I recall that Shoghi Effendi observed that what people want in religious faith is love and a shining ideal. From my own experience I would agree. Those are two factors that have attracted and held my involvement over a long period of time.

Also it might be interesting to look at other Faiths and churches and see what they do for their members as an organization and what they expect of their members in balance. It might yield some useful lessons and perhaps then we can borrow something like the year of service adapted apparently from the LDS church.

Anyone wish to comment? Thank you.

That is a very different picture than 50 person entering and 100 withdrawing. So the ratio is meaningful.”

Thanks for the response Baquia,

You’re example of 100 to 50 versus 50 to 100 is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about. I would disagree with you and say that without more information neither is a meaningful ratio First, how big is the organization/group we’re talking about? If its 10 million, than 100-50 or 50-100 doesn’t matter much – in either case you have a remarkable inertia. If, however, the org is only 200 people big, than both cases represent a major upheaval, though the latter number more than the former. Next, what is the trend over time? Is what we see this year representative of a trend? Did something unusual happen that might make us think what we see is an anomaly? In this specific case we’re talking about, it’s misleading to look at it the way you did. Yes, enrollments are declining, but so are withdraws. Less people are joining, but less people are also leaving (at least formally).

More important than this simple contextualization, however, is coming up with a theory about why we see the numbers we do. Otherwise they’re just a bunch of numbers and we know nothing about cause and effect which is what we ultimately care about (largely b/c we want to know about, and be able to influence, future behavior). One of the vital things to know is whether the important factors are endogenous (have to do with the internal working/decisions of the org) or exogenous (have to do with larger trends that the org is subject to). So, are the numbers we see a reflection of things the org is doing or of the population it resides in? So for instance, we’ve seen enrollment numbers in America declining, but that’s within the context of a society that is in general becoming less religious and less likely to be members of organized religions in general (and, its worth adding, the groups most in decline are mainline Christian groups, the ones most like the Faith in America in terms of being educated, middle-class and focused on social justice issues). So how much does this slowing of growth reflect what Baha’is are doing and how much reflects the overall decline of similar socially liberal religious groups in general (or, more specifically, the interest of people in socially liberal religious groups)? Maybe lots, maybe little, but the numbers by themselves don’t help us figure that out. Again, the 100-50, 50-100 only makes sense if we know the larger context.

I’m not suggesting that if you just look at the numbers the right way all of sudden things look great. What I am suggesting, however, is that trying to make meaningful inferences from numbers requires a fair amount of work - and trying to understand what’s happening in the Baha’i community simply can’t be done only referencing internal numbers. It has to be placed within the context of larger cultural and social trends. And I will say this - when we look at what religions are growing in North America and which aren’t and then look at what the defining features of growing groups are according to those who study them, I think the core activities and the Five Year Plan start to make a whole lot more sense.

Best,
David

That is a very different picture than 50 person entering and 100 withdrawing. So the ratio is meaningful.

In the end though, it is a moot point since as you say the vast majority of people who leave the Faith just drift away and do not inform the NSA or their LSA.

Any way we slice it, things are dire. The question is are we willing to acknowledge reality? Or do we want to strike the meditation pose that Counsellor Murphy suggests?

As you point out, compared to 1978 enrollement numbers are down (but it looks they had already dropped considerably from 1977) and the interpretation of that is pretty straight-forward. From a statistical point of view, though, your interpretation of the withdrawl numbers doesn’t work. Unless you have good reason to believe the same people who are leaving in a given year are the same ones who entered, dividing enrollments by withdrawls gives you a number that doesn’t have substantive meaning. That’s because people are withdrawing from the whole community, not just the smaller group of people who are newly enrolled. In other words the number that means something is ‘withdraws’/'overall community’. So in 1978 out of 71,189 people, 605 withdrew. That’s clearly the overall number, not the good address number, so the proper comparison would be that this year out of 137,000 or so people 369 withdrew. Clearly the percentage of the community formally withdrawing is much lower now. In 1978 .008% of people withdrew, this year it was less than half of that, around .003%. In other words, the community is roughly twice as big now with roughly half as many withdrawls. In either case, comparing to good addresses would be better but of course the real issue is that most people don’t formally withdraw, they just drift away, which is much harder to track.

Best,
David