A record number of people throughout the United States have expressed a lack of trust in clergy members, according to a new poll.
When asked by researchers at Gallup to rate the honesty and ethics of clergy members, less than half of those who participated in the study ranked them positively. The 47 percent who did represent the smallest group to do so since 1977.
“If views of a certain profession have changed, it usually has been a function of scandal surrounding it,” researchers indicated. “The Catholic priest abuse stories from the early 2000s helped lead to a sharp drop in Americans’ ratings of clergy, a decline from which the profession has yet to fully recover.”
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/12/16/poll-american-trust-in-clergy-members-hits-new-low/