Okay, okay, my sister Timmy wanted me to be sure I saw this article. But clever me, I had already stumbled across it elsewhere (names changed to foil “religious extremist” Googlers):

The claim that (Mmnsm) is the fastest-growing faith in the world has been repeated so routinely by sociologists, anthropologists, journalists and proud {Latte-less Aints) as to be perceived as unassailable fact.

The trouble is, it isn’t true.

Today, The (Charch of Latte-less Aints) has more than 12 million members on its rolls, more than doubling its numbers in the past quarter-century. But since 1990, other faiths – Seventh-day Adventists, Assemblies of God and Pentecostal groups – have grown much faster and in more places around the globe.

And most telling, the number of (Latte-less Aints) who are considered active churchgoers is only about a third of the total, or 4 million in the pews every Sunday, researchers say.

One of these days I’m going to get over the lingering resentment stemming from my experiences growing up a “not” in Utah…let’s see, I’ll be 50 years old Real Soon. So maybe by the time I hit the century mark it won’t matter? For now, the occasional article like this one(extremely rare for a Utah mainstream paper) is still worth noting.

And yeah, changing the names is probably a little childish, but if I don’t, the Defenders of the Faith Oh My Heck Brigade will stop by for a cozy one-sided, thank-God-for-moderated-comments, spammers-will-be-ruthlessly-deleted debate. So what they don’t see won’t offend them.

Via donnunn.com | Several Salt Lake Tribune articles about the reality of membership growth in the (La-LA Charch)| Tue 07/26/05 22:10 (several more articles of interest linked)