How Many Members Are There Really? Two Censuses and the Meaning of LDS Membership in Chile and Mexico David Clark Knowlton HOW MANY MEMBERS ARE THERE and what does it mean to be a mem- ber? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regularly publishes fig- ures representing Church membership. If nowhere else they appear in the biennial Deseret News Church Almanac. These figures are widely cited by the Church, members, scholars, and the press. As a result, it would seem that the question of how many members there are is a relatively simple issue. The other question, what it means to be a member, would seem to be the hard one. Yet, as we shall see, neither question is either straightforward or sim- ple. Two major countries in Latin America, Mexico and Chile, recently published decennial census numbers that included specific religious iden- tifications. Both countries required their inhabitants to identify their reli- gious membership as part of the regular process of enumerating national populations. In the past, these numbers have been grouped in large cate- gories, such as Catholic, Evangelical, and Other. Many scholars have DAVID CLARK KNOWLTON, associate professor of anthropology at Utah Valley State College, specializes in the anthropology of religion in Latin America.