A new comprehensive study of religion in America shows The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the fastest-growing church in the nation during the 1990s.
The study, "Religious Congregations & Membership: 2000," done by the Glenmary Research Center, is the broadest census to date of American religious bodies. Scheduled to be released to members of the Religion Newswriters Association at a press conference Friday in Nashville, Tenn., some aspects of the embargoed study were made public Tuesday by The Washington Post.
That story said religion scholars attribute the rapid growth of the LDS Church to its "aggressive recruitment and active community life."
When told of the study's findings Tuesday, LDS Church spokesman Mike Otterson said, "We have not seen the report. It is probably simplistic to attribute the remarkable growth of the church to one or two factors. Close to 300,000 individuals over the age of 8 have joined the church every year for more than a decade.

"These individuals have their own story and unique reasons for uniting with the faith and why they feel such spiritual fulfillment in it."
Earlier this year, when Salt Lake City was receiving worldwide coverage because of the Olympics, Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve told the Deseret News that church growth comes not because of that event's widespread media coverage but because people are looking "for answers to the real questions of life."
He said the church also continues to grow because its members — including some 65,000 full-time missionaries — are willing to share their faith with others and "a great power of the spirit that accompanies what we're doing. I think people who are searching and really want to know the truth respond."
The findings come just months after the National Council of Churches' 2002 "Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches" reported in February that the LDS Church is now the fifth- largest denomination in the United States.
Those findings align with the Glenmary Study's findings. The Rev. Dr. Eileen W. Lindner, who edited the NCC Yearbook, said the church's "distinctive theological position . . . and the history of its persecution make such rapid growth all the more remarkable; however, the church's strong emphasis on outreach through both mission personnel and electronic and print advertising makes it unique among contemporary North American churches."
The February ranking was the first time the LDS Church has been ranked among the top five in American membership, and this week's Glenmary study is believed to be the first time the church has been ranked as the fastest growing in the United States.
The Post story quotes Kenneth M. Sanchagrin, director of the Glenmary Research Center, saying that while churches identified by scholars "moderate or liberal" are on the decline, those "that are demanding in some way — that expect you to come two or three times a week, or not wear lipstick, or dress in a certain way — but at the same time offer you great rewards — community, a salvation that is exclusive of other faiths — those are the churches that are growing," he said.
Jan Shipps, a sociologist and religion scholar whose specialty is the LDS Church, said it's "a well-known sociological truth" that churches that demand adherence to structure are those that have grown the fastest. The notion was first chronicled in 1986 by Dean Kelley, in a book called "Why Conservative Churches Are Growing."
The book says that, despite the popular notion that secularism has become the new American religion, the opposite actually is true because evangelical Christian churches and those that offer a strict notion of morality and a promise of personal salvation are attracting the largest percentage of Americans.
The premise is true, Shipps said, in large part because there is "a general unsettled feeling" among Americans during the past several decades that has led to a "division of the culture into two parts" that are not necessarily grouped by denomination but rather by politics and cultural belief.
In fact, she said, nearly all historic mainstream denominations — and Catholicism in particular — now have their own "orthodox" or "progressive" factions, which often operate somewhat independently of each other. "That's part of what the culture wars are all about."
C. Kirk Hadaway, a scholar with the United Church of Christ, has written about the characteristics of churches that attract members in a journal of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
He said while "strictness" is one characteristic that draws membership, other significant factors are "the congregation's demographic/geographic context, congregational harmony or lack thereof, and sustained outreach efforts."
As for how Latter-day Saints figure in the Glenmary Study, Shipps said figures for Salt Lake City mirror what both city and church leaders already know — that the proportion of LDS Church members in the city itself has declined in recent years, "possibly because of the influx of non-Anglo Latinos, Muslims and other minorities."