The Growth of the Church

With the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, there were many convinced, as evidenced by headlines and stories in newspapers from around the country that the demise of Mormonism was at hand. Yet even amidst persecution and extraordinary challenges, the Church continued to grow and prosper.

Andrew D. White, president of Cornell University and later US ambassador to Germany, recounted a conversation he had with Count Leo Tolstoy, the Great Russian author, statesman, and philosopher, while serving as US foreign minister to Russia in 1892. Dr. White visited often with Count Tolstoy, and upon one occasion they discussed religion:

“Dr. White,” said Count Tolstoy, “I wish you would tell me about your American religion.”

 

“We have no state church in America,” replied Dr. White.

 

“I know that, but what about your American religion?”

 

Patiently then Dr. White explained to the Count that in America there are many religions, and that each person is free to belong to the particular church in which he is interested.

 

To this Tolstoy impatiently replied: “I know all of this, but I want to know about the American religion. Catholicism originated in Rome; the Episcopal Church originated in England; the Lutheran Church in Germany, but the Church to which I refer originated in America, and is commonly known as the Mormon Church. What can you tell me of the teachings of the Mormons?”

 

“Well,” said Dr. White, “I know very little concerning them. They have an unsavory reputation; they practice polygamy, and are very superstitious.”

 

Then Count Leo Tolstoy, in his honest and stern, but lovable, manner, rebuked the ambassador. “Dr. White, I am greatly surprised and disappointed that a man of your great learning and position should be so ignorant on this important subject.

The Mormon people teach the American religion; their principles teach the people not only of Heaven and its attendant glories, but how to live so that their social and economic relations with each other are placed on a sound basis. If the people follow the teachings of this Church, nothing can stop their progress—it will be limitless.

There have been great movements started in the past but they have died or been modified before they reached maturity. If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known.”( Thomas J. Yates, “Count Tolstoy and the ‘American Religion,’” Improvement Era, February 1939, 94).

Writing in Review of Religious Research in 1984, Dr. Rodney Stark, an eminent sociologist (who is not a Latter-day Saint), projected that Mormonism, “if growth during the next century is like that of the past,” would “become a major world faith.”

Assuming a 30 percent membership growth per decade (which is considerably lower than the Church’s actual growth rate since World War II), Stark predicted that by 2080 there would be more than sixty million Mormons worldwide.

He went so far as to project that, with a 50 percent growth rate per decade, there would be over 250 million members by the end of the twenty-first century. Stark stated:

Admittedly, straight-line projections are risky; they assume the future will be like the past. There is no way to be sure that Mormon growth won’t suddenly begin to decline. But it would be wise to keep in mind that back in 1880 scholars would have ridiculed anyone who used a straight line projection to predict that the 160,000 Mormons of that year would number more than five million a century hence. But that is now history.

Rodney Stark, “The Rise of a New World Faith,” Review of Religious Research 26 (1984): 18–27; reprinted in Latter-day Saint Social Life, 9–27