Question. Hendricks acknowledges in footnote 53 of chapter 4 that LDS (Mormons) and JWs are growing with “characteristics very different from the populist model” (per uc-sociologically-categorized-with-mormons-and-jws). LDS in particular has the most opposite-of-populist features of any major American religious body: rigid top-down hierarchy (First Presidency → Quorum of Twelve → Seventy → Stake/Ward), credentialed leadership tracks, mandatory missions, parish-system boundaries (wards), and doctrinal centralization. Yet LDS grows. How?
Why it matters. LDS is the strongest single counter-example to the populist-church thesis as a general growth theory. If Hendricks’s thesis is right that populist features cause growth, LDS should be declining; it isn’t. Possible reconciliations include: (a) the LDS lay-missionary system is the “populist” element doing the work, decoupling recruitment from organizational form; (b) Hendricks’s populist features are correlated-with-growth but not causally necessary, with LDS as the proof; (c) LDS may be at peak and beginning to decline, validating the long-term framework even if not the short-term snapshot; (d) the populist case applies only within Protestantism / lower-church Christianity, with LDS operating on different dynamics.
Adjacent question: directly bears on are-there-populist-failures-or-denominational-successes (this question is the LDS-specific version of that broader concern).
Adjacent to UC: as Hendricks himself notes, UC is sociologically categorized with LDS and JW, not with Calvary/Willow/Saddleback. If UC’s growth pattern more closely resembles LDS than Calvary, the strategic recommendations of BR may be aiming at the wrong reference class.
Current best guesses. Hendricks promises a brief analysis in the BR Appendix; that should be read carefully when ingested. Independent sources worth tracing: Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Mormonism, Armand Mauss’s The Angel and the Beehive.
Source. Raised in br-04-populist-vs-denominational REVIEW, from uc-sociologically-categorized-with-mormons-and-jws.