Americans are having a harder time trusting anyone as of late—including pastors.
The country’s perception of clergy hit a latest low in recent Gallup polling, with fewer than a 3rd of Americans rating clergy as highly honest and ethical.
People usually tend to consider within the moral standards held by nurses, cops, and chiropractors than their religious leaders. Clergy are still more trusted than politicians, lawyers, and journalists.
The continued drop in pastors’ fame—down from 40 percent to 32 percent over the past 4 years—corresponds with more skepticism toward professions (and institutions) across the board.
Americans are also less likely than ever to know a pastor, with fewer than half belonging to a church and a growing cohort who don’t discover with a faith in any respect.
“As American culture becomes increasingly pluralistic and post-Christian, we are able to’t assume that Americans normally default to a positive view of clergy,” said Nathan Finn, executive director of the Institute for Transformational Leadership at North Greenville University. “Ministers must work harder to achieve public trust than was the case even a generation ago.”
Finn also identified how scandals like clergy sex abuse, growing political polarization, and evangelicals’ countercultural moral positions can contribute to the decline in credibility amongst clergy, “especially amongst those that have either had bad church experiences or whose worldview assumptions are already at odds with historic Christian beliefs.”
The most dramatic decline in clergy trust got here across the crisis of sex abuse by Catholic priests within the early 2000s, when positive rankings fell from 64 percent to 52 percent. They’ve steadily declined since.
Gallup found that white, high-income, and college-educated Americans thought better of pastors. The rankings were concerning the same across political parties, with 38 percent of Republicans and 36 percent of Democrats seeing high levels of honesty and ethical standards amongst clergy.
Views of pastors did vary by generation. Elder millennials and Gen X were most cynical; fewer than 1 / 4 of individuals between ages 35 and 54 had a positive view of clergy ethics, in comparison with 38 percent of older Americans and 30 percent of those under 35. Positive perception of clergy amongst young people jumped by 10 percentage points in comparison with 2022.
Previous polling has shown that individuals are likely to trust their very own pastor greater than pastors overall. According to Barna research, nearly two-thirds of Americans have a “very positive” opinion of a pastor they’ve a private reference to, in comparison with 1 / 4 who said the identical about pastors normally.
But even that discrepancy has the potential to erode trust on the local church level.
“It could also be that individuals are considering, ‘I trust my pastor but not those I see on social media.’ However, ultimately this drop will influence local decisions. For example, if a senior pastor has a conflict with the governing board, people may more quickly say, ‘Well, our pastor is similar to those other pastors,’” said David Fletcher, founding father of XPastor, a resource for executive pastors.
“Changes in societal views can influence church members and leaders beneath the surface—it’s just like the tide, carrying us along for quite a while before we realize we’ve moved.”
Even though public trust is slipping across professions—groups like doctors, pharmacists, and bankers saw barely larger declines than clergy—Christians still need to see pastors held to a better standard.
“Scripture charges Christians normally and pastors specifically to be concerned about their fame with the surface world,” said pastor Aaron Menikoff, creator of Character Matters, a book specializing in the fruit of the Spirit in church leadership.
Menikoff cited 1 Timothy 3:7, where the qualifications of an elder include “a superb fame with outsiders,” and 1 Peter 2:12, which urges Christians to live “good lives” in order that those outside the church notice their “good deeds.”
Evangelical leaders agreed certain church stances and doctrines may cause pastors to lose credibility in today’s culture, but that pastors should take their character and public witness seriously.
“Pastors will fall short, they’re works in progress too. Nonetheless, by God’s grace they must strive for that holiness without which nobody will see the Lord (Heb. 12:14),” said Menikoff, whose Atlanta-area church hosts an annual pastors’ conference called Feed My Sheep.
Glenn Packiam pointed to the necessity for pastoral humility and a rethinking of authority as he explored Barna research on the declining trust in pastors in his 2022 book The Resilient Pastor. He wrote:
I’m less taken with finding ways to regain our credibility than I’m in our willingness to take responsibility for why we’ve lost it. … From small country churches to uber-megachurches, many pastors have been found to be bullies and hypocrites, alcohol abusers, and womanizers. The crisis of credibility is a symptom. The misuse of authority is the basis cause.
In the wake of public scandals involving pastors, ministries are developing accountability and discipleship training for pastors. For example, a free workshop through XPastor (involving CT partner publication Church Law & Tax) focused on legal, financial, and sexual standards in addition to challenges around Sabbath rest, with the hope that setting church integrity “guardrails” can keep leaders on target.
Also necessary, said Finn, is how pastors respond when things go mistaken: “It is throughout the power of church leaders to rebuild at the least some trust if we respond faithfully to our own moral failures.”
