Posted on 02/01/2023 3:26:27 PM PST by Morgana
As fewer Americans interact with pastors on a regular basis, fewer say they trust clergy overall.
Trust in pastors fell for the third straight year and reached an all-time low. Around 1 in 3 Americans (34 percent) rate the honesty and ethical standards of clergy as high or very high, according to the latest Gallup survey.
Downward trends in church attendance accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. With more Americans staying home each Sunday, fewer personally know a local church pastor. The lack of individual knowledge means more people associate pastors as a whole with the scandals surrounding individual church leaders.
The 34 percent who believe pastors have high ethical standards marks a two-point drop from the previous historic low last year of 36 percent.
Declining trust in pastors
Previously, Americans said pastors had a high or very high ethical standard and level of honesty, reaching 67 percent in 1985. After a decade of decline, Americans’ views of pastors rebounded through the 1990s and reached 64 percent in 2001 in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Since then, however, the downward trajectory has only slowed briefly amid sexual abuse scandals that were first exposed in the Roman Catholic Church and have since been revealed among other denominations and groups.
Trust in pastors has fallen 30 points since 2001. A majority of Americans last had a high view of pastors’ honesty in 2012. In 2018, for the first time, fewer than 40 percent highly rated pastors’ ethical standards and honesty. After a brief rebound in 2019, fewer than 2 in 5 Americans have given pastors the highest rating in the past three years.
Currently, slightly less than half of Americans (45 percent) say pastors have average levels of honesty, down three points from last year. Around 1 in 6 (17 percent) believe pastors have low or very ethical standards, a three-point jump over last year. Signals of trust
Adults under 35 are just as likely to say pastors have low or very low honesty (21 percent) as they are to say pastors have high or very high levels (20 percent). The older an American is the more likely they are to be more trusting of pastors. While 20 percent of young adults believe pastors have high levels of honesty, 30 percent of 35- to 54-year-olds and 46 percent of those 55 and older agree.
The more formal education a person has the more likely they are to trust pastors. Around 1 in 5 of those who are high school graduates or less (21 percent) believe pastors have high or very high ethical standards. Among those with some college, 38 percent trust pastors, while 43 percent of college graduates say the same.
Politically speaking, conservatives (38 percent) and moderates (40 percent) are more likely than liberals (24 percent) to believe pastors have high or very high honesty. Republicans (41 percent) are more likely than Democrats (34 percent) and independents (31 percent) to say they trust clergy.
Overall, pastors rank eighth among the 18 professions Gallup asked about in their survey. Clergy trail nurses (79 percent), medical doctors (62 percent), pharmacists (58 percent), high school teachers (53 percent), police officers (50 percent), accountants (41 percent), and judges (39 percent).
Professions Americans are less likely to trust than pastors include bankers (26 percent), real estate agents (24 percent), journalists (23 percent), lawyers (21 percent), car salespeople (11 percent), members of Congress (9 percent), and telemarketers (6 percent).
I think trust in everybody period, is at an all-time low.
I was raised Catholic and NEVER trusted my pastors as a child and young adult.
6% trust telemarketers.
I want their phone numbers!
Trust is for individuals not occupations.
But if all one knows of pastors is what one sees in headlines of scandals, or run-ins with the most obnoxious street evangelists (who usually aren't even pastors, properly speaking, but the unchurched might not know that), that's going to totally distort their perceptions. At least with things like schoolteacher sex scandals, practically everyone has personal experience knowing teachers who are scandal free.
This is one reason we need to mind the biblical admonition that Christian leaders be above reproach, and hold those who fall short to account and don't support their ministry when that no longer holds true.
Trust in all American institutions are at an all-time low. There is a reason why. They have all betrayed the trust we previously placed in them, in one way or another, over the past few years.
Trust, much like respect, once lost is hard to get back and does not happen overnight. Also, the trust doesn’t come easily. Those institutions would have to work hard to prove themselves before trust can even started to be regained, and I don’t think they are willing to do that. So now they will forget about gaining trust and just move to control.
Last weekend got a lecture at my church that I should be happy about all the illegal aliens.
They won’t be seeing me again.
Bishop Accountability
Abuse Tracker
Daily guide to media coverage of clergy abuse worldwide, and especially in the US Roman Catholic church. More than 100,000 articles blogged since 2006.
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/
After many years I have come to realize that clergy in general are just like everyone else. Some are saints, some are degenerates. Most are mixed bags, like the rest of us. It is naive to assume that just because someone has been ordained s/he is somehow endowed of greater virtue. Sin is everywhere, monks and cloistered nuns, much less parish priests and pastors, are no more immune than the man in the street.
It would be equally childish however, to abandon one’s faith because a cleric fell from grace.
bkmk
When the Catholic church publishes about systemic racism, it proves its leadership is in bed with leftist communists.
I am not a Catholic. But I recognized early on that the rhetorical question “Is the Pope Catholic!?” is not so rhetorical with this Pope, but is a legitimate question.
Bkmrk
While clergy have flaws as any human does, when they no longer serve in any religious capacity whatsoever then they should be viewed/treated as such. In my lifetime I’ve see two “ministers” run for president (Je$$e Jackson and Al $harpton), and the question of separating church and state WAS NEVER RAISED.
Nobody views them as anything but pimps for the Democratic Party; now a far wider range of them (including many Catholic leaders) have joined them in that category - and they are viewed/treated as such by their former flocks.
FILL IN THE BLANK
Public trust in ____________ falls to historic low.
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