Metro Voice News Celebrating Faith, Family & Community
The scandals that toppled several high-profile pastors in recent years may be taking a toll on public trust. The survey comes as more than a dozen pastors in North Texas alone faced removal or resignation in 2024.
Only 30 percent of U.S. adults say clergy members have high or very high levels of honesty and ethics, a two percentage point drop from last year, a recent Gallup poll found. Forty-two percent say pastors have average levels of honesty and ethical standards, while 20 percent rate their trustworthiness as low or very low. Seven percent had no opinion.
“The proportion saying the clergy have high or very high ethics is down from an average 56% in 2000-2009 to 30% today,” Gallup noted.
Nevertheless, pastors still rate among the top half of professions included in the poll. Clergy ranked 10th among the 23 groups. According to previous research on pastoral credibility, non-Christians have shown particularly strong skepticism toward religious leaders. Nurses (79 percent rated high or very high), grade-school teachers (61 percent), military officers (59 percent), pharmacists (57 percent) and medical doctors (53 percent) are the only professions that a majority of Americans give top marks for ethics.
Among the other findings:
• White Americans are more likely than non-white Americans to highly rate pastors’ honesty and ethics standards (37 percent vs. 20 percent).
• Republicans (46 percent) are more likely than Independents (24 percent) and Democrats (25 percent) to give high ratings.
• Older Americans are more likely to be trusting of pastors. Twenty percent of 18- to-34-year-olds highly rate clergy compared to 28 percent of those ages 35 to 54 and 38 percent of those 55 and older.
• Among those with an annual household income of $50,000 or less, 27 percent rate the honesty and ethics of clergy highly. Those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 have similar levels of trust (28 percent), and those with household income topping $100,000 are more likely to rate pastors highly (40 percent).
• Individuals with a high school diploma or less (20 percent) are less likely than those with some college (30 percent) and those who are college graduates (40 percent) to say pastors have high or very high honesty and ethics standards.
Recent trends suggest this decline in trust may continue, as church attendance and membership continue to fall according to ongoing Gallup research.
–Dwight Widaman | Metro Voice
