Latest from Mormon Land: LDS membership drops for first time in U.S.; apostle updates divorce remarks

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The U.S. is down…

A record 44 countries and territories witnessed their Latter-day Saint rolls grow by at least 10% last year, but the nation with the most members saw its Latter-day Saint ranks decline.

For the first time, the U.S. experienced a drop in Latter-day Saints, independent researcher Matt Martinich reports at ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com, with a net decrease of 186 members, leaving the country’s overall 2025 tally at 6,929,770.

This dip, he notes, came despite reports of a 17% jump in convert baptisms.

Why the slippage? Martinich points to falling birthrates among active members, the removal of unbaptized children of record after age 8, and names deleted due to death, loss of membership, or resignation.

… The Global South is up

Meanwhile, 14 of the 20 locales where the church grew fastest in 2025 are in Africa or the South Pacific, Martinich reports, and nine of the top 10 countries with the highest net increase in Latter-day Saints are in Africa or Latin America.

Brazil, for instance, added 47,924 members, followed by Mexico’s 38,229, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s 25,704, Nigeria’s 23,702 and the Philippines’ 22,621.

Keep in mind, all these numbers are based on the church’s self-reported figures for members on its rolls.

The D-word

In his latest General Conference sermon about eternal marriage, apostle Neil Andersen conceded that there are “situations where divorce should be considered.”

He added, however, that the “cautions are significant.”

Andersen did not elaborate on that tantalizing caveat, stating only that he would “include prophetic teachings on this subject” when his talk was published.

It now has been. Here is what the apostle put in his footnotes:

From Dallin Oaks in 2007: “There are many good church members who have been divorced. I speak first to them. We know that many of you are innocent victims — members whose former spouses persistently betrayed sacred covenants or abandoned or refused to perform marriage responsibilities for an extended period. Members who have experienced such abuse have firsthand knowledge of circumstances worse than divorce.”

Not included was Oaks’ next sentence in that sermon: “When a marriage is dead and beyond hope of resuscitation, it is needful to have a means to end it.”

In short, divorce.

Andersen’s footnotes also quoted apostle James Faust from 1993: “‘Just cause’ [for divorce] should be nothing less serious than a prolonged and apparently irredeemable relationship which is destructive of a person’s dignity as a human being.”

President So-and-So has said …

This conference saw a precipitous decline in speakers quoting the church president.

Last October, according to Ziff, the pen name for a blogger at the Zelophehad’s Daughters website, Russell Nelson racked up 157 references in talks and footnotes. (Nelson had died the week before.) In the latest gathering, that overall tally fell to 38.

Notably, church leaders didn’t simply shift to the current church president. The blogger points out that Oaks got 90 references in talks and footnotes.

And these came in a conference in which members “sustained” him as the faith’s 18th president.

The latest ‘Mormon Land’ podcast: Aging apostles

Apostle Hugh Brown proposed a “radical” solution to what he saw as the church’s gerontocracy problem. If it had been accepted, only three of the current apostles would qualify as church president. A historian discusses succession and aging church leaders.

Listen to the podcast.

Around the world

• Members of Wyoming’s “Black 14” — who famously protested the former priesthood/temple ban against Black members but have since teamed up with the church on charity — helped deliver 36,000 pounds of food last week to the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

“So far, we’ve delivered 1.75 million pounds of food since 2020,” former Wyoming Cowboy football player Mel Hamilton of Black 14 Philanthropy said in a news release. “…We want to feed as many people as we can.”

• Children are “naturally kind” and can model this virtue for adults, said President Camille Johnson, head of the women’s worldwide Relief Society. But, she warned, youngsters also “can be taught bigotry and hate.”

Johnson, speaking at last week’s Kindness Summit, organized by the Semnani Family Foundation in Salt Lake City, trumpeted the beauty of doing one kind act a day.

“Our kind acts, one a day over a lifetime,” she said, “are vital to the well-being of our families, community and nation.”

From The Tribune

• The director of “The Chosen” has some counsel for Latter-day Saints: Loosen up.

• With cries of “woke” and “feminist,” some Latter-day Saints objected to the church letting women lead Sunday schools. Others celebrated the move. Listen to the podcast. Read the excerpts.

• In the South Pacific, members prepare for “a blessing beyond measure.”

• A Utah city is honoring historical church sites.

• Tour the brand-new visitors’ center for Salt Lake City’s Temple Square.