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(RNS) — A new study of Americans ages 13 to 25 shows teenage and young adult Latter-day Saints to be traditionally religious … and also not. And in that, they are similar to other Americans who still consider themselves religious but are in many ways disengaged from their faith traditions.

“The State of Religion and Young People 2021: Navigating Uncertainty,” conducted throughout 2021 by the Springtide Research Institute, argues that “for a large and growing segment of young people, religiosity is increasingly decoupled from institutions, even as they express high levels of religious belief, practice, and identity.”

Over the course of the year, more than 10,000 young people were surveyed, including a total of 470 who self-identified as Latter-day Saints, or Mormons. Of that group, 134 also received an additional set of questions about their experiences and views.

As always when interpreting data about Mormons, keep in mind that when the sample size is small, the margin of error is high. For each finding discussed below, I’ll indicate the “n,” or sample size, for that particular question.

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Let’s start with the positive findings — what many stalwart members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would consider to be good news.

1. Mormons reported the highest participation rate in what the study called “youth group” activities, at 43%.

This indicates that, even in a time when many young people are disengaging from organized religion, programs such as Young Men and Young Women, seminary and Institute are still a factor in the lives of many young Latter-day Saints.

When attending services and gatherings which do you attend? (Youth group?) (n = 396) 

2. These Mormons also report higher attendance at religious services than the national average.

Only 1 in 10 say they never attend, compared with more than 1 in 4 nationally. And more than a third (36%) of these Mormon young people say they go to church nearly every week or more often, compared with 23% in the sample as a whole.

3. They show somewhat greater trust in organized religion.

57% of the LDS respondents said they trust organized religion “completely” or “a lot,” compared with 35% in the national sample.

On the other hand, the research also showed a number of findings that will give LDS parents and leaders pause. Before I get into that, let me try to provide a bit of context. In most data about religion in the U.S., two things are consistently true about Mormons: Though not immune from national trends toward disaffiliation and decreased orthodoxy, they’re still more religious than other Americans. They generally report stronger belief in God, higher attendance at religious services and a greater sense that religion is important in their lives.

In fact, last month when I reported on longitudinal data from the Cooperative Election Study about the drop-off in Mormons’ religiosity, some readers complained that I didn’t give enough context about the declines that are happening in other religions too.

But with the Springtide data, Gen Z Mormons do not necessarily hold to the line I’ve been using for years when I talk about millennial Mormons: “They’re less religious than their parents but still noticeably more religious than their peers.” The picture is murkier here, especially in the smaller subsample of Mormon respondents who were asked a battery of additional questions about their faith.

1. Their belief in God is about average.

I found this very surprising. While few young Mormons surveyed were flat-out atheists (only 7% compared with 16%), they expressed a significant level of agnosticism, with most falling somewhere in the middle. Only 1 in 5 said they had no doubts at all about the existence of a higher power, on par with Gen Zers nationally.

2. Mormons rank highest of all faith groups in saying they personally have been harmed by religion, faith or a religious leader.

For me, this was a jaw-dropping finding, and a potentially disturbing one. (The n for these final three questions is only 134 people, so I am taking all of this with a grain of salt, as I’ll explain at the end.)

Nationally, 39% of respondents said they had been harmed by religion. For Latter-day Saints, it’s a full 20 points higher. It’s hard to digest that number, frankly: More than half of young Mormons say they’ve been harmed by religion? On a similar question, 60% of Mormons said they don’t feel safe within religious or faith institutions.

This is particularly confusing when you juxtapose these findings side by side with the trust results reported above: A majority of young Mormons say they have been harmed by religion or religious leaders (59%), but an almost identical percentage (57%) say they have a lot of trust in religion. It’s a head-scratcher.

3. Young Mormons don’t feel like they can bring their whole selves to church.

Mormons ranked fifth overall on this question, so on the one hand you might see them as occupying the middle of the pack in the table below. But compared with other Christian groups, they are markedly more likely to say they can’t be themselves in a religious organization.

Of course, one possibility is that these respondents are reflecting on the idea that they can’t be themselves in any religious organization, not just their own. The question doesn’t specify. But in any case, it demonstrates a discomfort, a worry that the community might not be expansive enough to hold whoever they are behind the façade.

4. Half of Mormons don’t think religious leaders care about their concerns.

The question doesn’t spell out what kind of leaders, so it’s hard to know if these Mormon respondents were thinking of apostles in Salt Lake City or a bishop closer to home.

So the Springtide report has good news and bad news for Mormons — potentially. Besides exercising a lot of caution in interpreting the results from the small subsample, we should be aware that post-survey weights have been applied to make the data represent the national population in terms of gender, race and region.

That can skew the results somewhat for Mormons. The nation is more racially and geographically diverse than Mormons are, and this can make a difference. For example, Utah Mormons are more religiously orthodox in both belief and practice than Mormons elsewhere in the U.S., and they make up about 30% of Mormons throughout the country. But in a national survey that is weighted to reflect the total population of each state, Utah only accounts for 1% of the U.S. population, which means the post-survey weights may be deflating responses from some of the most orthodox respondents and artificially inflating the responses of Midwestern heretics like me. (This is true of every national survey that includes Mormons, not just this one.)

Despite the data’s limitations, I also think that the Springtide report is particularly valuable for people who care about LDS young people, because it harnesses something that studies that only include adults often miss. By targeting people ages 13 to 25, Springtide is unconsciously including some Mormons who will probably leave the church later.

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Think about it this way: Some of these respondents are still living at home, maybe attending church with their parents (or not). They still consider themselves Mormon and will self-identify as Mormon on a survey, but they’re not strong believers. Some years down the road if they’ve been inactive in the church for a long period, they may be less likely to still identify themselves on a survey as being LDS.

I think that’s a major part of why Springtide’s data looks different from what we’re used to seeing from outlets like Pew and PRRI, which only focus on adults older than 18. Since the median age for leaving the LDS church is in late adolescence (19 in the Next Mormons Survey, and apparently 18 in internal data from the church itself), the Springtide data gives us a glimpse of young adults who may have one foot out the door but not yet both.

We need to learn from what they have to say.

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