In 2020, 39% of Americans agreed that their religious leaders had high or very high “honesty and ethical standards.” While that figure lies slightly above the record low of 37% reached in 2018, trust in clergy has decreased considerably from the record high it achieved more than 30 years earlier.

Public trust in American clergy remained near record lows in 2020, according to a survey released by Gallup.

Lifeway Research, the publication arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, has analyzed the findings of Gallup’s annual ratings of the honesty and ethical standards of professions since 1985, the most recent installment of which was released on Dec. 22, 2020. One of the groups that respondents are asked to rate the honesty and ethical standards of is clergy.

In 2020, 39% of Americans agreed that their religious leaders had high or very high “honesty and ethical standards.” While that figure lies slightly above the record low of 37% reached in 2018, trust in clergy has decreased considerably from the record high it achieved more than 30 years earlier.

“For churches, for churchgoers, for clergy themselves, that’s not good news because … these are real perceptions that Americans have,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research.“This trendline does correspond with the decline that we’ve seen in religious affiliation in recent years, and clearly, if Americans are not attending church, they would … likely not have personal relationships with a pastor. So without that regular contact, their perception will be based completely on secondhand information or media accounts of … pastors.”

Secular Americans “can still have a positive view of pastors even if they don’t attend the church, but the news they’re going to get on … it’s typically going to be bad news when it comes to the media or social media. That doesn’t necessarily mean that pastors are behaving worse than they did years ago, but the word travels farther when they do make mistakes,” he added.

“The trendline since the year 2000, it’s pretty downward even though there’s a couple of years that it bounced back up, it’s been downwards since … around 2000. Where if you draw a trendline before 2000, fairly flat, even though there are a couple of big spikes,” McConnell continued.

Read More