Raëlian Church membership estimates

Various news media have reported Raëlian Church membership estimates, and these statistics, often provided to the news outlets by the Church itself (see the sources below), claims a long-term term trend of past growth. However, despite the media's efforts to provide coverage on the Raëlians, the estimates taken within a given year can vary by tens of thousands. Outliers appear when charting the dates of membership estimates.

In addition to the media, Susan J. Palmer, a Canadian sociologist who has studied fringe religious movements has given several estimates of the size of the movement in different years, and a member of the University of Virginia has given estimates as well. Claude Vorilhon the founder of the Raëlian Church gave the earliest estimates of the movement's size in his 1970's Raëlian books. Most, if not all of the estimates below originate from numbers given to journalists by representatives of the Raëlian Movement during media interviews etc. Occasionally journalists will quote outdated information which would account for what appears to be a decline of thousands of members in a short period of time.

Regional

Worldwide

ee also

*History of Raëlism
*Raëlism

References

reflist|2

Cited texts

*Raël, [http://rael.org/download.php?view.1 "Intelligent Design"] . "Nova Distribution", 2005. ISBN 2940253003.
*Palmer, Susan J. [http://books.google.com/books?id=gmCCxUJGi70C&printsec=frontcover&dq=susan+j+palmer+aliens+adored&output=html "Aliens Adored"] . "Rutgers University Press", 2004. ISBN 0813534763.