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I notice on Wikipedia that it lists the total number of Jewish adherents at ~14 million, and it lists the number of adherents in the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) at ~15.3 million. Are there really more Mormons in the world then there are Jews?

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    @Jamiec kutschkem might also have meant "ethnic identity".
    – ChrisW
    Commented May 12, 2015 at 11:49
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    @ChrisW Yes that's the word. What I meant is that "jewish" people don't necessarily identify themselves as jewish because of some religious belief. I met enough non-believing people identifying themselves as Jewish to be convinced of that. And that was not in Israel, by the way.
    – kutschkem
    Commented May 12, 2015 at 14:17
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    @DVK The claim is on Wikipedia right now, you can't blame me if they're using outdated sources.
    – ShemSeger
    Commented May 12, 2015 at 15:51
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    @jamesqf: That's an extreme simplification of a much deeper theological topic, and it's entirely irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion. The count of members released by the church at its General Conferences means exactly what an outsider would intuitively think it means: people alive today.
    – Mason Wheeler
    Commented May 12, 2015 at 23:24
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    @jamesqf The Church only reports living numbers. If the church were to report the numbers of the dead, including temple work, then the number would be somwhere in the hundreds of millions, if not billions. Baptisms for the dead have been preformed since the 1840's.
    – ShemSeger
    Commented May 14, 2015 at 15:33

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Yes, this seems to be right.

I found this report which states worldwide Jewish population to be estimated at about 13,8 million in 2013. At the latest LDS General Conference (April 2015), the statistical report stated 15,3 million members at the end of 2014.

Note that as I said in the comments, we are comparing apples to oranges here. Jewish population grows mainly through births, while LDS membership grows through births and convert baptisms.

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    You reminded me of xkcd.com/1102/index.html
    – Avrham Aton
    Commented May 13, 2015 at 15:06
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    @user2900110 ;-P How much that comic applies depends on the region where you live. It's very much like that in South America, from what I hear. Not so much in Europe. Fewer converts, but retention is high. From my experience as ward secretary, I would estimate 30-40% of middle-european members are visiting church every week. The comic isn't fair because we actually expect people to live their religion. Also, before baptism people are taught quite a bit, it's not like we are interested in luke-warm converts for the numbers. Also non-retention is a dead end - generally no children are baptized..
    – kutschkem
    Commented May 13, 2015 at 15:20
  • @user2900110 from families that aren't active, because they often don't have much contact with the church. That's also unlike some other confessions that I will leave unnamed.
    – kutschkem
    Commented May 13, 2015 at 15:21
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    While Judaism doesn't prevent people from converting, there indeed isn't much focus on proselytization.
    – JAB
    Commented Aug 18, 2017 at 1:20

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