Public trust in pastors continues to decline, Gallup poll finds
Public trust in pastors has dropped to a new low, according to the latest Gallup poll. The survey finds that only 30% of Americans rate clergy as highly honest and ethical, continuing a downward trend.
Gallup’s findings, released last week, place clergy in 10th position among the 23 professions measured. Clergy were ranked below auto mechanics (33%), judges (28%), but above bankers (23%) and nursing home operators (21%).
The poll, conducted Dec. 2-18, 2024, also revealed that 20% of Americans rate clergy’s honesty and ethics as low or very low, while another 42% see pastors as having average standards. Seven percent said they had no opinion about clergy.
“Previously, a broad majority of the U.S. held pastors in the highest regard,” Lifeway stated, recalling that 67% of Americans considered pastors highly honest and ethical in 1985. The figure briefly rebounded to 64% in 2001, coinciding with a wave of public support following the September 11 attacks.
However, reports of sexual abuse in religious settings, such as the 2002 investigations by The Boston Globe, appear to have eroded trust. Gallup described 2002 and 2018 as points in time that mirrored negative developments in the Catholic Church and other denominations, while Lifeway pointed to the “additional sex abuse reports in other denominations and Christian groups” as relevant factors.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/publi...finds.html
Public trust in pastors has dropped to a new low, according to the latest Gallup poll. The survey finds that only 30% of Americans rate clergy as highly honest and ethical, continuing a downward trend.
Gallup’s findings, released last week, place clergy in 10th position among the 23 professions measured. Clergy were ranked below auto mechanics (33%), judges (28%), but above bankers (23%) and nursing home operators (21%).
The poll, conducted Dec. 2-18, 2024, also revealed that 20% of Americans rate clergy’s honesty and ethics as low or very low, while another 42% see pastors as having average standards. Seven percent said they had no opinion about clergy.
“Previously, a broad majority of the U.S. held pastors in the highest regard,” Lifeway stated, recalling that 67% of Americans considered pastors highly honest and ethical in 1985. The figure briefly rebounded to 64% in 2001, coinciding with a wave of public support following the September 11 attacks.
However, reports of sexual abuse in religious settings, such as the 2002 investigations by The Boston Globe, appear to have eroded trust. Gallup described 2002 and 2018 as points in time that mirrored negative developments in the Catholic Church and other denominations, while Lifeway pointed to the “additional sex abuse reports in other denominations and Christian groups” as relevant factors.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/publi...finds.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"