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The following was first published in the Mormonism Researched in September/October 2026. This is a free publication produced by Mormonism Research Ministry. To get a free subscription of the bimonthly newsletter, visit the website here.

In 2019, popular blogger Jana Riess—a faithful Latter-day Saint—wrote a book titled The Next Mormons that was published by Oxford Press. The book incorporated an extensive survey (called the Next Mormon Survey, or NMS) tabulated in 2016 by Riess and Benjamin Knoll. However, that research is now dated as opinions have changed, especially after COVID.

A similar book written by Jeff Strong was published in May 2026 by Coldstream Publishing in Utah titled Torn: Why People We Love Are Leaving the Church and What We can Learn from Them. Strong, who says he is donating any proceeds of book sales to his foundation, has worked at S&P 500 companies such as Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson; he also was a bishop and mission president who once taught at church-owned Brigham Young University.

Like The Next Mormons, Torn—at the time of this writing it was the top bestseller on the topic of Mormonism—offers research that can help shed light on the mindset of American     Latter-day Saints since “the research focuses primarily on respondents residing in the United States, where approximately 40 percent of Church members live” (237).

People regularly leave the LDS Church

When the LDS respondents were asked what they value most about their church, the top response (45%) listed the gospel’s truthfulness revealed in their testimony, with another 33% listing their relationships in the church. Another 25% said the plan of salvation should be considered “the guiding doctrine that provides direction, purpose, and an eternal perspective in life.” Other responses were the atonement, prophets, covenants, temples, scriptures, priesthood, and sacraments (15).

Based on that statistic, it appears that many Latter-day Saints place more spiritual trust in their personal testimony than what corresponds to reality (truth).

When I have asked Mormons what the “Gospel” means to them, many default to their subjective testimony. Instead of being concerned about testimonies or relationships in the church, though, perhaps members ought to focus on the truth claims offered by their church and see if the reasons for believing actually correspond to reality.

Torn utilizes a survey that Strong and researcher Jeffrey P.  Dotson produced in 2025 called Why People are Leaving (WPL). Strong lists the problem facing the LDS Church on page 18: “A substantial share of once-active members have disengaged, and the scale of this shift is significant. If this feels sobering, that is understandable.” According to the survey, 40% of former active LDS Church members in the United States have left in the past 25 years (16). That is a staggering number.

He then writes on page 31:

“Perhaps the most alarming finding in our research is not just the total number leaving but the speed at which they are leaving. Using the decade 2000-2009 as a baseline, the rate of disaffiliation in our survey multiplied dramatically in over the next three successive five-year periods.”

In fact, 3x was listed for 2010-2014, 6x for 2015-2019, and an incredible 11x for 2020-2023, though Strong cautions that perhaps the “acceleration rate could be somewhat overstated” because those who left before 2010 may have been less likely to have taken the survey. Regardless, members who are leaving the LDS Church in “droves” (a description once used by a church historian more than a decade ago) has been happening for a while.

The Four “Waves”

Strong gives “four primary reasons why most people step away” from Mormonism, which he labels “waves.” The first wave, he explains, is “lifestyle,” a reason why 6 percent of members leave Mormonism and cited as a contributing factor by another 20-30 percent.

The characteristics include the LDS controlling culture (34%), mental health strain (29%) and guilt and shame (25%). According to Strong, the question asked by Wave 1 is not “Is it true?” but rather “Can I survive this?” (20)

Wave 2 deals with church history. WPL showed that this is the main reason why 42% of the membership leave, the highest of the four categories; it is a contributing factor for 40-50 percent of the others. The most frequently cited issues are doctrine and truth claims (39%), problematic history (28%), troubling temple practices (12%), and polygamy and its legacy (12%) (23).

The thirteen Gospel Topics Essays published by the LDS Church from 2013 to 2015 certainly caused many Mormons to raise their eyebrows and question their faith. Troubling topics addressed in these essays include polygamy (such as the practices of Joseph Smith), the Book of Abraham, and the translation process of the Book of Mormon (i.e., how Smith used a seer stone in his hat rather than a traditional translation process).

Strong writes,

“What troubles them is the perception that they were asked to build their lives on a simplified or inaccurate narrative and later learned that complexity or errors may have been known but not fully shared. The deeper question becomes whether the institution can be trusted to give them the complete truth, even about the problematic things” (24-25).

In the NMS findings, only 6 of the top 30 reasons why people left the church involved church history and doctrines. In that survey, the top historical reason was no higher than number 8 (“Lack of historical evidence for the Book of Mormon and/or Book of Abraham” at only a 21% response). The next most popular historical reasons involved Smith’s polyandry and polygamy (16%) at numbers 12 and 14.

It is exciting how doctrine and church history were listed in the WPL by close to half of all former Mormons. These two aspects are a top priority for us in our ministry focus at MRM.

The third wave reported in Torn is the church’s social positions and moral conflict, which is the second highest reason for leaving at 33%—and a contributing factor for 50-60% more of the others. (For NMS, this wave was the biggest reason why people left the church.) The social issues include sexual identity (LGBTQ+) (33%), financial stewardship (27%), and racism (20%).

Financial stewardship has become a major factor in the past few years since it was revealed in December 2019 by a whistleblower that the church has a $100+ billion reserve fund; in 2023 the LDS Church were fined $5 million fine by the government for obscuring the size of this fund.

Strong writes,

“This wave is powerful because many feel they cannot outsource moral responsibility without compromising their conscience and values” (27)

Finally, the fourth wave is church experience and spiritual depletion, listed by 18% of the respondents, with another 30-40 percent saying this was a contributing factor to leaving. Reasons include spiritual emptiness (31%), lack of belonging (26%), and social exclusion (26%). Respondents said they “felt spiritual starved” and the “Savior felt eclipsed by the institution and by Church leaders.”

According to Strong, “Our research suggests it is one of the strongest influences of departure—a last straw” (29), adding that “most people do not leave because of one wave. They leave when multiple waves converge and endurance finally gives way” (30).

The Results

On pages 32-33, the book describes a changing church composition, including:

· Members under the age of 35 are “leaving at substantially higher rates than previous generations” while those over 66 “are also disaffiliating at faster-than-average rates”

· Gen Z (born 1997-2012) members are “returning to religion in large numbers,” though this generation is “the least religiously affiliated generation on record”

· Gen Z women leave the church at higher rates than men

· Men generally cite “intellectual or historical concerns” while women “point to cultural and structural tensions”

· Women who do stay in the church “are typically more religiously committed than the men”

· Members with more education are leaving at a higher rate compared to those with less education

· When members talk to someone about questions and concerns about their faith, overwhelmingly they are most inclined to confide in their spouses and friends (53%) for helpful advice over 12% who say their parents are helpful and 10% who go to their bishop/stake president and relief society president (45).

When asked how long they spent “wrestling with [their] concerns,” 85% who leave the church say either 100+ hours/several years to “limitless hours/5+ years” (46). As far as the resources they utilize, 54% look to nonofficial LDS platforms, followed by non-LDS religious (50%) and social media (35%) sources.

For some, their research could include the information from MRM and the YouTube channel God Loves Mormons; for many others, excommunicated influencers such as agnostic John Dehlin from the Mormon Stories podcast and the YouTube channel of British church critic “Nemo the Mormon” certainly play even bigger roles.

The least helpful? Only 7% said official LDS resources were beneficial, which is astonishingly low. Strong postulates that this is “because they are seen as incomplete, selective, defensive, or disconnected from lived reality” (48).

What this means is that most who leave Mormonism are not just making a rash decision. Instead, their proverbial “shelf” becomes so overwhelming that it ends up crashing and burning their testimony.

This is where MRM and the Utah Christian Research Center can be of service, as our goal is to provide the resources questioners can use to do their “due diligence” in their research. Our goal is not just to get a person to leave Mormonism; instead, we want the questioning member to seriously consider the God and Gospel of biblical Christianity.

Another result is that

“approximately one-third of members attending sacrament meetings each week no longer believe the Church is what it claims to be” even though they may attend meetings and hold callings (50). Why? As Strong writes, “Because families matter. Because relationships matter. Because leaving would mean abandoning a church and a people they have loved and given themselves to with their whole hearts for decades or a lifetime” (51).

People leave the “one true church” not so much because they sinned or lost the Spirit; rather, they no longer feel they belong and or believe in the Restoration or church doctrines (60).

Half of those surveyed feel mostly or even completely uncomfortable with the LDS culture (82). Many end up becoming exasperated. As one respondent said, “I didn’t leave because I stopped believing. I left because I couldn’t stop pretending” (53).

Conclusion

Jeff Strong did not conduct these surveys or write his book for our benefit. Yet the results of his research encourage us. Meanwhile, Riess and Knoll plan to publish a follow-up Oxford book in February 2027 titled Leaving Mormonism: Who is Exiting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—and Why. 

As Christian apologists, we ought to study this valuable research and understand the mindset of questioning Latter-day Saints so that we can be more successful in our outreach efforts. This information has certainly benefited our work at MRM.