wfn.org | US public confidence in religious institutions tumbles

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Note #7339 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

11-July-2002
02243

US public confidence in religious institutions tumbles  
  
by Chris Herlinger   
Ecumenical News International

NEW YORK -  Public confidence in US religious institutions has dropped dramatically this year to a 30-year low, reflecting the recent scandals affecting the Roman Catholic Church, a prominent polling organization has concluded.  

A new national survey by the Gallup Organization, based in Princeton, New Jersey, determined that only 45 percent of Americans surveyed had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in religious institutions - a substantial 15 percent drop from 60 percent in 2001, and the lowest percentage since 1973, when Gallup began surveying Americans on their confidence in national institutions.  

Of the 16 institutions covered in the survey, churches and organized religion in general ranked sixth - behind the US military, which ranked first (79 percent of respondents expressed a great deal or quite a lot of confidence), the police (59 percent), the presidency (58 percent), the US Supreme Court (50 percent) and banks (47 percent).  
Behind organized religion were the medical system (38 percent), public schools (38 percent), television news (35 percent), newspapers (35 percent), the US Congress (29 percent), the criminal justice system (27 percent), organized labor (26 percent), big business (20 percent), Wall Street (19 percent) and health maintenance organizations (medical care co-operatives) (13 percent).  

The last time a poll showed such a wane in public confidence in religious institutions was in 1989, at a time when a number of US Christian television evangelists were involved in well-publicized financial and sexual scandals. At that time, a bare majority of respondents - 52 percent - said they had confidence in organized religion.  

Prior to that, organized religion had generally scored about 60 percent in confidence, said Gallup pollster Frank Newport. And from 1973 to the mid-1980s - a key historical period in which the US was shaken by the Watergate scandal, saw the end of the Vietnam War and ushered in the presidency of Ronald Reagan - organized religion was the US institution that enjoyed the highest confidence ratings.  

In a report issued on 28 June, Newport said "there is little question that the sex abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church is the main cause of the drop-off in confidence this year", citing data showing that only 42 per cent of Catholics compared with 59 percent of Protestants "have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence" in organized religion.  

In 1991, a Gallup poll showed essentially no difference in Catholics' and Protestants' ratings of confidence in organized religion. Newport told ENI the respondents' religious affiliation had not been asked every year, so Gallup could not determine whether Catholics had shown a substantial decline in confidence this year over last year.  

Newport stressed that the current survey had not questioned respondents on why they ranked the institutions as they did, saying pollsters were making a "strong inference" that the recent problems over the sex abuse scandals involving priests were the reason for such a steep drop in support for organized religion.  

Inference might also lead an observer to conclude that the September 11 terrorist attacks were the reason the military and presidency were rated so highly, Newport said.  

But he added that Gallup polls had consistently shown that Americans were among the most religious people in the world - particularly in comparison with citizens of other Western nations. He said that current mistrust in religious institutions was not a reflection of any loss of religious values or in the confidence Americans had in their local church and pastor. The poll, he said, was judging institutions on a national level.  

"I think in general people would say their local parish is good," Newport told ENI.  

In the breakdown of this year's polling - based on telephone interviews of 1020 US adults conducted from June 21 to 23 - 26 percent said they had a "great deal" of confidence in organized religion, and 19 percent said they had "quite a lot" of confidence. Thirty-two percent said they had some confidence, 18 percent said they had very little, 3 percent had none and 2 percent had no opinion.  

The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points. The full text of the poll may be found at www.gallup.com/poll.
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