Who do you trust? If I were to ask a believer that question, I am sure most would respond with, “God!” After all, Proverbs 3:5-6 exhorts us to: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” Psalm 91:2 is also a favourite verse for many: “I will say of the LORD, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him I will trust.’”
Next question: who don’t you trust? Between December 2-18, 2024, Gallup ran a poll of the most trusted professionals in America. The question was: “Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields – very high, high, average, low, or very low?” Nurses achieved the highest result with 76% of people rating them very highly/highly. They were followed by grade-school teachers (61%), military officers (59%), pharmacists (57%) and medical doctors (53%). Lobbyists (4%), members of Congress (8%) and TV reporters (13%) all ranked the worst!
Unfortunately, trust in “clergy” continues to decline, with only 30% rating their honesty and ethical standards very highly/highly, 42% rating them as average, and 20% rating them as low/very low. This represents a loss of six points since 2021, continuing the long-term downward trend in trust in ministry leaders. However, more alarming is the fact that since Gallup started rating 23 professions in the early 2000s, there has been a 26-point decline in the perceived honesty and ethics of ministry leaders – the largest decline of any group. So, what explains the loss of trust? According to Gallup: “The decline in Americans’ religiosity over this period contributes to the loss of trust in clergy, as the growing proportion of nonreligious adults express lower trust than religious adults. However, the Catholic Church’s child sexual abuse scandals also appear to have contributed to downticks in trust in clergy, including in 2002 and 2018.”
In my home country of Australia, an Ipsos poll conducted in 2024 revealed that doctors are the most trustworthy profession (66%), followed by teachers (60%) and scientists (58%). They are followed by serving staff at a restaurant (49%), the police (48%), and armed forces (47%). The professions most likely to be considered untrustworthy were social media influencers (61%), politicians generally (56%), advertising executives (49%), Government ministers (48%), journalists (40%), bankers and clergy/priests (38%), and business leaders (36%).
In focusing on our young people, the Australia Talks National Survey in 2021 found that although 41% of Australians don’t trust religious leaders “at all”, the distrust is even more significant amongst 18–24-year-olds with 47% showing a complete lack of trust in religious leaders – a jump of 15 percentage points since the corresponding survey two years prior. In fact, Dr Ibrahim Abraham, a religious researcher from the Australian National University, used the term “apatheists” (a combination of apathy and atheism) to describe most young Australians. […]
— Read More: harbingersdaily.com
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