Pew has a new report, A Portrait of Mormons in the U.S.. Most of it is is unsurprising, but this caught my eye:
Converts are more likely than lifelong members to come from minority racial and ethnic groups. One-in-ten converts to Mormonism are black, and nearly all black Mormons are converts. An additional one-in-ten Mormon converts are Hispanic, and just 72% are white; by contrast, 91% of lifelong Mormons are white. Converts are also more than three times as likely as lifelong members to be immigrants to the U.S. (14% vs. 4%).
The sample size may be small, so the 1 in 10 figure could be a fluke, but this is striking in light of the fact that blacks did not become recognized as equal to non-blacks within the Mormon church until 1978 (people of black African ancestry were excluded from the priesthood).
Comments are closed.