Recently, the KUER radio station published a report suggesting that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is enforcing new policies for on-campus demonstrations and hiring standards for faculty and staff at Brigham Young University.
Patrick Mason, an LDS historian and professor at Utah State University observed for the KUER report: “I do think this is really a muscular reassertion of the church’s distinctive identity and mission.”
And, Matthew Bowman, who teaches LDS history at Claremont Graduate University in California, reportedly opined: “It seems to me that the church has picked up this sense of separation and the sense that being different from mainstream American society is the way through which the church will survive.”
Reasserting its “distinctive identity and mission” and “being different from the mainstream” was exactly what the church was about from 1961 through 1990, when it experienced for 30 years the most remarkable average annual rate of growth of 5.2%. Growing more robustly than nearly every other Christian denomination during that time.
Then, unfortunately, following the lead of the church’s public affairs professionals, beginning in 1991 and throughout the next 30 years, the church reoriented its marketing away from its highly prosperous niche market strategy that emphasized the uniqueness and peculiarity of its restored gospel claims.
The church mistakenly shifted its marketing strategy to engage the general Christian marketplace, demonstrating in word and deed that “Mormons” were in fact Christian, with the objective to decrease criticism and the occasional persecution.
To achieve this objective, the church intentionally and energetically de-emphasized its uniqueness and the peculiarity of its restored gospel claims and instead highlighted its commonality with the general Christian marketplace. It decided to go along to get along.
While unintentional, the shift in marketing strategy proved to be devastating. Not only did the church shortsightedly abandon its highly productive niche market, it attracted out from the general Christian marketplace new members, who, understandably, are at best lukewarm towards the church’s restored gospel claims.
Moreover, the church inadvertently sent the message to its membership that “all is well in Zion,” because it was effectively “building bridges of understanding” into the general Christian marketplace. As it set out to do, it successfully reduced criticism and increased acceptance. Over the last 30 years the church’s level of popularity and acceptance within the general Christian marketplace has never been higher. What is not to like? All truly is well.
Not so fast. What the church’s public affairs professionals failed to discern was the criticism and occasional persecution naturally screened out those who would not truly be converted to the restored gospel claims — claims that during the previous 30 years attracted highly devoted converts and solidified the devotion of members because of the criticism and occasional persecution, not in spite of it.
Today, the church is filled with fair-weather members who lack conversion and devotion to its restored gospel claims. Unfortunately, the church’s membership does indeed reflect much of what the church sought to emulate in its pursuit to be accepted into the general Christian marketplace.
The church’s successful assimilation into the general Christian marketplace has unexpectedly become the enemy of its prosperity. Its misguided marketing shift away from its highly productive niche market resulted in the catastrophic collapse of the church’s average annual rate of growth, reduced to 2.6% — half of what it was during the previous 30 years. The decline in the last decade has even been worse, with an anemic average annual rate of growth under 2%.
If the KUER report accurately reflects a true reality regarding a “muscular reassertion” of the church’s “distinctive identity and mission” that is very much “different from the mainstream,” which also happens to be providentially fitted for its prosperity, undoubtedly the church’s annual rate of growth will rise again. And then, perhaps, much will be well in Zion.
Stuart Reid
Stuart C. Reid, Ogden, is a former Army chaplain and a former public affairs professional who regrettably helped develop the 1990s marketing strategy shift away from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ successful niche market.