Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Robert Stockman, Baha'i membership statistics, bahai-library.com.
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Bahá'í membership statistics

Robert Stockman

1998-11

Letter One, question

Subject: Re: Bahá'í Growth

Date: 11/1/98 1:34 AM

Greetings!

Does anyone know the basis for the membership figures given below? Are they
running composites of declarations less withdrawals and deaths? Are they the
number of American Bahá'í subscribers? Do the figures include folks who
signed
cards during mass teaching campaigns without recognizing the station of
Bahá'u'lláh? If so, is there an other basis for measuring "believers"?

Figure 1, "Number of American Bahá'ís for selected years" appears in Robert
Stockman's short essay, "U.S. Bahá'í Community Membership: 1894-1996,"
published
in The American Bahá'í November 23, 1996, page 27.

Note: Statistics are available for most years, but not for all. The years
shown
were chosen to represent trends.

Year Membership

1894 -- 7
1899 -- 1,500
1900 -- 500
1906 -- 1,500
1916 -- 2,884
1920 -- 1,500
1926 -- 1,500
1936 -- 3,000
1941 -- 4,256
1946 -- 5,134
1951 -- 6,729
1956 -- 7,578
1962 -- 9,659
1966 -- 14,716
1968 -- 17,765
1970 -- 23,994
1971 -- 40,221
1972 -- 59,372
1974 -- 63,470
1979 -- 77,396
1984 -- 91,669
1989 -- 112,000
1993 -- 120,000
1996 -- 133,000

Letter Two, answer

Subject: RE: Bahá'í Growth

Date: Sun, 1 Nov 1998

From: "Stockman, Robert"

To: "Bahá'í Studies"

Dear Friends:

The list of Bahá'í population numbers in the United States from the
18890s to the present is a composite from various sources. The
figures before 1934 are the best estimates possible, based on the US
Religious Census (information collected by the Bahá'ís based on
various definitions of membership). The figures from 1940 to the
1960s or 1970s come from Bahá'í News, where the figures were
occasionally published. From some time in the 1970s on, a staffer at
the National Teaching Committee (one with graduate school experience,
not someone with no statistical experience) compiled the data from
national membership records, probably annual membership reports in the
files.

The definition of membership is more or less the same since the 1930s;
a person must sign a declaration card stating he/she believes in
Bahá'u'lláh, the Bab, and `Abdu'l-Bahá, and understands there are laws
and institutions to obey (the card does not specify them).

The National Center, obviously, is not in the position to decide which
cards were signed in good faith and which were not. The National
Spiritual Assembly instituted a two-tier process about 1974, of (1)
declaration, and (2) enrollment, the latter involving a meeting with
the declarant to ascertain that the person understands what s/he is
doing. The two-stage process was inaugurated because of abuses in
mass-teaching campaigns during 1968-72. It is difficult to say how
extensive "abuse" was; there are stories about what people did ("sign
here and you'll start getting a newspaper every month" for example).
I participated in mass teaching in Florida in 1979 and saw no cutting
of corners. I have never heard anyone say that "corner cutting" was
extensive or widespread, so I am of the opinion that rigorous
sociological research is needed to determine it, rather than relying
on anecdotes.

The National Bahá'í Center does not maintain a list of "inactive"
Bahá'ís. Its membership list is divided into several categories:

Bahá'ís in good standing, known addresses.
Bahá'ís in good standing, "mail return."
Bahá'ís in good standing, "address unknown." This category is
a more definitive one than (2). I am not sure what the difference
between the two are; the people in Information Services have reliable
definitions or each. Perhaps it has to do with the post office's
reply.
Bahá'ís who have lost their rights, are in mental institutions,
prisons, etc. These are coded as separate categories. I am uncertain
to what extent their addresses are maintained. It would depend on
whether they get *The American Bahá'í,* because the main maintenance
of the mailing list has to do with the "address correction requested"
feature on *The American Bahá'í.*
Bahá'ís who are dead. When someone dies they remain on the
database and their id number is permanently theirs. Obviously, they
are not counted as part of the current membership! I say this only
because someone has suggested in print that they are included. They
aren't, I assure you.

I am typing at home and do not have all the latest figures. As of
Ridvan 1998 the American Bahá'í community included 58,240 adult men;
58,903 adult women; 5,776 adults whose sex is unknown in Wilmette (I
am sure it is known to the persons in question); for a total of
122,920 adults. The community also includes 7,212 youth (aged 15-20)
and 8,036 children (aged 0-14). These total 138,168 persons. These
figures do not include Bahá'ís in the Falklands or the Turks and
Caicos Islands, which are under the jurisdiction of the United States
NSA (of course, there are 14 Bahá'ís in the Falklands and 142 in Turks
and Caicos, so they don't change the figures much). The figures also
do not include Bahá'ís in Alaska (about 3,000, I think), Hawaii,
Puerto Rico, Guam, and other US possessions not under the jurisdiction
ot the U.S. NSA.

These figures are from the annual statistical report sent to the
Universal House of Justice in late August and are public statistics.
If you'd like to know how many Bahá'ís there are in any particular
state, I can tell you.

Of the 138,000, roughly half have good addresses, and I think about a
quarter each are mail returns and address unknowns. But people do not
stay in the mail return or address unknown categories because
sometimes they notify the NSA of their correct address. The
Information Services department makes over 20,000 address changes a
year; Bahá'ís move a lot (the United States census reports the average
American moves once every five years). When an address is updated the
date of the update is now kept, but I don't know whether it has always
been kept. At some point in the future Bahá'í sociologists could
define "membership" as someone whose address has not been listed as
"address unknown" for the last, say, five years or the last ten years,
but I am not sure whether the data would allow that yet.

A few other matters. Electoral districts are defined based on known
addresses, of course. Some areas have more "address unknowns" than
others. I once asked the computer to give me the list of everyone in
South Bend, Indiana (where I live) who falls in all three categories.
We had 27 with known addresses and maybe three in the other two
categories.

Defining membership is extremely subjective and whenever anyone says
group X has so many members you always have to ask "by what
definition"? There are usually several definitions that are
legitimate. If you go through a town and ask everyone what their
religion is, you will get a definition based on "religious identity."
You will find people who say they are Lutherans that the local
Lutheran church has never seen, because they moved into town as
Lutherans and still consider themselves Lutherans, but never go to
church. There are a very small number of people in the United States
that are Bahá'ís by that definition. When I was the Bahá'í
representative to the Harvard-Radcliffe United Ministry I got all the
"religious identification cards" that had been marked "Bahá'í" (these
were included in the registration packet every September; completing
it was optional). In addition to the cards turned in by the Bahá'ís
there were always 1 or 2 people we had never heard of. There were
also a few people who checked multiple boxes, like "Orthodox Jew"
"Bahá'í" and "Buddhist."

Even with the "address known" people, the "quality" of faith varies a
lot. I have a friend who declared after knowing about the Faith for
20 years. Every now and them we get in a discussion and he say "Rob,
what do we believe about X?" He wants me to tell him what "we" (he
and I) as Bahá'ís believe! This friend also gets feasts and firesides
mixed up. But does he have a Bahá'í identity? Yes.

Regarding what fraction of the "mass taught" Bahá'ís have a Bahá'í
identity, this requires research to answer. If people didn't have an
identity when they signed a card, maybe they do after receiving *The
American Bahá'í* for twenty years! Whenever new membership cards are
mailed to people, a hundred or so are returned by people who say they
aren't Bahá'ís. Recently an effort was made to find telephone numbers
for Bahá'ís who were "address unknown" in South Carolina and they were
called. I haven't heard the details, but the informal estimate I
heard was that maybe 10% of them do not identify themselves as
Bahá'ís.

I hope we can get better data, though. Recently 4,000 Bahá'ís were
chosen at random and sent a letter asking them to participate in a
"survey panel" for 18 months. A third replied favorably; almost no
one refused. The panel has been divided into thirds and each third
will be surveyed twice a year on different matters. Then a different
4,000 people will be selected and asked to participate and new panels
will be constituted. The surveying task force hopes to make surveying
a permanent part of the Bahá'í community culture. The panels are
being checked for sample bias and other scientific efforts are being
made to check reliability of the results. I hope in a year or so the
results can be published in a proper, peer-reviewed journal, just like
research on Baptists and other groups. The Bahá'í Faith is part of
the Cooperative Congregational Survey project, a massive effort by 40
denominations to survey their congregations simultaneously about the
same issues in early 2000 (coincident with the decennial US census).
So surveying of the American Bahá'í community--which actually began in
the early 1980s, and accelerated with small surveys in 1988 and
1992--is now beginning to be developed on a professional basis. I
hope the results, in a few years, will replace anecdotes and
speculation with hard data.

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