we drove to Utrecht, had lunch all together, and dropped Peter and Chase off at the train station. Britta, Linda and I drove back to Frankfurt and flew home the next day, June 18.

I remember the trip for three things.

First is survival in a foreign land. Of course Germany, Austria and the Netherlands are not difficult places. For a trip overseas this was about as easy as I can imagine. But I wouldn’t have made the trip on my own. Not yet. I’m not strong enough. I can’t be in a different city every day. I can’t spend 8½ hours on a plane. I can’t spend a half-day in a car. I can’t walk all around town and through museums and back again. I just can’t do it.

But I did. My daughter and my wife and my doctor persuaded me that even half days were better than sitting home alone. And that’s not far from what I had. I spent a lot of mornings and some evenings in a hotel room. But I did travel, I saw a lot, I ate and slept and walked and learned.

Second is the sights and sounds and people of Peter’s and Chase’s missions: Peter for two years in Northern Germany centered on Hamburg, and Chase for two years in the Netherlands. Of course they lived it 24 hours a day for two years, and I just saw a few buildings and met a few people. But I can now picture their work, the streets they walked, the people they met, the churches they helped. I’m glad I have that picture in mind.

Third is art. In Frankfurt at the Städel Museum I got to see Max Beckmann’s 8 bronzes, including Mann im Dunkeln.

In Vienna, at the Albertina, I spent some a long time with one of Monet’s water lilly paintings

One of approximately 250 in the Water Lilies series, by Claude Monet

and kept coming back to a Kandinsky.

A Kandinsky of the style but not the very one in the Albertina

In Amsterdam, at the Rijks museum, after rooms full of Rembrandts, I came upon three Vermeer paintings and my brain lit up. It was a surprise. Even with Rembrandt’s work as a backdrop (what a backdrop!), the Vermeer paintings seemed like coming upon the real thing, life in oils.

Street in Delft, by Vermeer

Standing in front of Mann im Dunkeln, and Street in Delft, I had the same feeling that came when I saw El Capitan in Yosemite, and a sunset over the Wasatch mountains, and my son talking to a stranger on the street, and Linda's smile in the morning: "This is a piece of heaven on earth; I'm glad I have lived to see this; I'm glad this sight and experience is part of my life."

(We've traveled so much in the last month that I haven't posted blogs that are on my mind. I'm dating these where they belong, not when they were actually posted.)

Memorial Day 2008

Memorial Day has always before been a parking meter holiday for me. The banks are closed, there is no mail, and I usually choose not to go into the office even when I have work demands.

We are not a military family. My Kimball grandfather registered with the Selective Service when it was created in 1917 after the U.S. entered the war in Europe. He was found perfectly fit, but was not called up and armistice was signed the next year. My uncles Spencer, Grant and Andrew all served in World War II, all in the Navy on the Pacific front. They all came home. My father was too young for World War II, and would have been exempt in any event because of his polio disability.

I’m sure there are other relatives who served in one war or another. But there is nobody else whom I know well enough to have heard stories from or about, and I'm not aware of any deaths in war, among family members.

I grew up with the war in Vietnam always present. Just today I checked the dates (using Wikipedia and subject to whatever flaws the “Vietnam War” entry contains), and confirmed this.

I was born in 1955. Vietnam was partitioned in 1954, in what was supposed to be a temporary partition pending national elections in July 1956, except that the U.S. never agreed and the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, declined to hold elections. Instead, in 1955, Diem launched a “Denounce the Communists” campaign, and in October declared the new Republic of Vietnam.

I was four years old in 1959 when North Vietnam’s Central Committee issued a secret resolution authorizing an armed struggle, and the southern Viet Minh began large-scale operations against the South Vietnamese military.

I was eight years old in 1963 when some policy makers in Washington concluded that Diem was incapable of defeating the communists and might even make a deal with Ho Chi Minh. Apparently the CIA was in contact with generals planning to remove Diem and told them that the United States would support such a move. President Diem was overthrown and executed, along with his brother, on November 2, 1963.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated three weeks later, on November 22, 1963.

I was ten years old when U.S. involvement in Vietnam War was escalated, starting officially on the morning of January 31, 1965, when orders were cut and issued to mobilize the 18th TAC Fighter Squadron from Okinawa to Danang.

I was sixteen when the wind-down began, when the U.S. troop count was reduced to 196,700.

I was nearly eighteen, a senior in High School, when Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action against North Vietnam and a cease-fire was declared across North and South Vietnam.

My birthdate was assigned number 11 in the draft lottery. Had there been an active draft in 1973 I almost certainly would have been drafted. However, for the first time in my young memory, in 1973 nobody was drafted.

From 1956 to 1975, essentially the first twenty years of my life, almost 3 million Americans served in Vietnam and at least 58,193 Americans were killed in Vietnam (other counts put the number at 58,209 or 58,217). (I'm thinking of men almost exclusively, but of the casualties 8 were women.) Vietnamese military dead on both sides exceeded 1.3 million, and civilian deaths are estimated at 2 million.

We visited Tom and Michael last weekend, stopping for an evening and a morning on the way up to Northfield, Minnesota, to see Chase at school. Every time I see Tom I’m aware that there is a part of him I can’t know or reach. That part served in Vietnam. It was a long time ago. We are getting to be old(er) men now. But surprisingly there is an always present “I was there” mystery and depth to Tom. I have the same feeling with Doug Braithwaite, with whom I’ve discussed this directly. Doug tells me that there are a few stories he can tell, more that he can share with and will only make sense to other men who were there, and some that he will never tell anywhere.

But today I’ve been thinking more about all those who did not return except as a body in a bag or a casket. They would have been the men just older than me. They would have made my world a livelier, better, richer place. But they didn’t come back, and I never knew them.

The Vietnam war was a mistake in sixteen different ways. So is the current action in Iraq, whatever it is rightly called. But the young men who went to war are not to blame for the mistakes of the leaders. Those young men serve where they are called. I wish they all had come home. I wish I had known them. I mourn them, and honor them.

There’s no great mystery about why this Memorial Day for me, and not any of the 51 Memorial Days that came before. This Memorial Day I am alive, after learning that I had cancer that was fatal if not treated, and for which the treatment was only a little less extreme than the disease. A year ago today I was 11 days post surgery and still in very intense care. Linda celebrates May 15 or May 16 as a new “birth” day for me. However, I slept pretty much all of May 15 in an operating room, I was barely conscious on the 16^th, and for some days after I wasn’t sure I would survive the night. It was more like Memorial Day one year ago today when I started to believe that I might live another day.

I am glad to be alive. I celebrate every single day, every hour of every day. And yet by the time I was diagnosed I had three adult children and a partner in Linda with whom I had already made a life together for nearly thirty years. I had had three significant careers and was working on the fourth. I had lived well and long. Morbid as it sounds, I had probably done all that was needed for me to do.

Those young men who went to Europe and to the Pacific and to Korea and to Vietnam, and now to Iraq, but didn’t come home, those young men did not get to live out the full measure of their lives. They are gone, and we are the lesser for it. I remember them today.

Bigger than a duck.

In December I ordered a pair of hiking boots. They were out of stock so I received a pair made for me in late January, just before I went into the hospital.

These days it is easy to find hiking boots that are built like running shoes with ankle support. They can be relatively inexpensive and certainly do the job for casual hiking. They have lots of plastic parts and don’t change at all until, at the end of their useful life, they simply fall apart. They either fit right the first time you put them on, or they never fit at all.

I discovered that it is also possible to have hiking boots made to order. Some of the best have a backlog of more than a year and cost thousands of dollars. I expect they are wonderful to walk in. I hope they are indestructible. I'll probably never know.

What I wanted was neither the hydrocarbon-intense running shoe with ankle support, nor the turn-out-your-pockets custom built. I wanted boots like the ones I eyed in the store and envied on my older friends’ feet when I was 15 years old. Sturdy leather boots with serious waterproofing, with a lug sole stitched to the upper so it can be replaced. The kind that are too stiff and give you blisters when they first come out of the box, but after a few weeks mold to your feet and from then on fit perfectly. The kind that will take you through any terrain in all kinds of weather, so you don’t even check the weather first. You just pull on your boots, confident they’re the right choice whatever it’s like outside. The kind you resole three or four or five times because the uppers last forever and once they’re broken in they feel better than anything else you’ve ever worn.

Surprisingly I couldn’t find what I wanted in the stores, even places like REI that I thought would cater to that kind of interest. Thanks to the internet, I did find them online and ordered a pair (Irish Setter Countrysider Style 1885, from Red Wing Shoes). I’ve been using them every day since I got out of the hospital. With well over 100 miles on them, they are starting to feel good.

Almost every evening I go out for a walk. Around nine o’clock I put down whatever I’ve been working on, turn off the television if it’s been on, and start into my nightly routine. I pull on the boots, choose the appropriate coat for the weather, start up an audio book on my iPod, grab my walking sticks, and head out for a walk. The walking sticks keep my upper body involved and keep me walking at a fast pace. They also help when my balance is off; I’ve lost some of the feeling in my feet, my left foot in particular, and sometimes I miss a step. These days a brisk 30 minutes is about right for a good walk without strain.

I like to look at the houses. Most are lit from the inside at that time of night, so I can see all the different colors people use in their living rooms, and who has interesting art work hanging. Because I’m walking I know where there’s a house surrounded by tulips. Where the construction sites are. Which houses are for sale and which have sold (houses around here are in fact selling). Which yards are kept up and which are already going to seed, if that’s possible in May.

The air smells a little different every night, especially in the Spring when there’s always something new blooming.

There are almost no adults on the streets at 9 or 10 o’clock. The adults seem to be home, or in a car, or rushing from car to house. I do see teenagers, mostly in packs. Mostly having fun, but sometimes mischief. I can usually tell by how they look at me. The open eyes, “hello,” “nice evening,” “I like your walking sticks” kind of look is kids having fun. The “what are you looking at?” And “why don’t you just go away?” kind of look is kids engaged in some kind of mischief and feeling guilty. Like the time they were setting a fire just outside the municipal tennis courts.

After the walk I get ready for bed and then play the piano for 30 or 40 minutes, finishing with a random and different every day medley of hymns.

All together, the walk, the smells and sights and sounds of the night, the audio book, the piano, all serves as a celebration and reminder of life. I’m alive. I hear and see and smell, walk and think and praise. It’s a good day, one that ends with walking and making music.

Oh, the title to this entry: “Bigger than a duck”? It’s my favorite line so far from “Neverwhere” by Neil Gaiman, the book I’m listening to right now:

“To say that Richard Mayhew was not very good at heights would be perfectly accurate, but would fail to give the full picture. It would be like describing the planet Jupiter as bigger than a duck.”