7022 S. Dexter St.
Littleton, CO 80122
February 17, 1987

Jim Valentine
P.O. Box 13482
Milwaukee, WI 53213

Dear Jim,

I received your package on Oct. 5.  Thank you for sending it.   I have a few preliminary comments to make about Rick Branch's paper.  I am inclined to do a detailed analysis of the way he handles his evidence.  I find that he is interested primarily in creating an impression that is consistent with his idea of Mormonism rather than an accurate picture of Mormonism's social fruits.  In this letter I will confine myself to the divorce statistics.  I enclose copies of the appropriate documentation for your perusal.

Mr. Branch quotes the "Utah Vital Statistics Annual Report" "1980" only eight times.  I find this astonishing.  I would expect someone doing a statistical report on a state to quote the state report as often as possible.  Eleven quotes come from other probably reliable statistical sources -- Church Almanac (1), State of Utah...Report of the Utah Liquor Control Commission (5), Utah's Drinking Driving Problem (3), Patterns of Alcohol Consumption (2).  Fully forty-two of Mr. Branch's citations are from newspapers or magazines -- Salt Lake Tribune (17), Deseret News (9), Utah Holiday (6), Ogden Standard Examiner (3), Utah Evangel (1-an article by Mr. Branch), Orange County Register (1), BYU Today (1), Church News (2), Family Planning Perspectives (2).  These constitute 52.5% of Mr. Branch's sources!  Also, the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah Holiday, and Ogden Standard Examiner have long histories of anti-Mormonism in their editorial pages.  Of course, the Utah Evangel can hardly be considered favorable to the LDS Church.  The problem with using newspapers or magazines as sources is that it is difficult to track down the ultimate source of the information to see if the published data are valid or myth.  As often as not, newspapers and magazines quote each other.  These sources also provide an "out" for the compiler if the numbers turn out to be wrong.  I already mentioned to you that Dave Hunt in a letter to Barbara Hainsworth (which I have read) stated that he got his statistical information for The God Makers from The Denver Post, and referred her to the newspaper if she wanted to know where the numbers came from.  His attitude was that if the numbers were wrong and Mormonism unfairly received a black eye, it wasn't his problem since all he did was quote from a published source.  He never did answer the question (asked in a subsequent letter) why didn't he spend some time at his friendly neighborhood public library looking up the data in documents published by the Bureau of the Census and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  These publications are readily available in public libraries around the country.  Now to specifics.  In the remainder of this letter I will be quoting from a number of publications.  Since the titles are long, I will abbreviate them as follows:

As Mr. Branch stated (Branch, p. 8), in 1980 Utah did indeed have a divorce rate slightly higher than the national average. It is not this statement that is offensive to Mormons, but the implication that Mormons have just as much or more divorce as the rest of the nation, when the data quoted by Branch doesn't show this.  You will note (StatAb 85, p. 82) that the national average was 5.2/ 1000 population, while Utah's rate was 5.3/1000.  The rates range from a low of 2.9 (Pennsylvania) to a high of 17.0 (Nevada).  Mr. Branch doesn't tell his readers that every state in the Mountain and Pacific regions (west of Kansas) except Hawaii have higher divorce rates than Utah (Statab 85, p.82).  In the Mountain region, Utah has the lowest rate.  This is interesting.  The western states have high divorce rates, but predominantly Mormon Utah has the lowest rate in the region.  Branch doesn't break out the rate by religion, for states don't report divorce by religion.  But what we are really interested in is not the Utah rate, but the Mormon rate.  Mr. Branch assumes they are the same, but there is good evidence they are different.

First, the state with the highest percentage Mormon population has the lowest rate in the region.  Second, if one plots the divorce rate against the percentage non-Mormon population for all the Utah counties with population over 50,000, one finds that there is a direct relationship, that is, those counties with the highest percentage non-Mormon population have the highest divorce rates.  There are two reasons counties with lower populations must be excluded:  First, those counties with small populations are rural rather that urban counties.  It would be surprising if there were no difference in the divorce rates of urban and rural areas.  Second, counties with small populations generally have small numbers of divorces.  The number of divorces must be large enough so that small changes in the total number of divorces don't affect the rate very much.  For example, in 1980, Dagget County had a population of 769, of which 41.6% was non-Mormon.  There was only one divorce in this county.  One additional divorce would have doubled the rate.  These kinds of fluxuations swamp out the trends that are being looked for.

The procedure is as follows:

Here are the results of this procedure:

There is little, if any, correlation of divorce rate with population.

This is a striking correlation, and confirms the hypothesis that the Mormon and non-Mormon rates are different.  It also provides evidence that the non-Mormon rate is higher than the Mormon rate.  If the rates are different, we can calculate the average Mormon and non-Mormon rates.

Of the eight Mountain region states, six have Mormon populations of less than 10% (Arizona-5.5%, Colorado-2%, Montana-3.4%, Nevada-7.5%, New Mexico-2.5%, and Wyoming-9.5%).  This is determined by using CA 85, p. 251-253 to find the Mormon population of the states, and Statab 86, p. 12 for the total population of the states.  Nevada should be ignored because of its abnormally high rate (17.0).  Including Nevada would make the Mormons look better.  The remaining five states have 72% of the region's population.  It is therefore reasonable to calculate the combined divorce rate of these states, by treating the small Mormon populations as non-Mormon, and assume that the rate of non-Mormons in Utah will be similar.  Treating the small Mormon populations as non-Mormons works against the Mormons.  The combined divorce rate is calculated by adding the number of divorces from these states.  When this is done, the non-Mormon rate for these states is 6.9.  Since the Mormons make up 70.2% of Utah's population, and since the Utah's divorce rate is 5.3, a simple algebraic equation may be written to calculate the average Utah Mormon divorce rate.  This equation is:

0.702X + 0.298(6.9)=5.3, where X is the Mormon divorce rate

Solving this equation yields X=4.6.  This is considerably below the national average.  Note: I tried three other approaches, including leaving Nevada in the calculations, and applying the calculated non-Mormon rate the entire region.  The results varied from 4.1 to 4.7 for the Mormon rate.  The reason the Utah divorce rate is the lowest in the region is because the Mormons are pulling it down.  The problem is actually more complicated than this.  For instance, no attempt has been made to separate out active LDS from inactive LDS, who may have divorce rates as high as their non-Mormon neighbors.  The church has some data on this.  Those Mormons who have been sealed in the temple have divorce rates about 1/5 of the national average (letter of ex-Church Historian Arrington--copy enclosed).

In his paper, Mr. Branch makes two major errors in interpreting statistics:

Mr. Branch's scholarship is nil.  He shows time and time again that he either does not know how or is unwilling to properly interpret statistical data.  He has tried to create an impression in the minds of his readers that is simply not correct.  In effect, without ever stating a falsehood, he is lying to his readers about the Mormon divorce situation.

Jim, I hope this letter has given you some insight as to why I have a difficult time believing people like Mr. Branch care anything at all for my soul.  He is NOT interested in the truth about the Mormon social situation.  His interest is to make the social fruits of Mormonism look bad, in spite of the fact that that compared to non-Mormons they are quite good.

Sincerely,

Malin L. Jacobs