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Saints of the Western States (1990)

Lowell C. Bennion

Since 1940, the American share of the LDS Church's world membership has shrunk to almost half--from about 90 to 50 percent. The western states' share of U.S. Saints has declined much less, despite the creation of LDS stakes throughout the East. About 80 percent of American Mormons reside in the 13 western states (including Alaska and Hawaii), with most of them (nearly 80 percent) living in the eight intermountain states. Moreover, neither percent has changed much during the past 20 years of rapid worldwide Church growth. Thus, in both 1970 and 1990, Utah counted roughly twice as many Mormons as California.

How can one explain American Mormons' strong preference for the West, particularly the Great Basin Kingdom? Any complete answer would require mapping rates of natural increase, migration, and conversion, for some combination of such factors has enabled that region to maintain its preponderance of U.S. Saints. Arizona alone, with 200,000 LDS in 1990, had as many as the northern states of the East combined. The North has offered transplanted intermountain Mormons far less employment than the southern states, which recorded 430,000 LDS (55 percent in Texas, Florida, and the Washington, D.C., area).

While LDS leaders have tried for a century to stop the Gathering to Zion, they have never quite succeeded, not even by building temples outside Mormon country. The pining for Zion attitude persists, affecting not only converts but born-in-the-Church members. Many intermountain Mormons who take jobs on the Pacific coast or east of the Rockies eventually return. Converts overseas, in the eastern United States, and even in the far West often join them, seeking a safer and more Mormon environment. If the Wasatch Front seems too crowded, they gather to a small town in rural Utah or an LDS ward in a neighboring state.