Could Mormons Survive an Apocalypse of Apathy?

Last week Slate.com had a week-long series on “How Will America End?” that examined various apocalyptic scenarios. Josh Levin, for instance, asked whether Mormonism can preserve American civilization :

A religion is also a good candidate to keep America alive. The history of Catholicism shows that religious movements can outlast the political systems in which they arose. Our idealized conception of what America stands for has its origins in religious belief as well: the Puritans’ values of industry and self-reliance, and their desire for the nation to be a “city upon a hill.”

What religion might serve as America’s preservationist? In the 1960 novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr. imagines a group of monks playing the same role as their European forebears, preserving knowledge in a post-apocalyptic America. Considering this country’s microscopic monk supply, it’s hard to imagine monasteries banding together to combat data rot. Evangelical Christians seem like a more logical contender: Around 100 million Americans identify as evangelicals, and the idea of the United States as a promised land is pervasive in evangelical thought. But while they’re often thought of as a homogeneous bloc, evangelicals are really a diverse and fragmented lot. That makes the movement resilient and adaptable but not exactly the best vessel for preserving a culture. The early Catholic Church, in contrast, was more disciplined and hierarchical, a far better candidate both to survive a collapse and to carry forward societal traditions.

A better candidate to serve as America’s time capsule: the Mormons.

If a zombie apocalypse were to befall America, I’d put my money on the Mormons being the religious cohort most likely to survive. They have the combination of moral fortitude and self-reliance that would help carry them through such a sudden catastrophic scenario. The more intriguing question, I think, is whether the LDS church can survive the more mundane, steadily eroding effects of modernity.

While the LDS church is hierarchical, it doesn’t appear to put the same emphasis on institution building that has been the hallmark of American Catholics, mainline Protestants, and—the latest group playing catch-up—evangelicals. There are, for example, relatively few LDS colleges and universities. (How many can you name that are not BYU?)

Instead of institutions, the LDS church relies on individuals. According to professors J. Quin Monson and David Campbell, Mormons make greater sacrifices for their faith than members of many other religions do.

The typical adult Mormon spends three hours in Sunday services; complements this with periodic worship in Church temples, which fulfills obligations that Sunday worship does not; visits a pre-established network of congregation members each month to discuss their satisfaction with the Church; and volunteers in some other capacity for his or her congregation. (One study found that 60 percent of Mormons volunteer annually for a church-related group, compared to 36 percent of Southern Baptists and 27 percent of Catholics.)

. . . Monson and Campbell cite statistics showing that 53 percent of Mormons reported giving a speech or presentation at church in the past half-year, compared to 14 percent of Southern Baptists and four percent of Catholics. On top of that, most males also spend two years as missionaries just as they enter adulthood, journeying far from home to plug their faith to an often-hostile audience. Then there’s the unusually rigorous Mormon tithing guideline, which instructs adults to donate 10 percent of their income to the LDS Church. (In contrast, the Catholic Church asks adherents only to contribute to its upkeep; the average Catholic giving rate is about 1.5 percent.)

This remarkable level of individual dedication has helped the LDS church grow by a rate of approximately forty percent per decade during the twentieth century. Yet the church estimates that there are only four million active churchgoers out of a global Mormon population of twelve million. Within another century Mormonism is likely to hit a demographic tipping point that would ensure the survival of the religion for centuries to come. But what about until then?

One of the primary strengths of the LDS church—strong reliance on individual engagement—could quickly turn into a weakness. It appears that the Mormons are only an apathetic generation away from reversing their growth and sliding into decline. What would happen if a generation of mainstreaming young Mormons rebelled against the church? Imagine if the LDS church had the equivalent of the emergent church—a movement that isn’t an outright rebellion but merely a shifting away from traditional ways and norms. Could it sustain its levels of (already declining) growth if the participation of a younger generation were to decline by twenty percent?

The Catholic and mainline churches in America have institutional structures that prevent their decline from becoming too precipitous. They can outlast a generation or two (or three) without dying off completely (the mainline churches, however, are testing the limits of this rule). The evangelicals have weaker institutions but sheer bulk: they have the numbers to outlast even long periods of contraction. (Worse case scenario, if the American versions were to completely fail, the Africans can keep global Christianity alive.)

Can Mormonism survive if its average member was as unengaged as, say, the average Methodist? Throughout their history they have been shockingly successful in passing on their churches’ values to their young. But that is a task that becomes more difficult with every passing generation. The Mormons may find that surviving an American apocalypse is less difficult that surviving American apathy.