This month Roy Morgan research released its annual survey, documenting changing public perceptions of the ethics and trustworthiness of various professions.
Putting a positive spin on the result for clergy looks tough. The best news is that clergy remain more trusted than bank managers. but only just.
And there's the rub. A majority of Australians don't trust ministers of religion.
It would be easy to dismiss such research. After all the New Testament writers warn Christians to expect to be mistrusted and even persecuted.
The problem with a knee-jerk response is that the anti-clerical feeling in Australia isn't fixed. Over the past ten years the number of Australians who don't trust church leaders has grown by roughly 2 million. The decline in minister’s public standing has been rapid.
As researcher Roy Morgan himself put it:
Of concern to religions in Australia however will be the continued slide in respect for Ministers of Religion (44%, down 1% and down 9% since 2004) "” now at a record low since first being measured in 1996 and falling for a record equalling fifth survey in a row.
Well-known political blogger Andrew Norton observes that the professions "where the job description requires selling a story - MPs, lawyers, advertising people, journalists, car salesmen, insurance advisers, union leaders - tend to do badly".
I would go further and add that professions do well when the community perceives they provide them with timely advice free of vested interest.
While health professions rate highly today, this is not merely because they are 'caring' or offer a 'public service' but because of current perceptions about their profession's connectedness to the civic fabric and the lives of ordinary Australians. This is clearer when you look at changes over time. After all in 1979, bank managers were more trusted than doctors.
Clergy no longer equated with teachers
Many of my clergy friends would describe their primary function as 'teaching'. It is very interesting, then, to look at perceptions of clergy trustworthiness compared to the teaching profession.
From 1980 until about 1995, school teachers and university lecturers placed somewhere in the middle range, trusted by between 50 to 65 percent of the population. This too is where ministers of religion were placed when Morgan first asked the public about them in 1996.
Since then, the public's trust in university lecturers has stayed reasonably stable (57% in 1997; 60% 2010), while public's trust in school teachers has risen significantly (64% in 1997; 73% in 2010)
Crikey's resident expert in econometrics Scott "Possum" Steel has produced a couple of charts to help illustrate. One particularly interesting graph charts the public's declining trust in both bank managers and clergy over the past 20 years.
While another shows that the public's trust in teachers growing about as fast as its trust in clergy has fallen.
Why is it so? The lesson from the banks
The short-time frame makes it difficult to determine whether the public's declining trust in clergy is connected to the sex abuse scandals over the past decade or as Steel observes:
whether their fall was actually more representative of some perception of institutional decline that may have been in operation for period going farther back than 1996.
While the sex scandals are undoubtedly part of the picture, I think the later theory provides a more powerful explanation of the long-term trend.
The similar decline in bank manager's public standing helps explain why.
It is clear that the public's trust in bank managers tanked in tandem with the big bank's institutional withdrawal from the local community.
As Steel explains:
Back before the financial deregulation of the 1980's, bank managers were a very powerful figure in most local communities - where a very large proportion of all home loans and personal loans approved by a bank required the personal approval of the local bank manager. So it's interesting to see how the honesty and ethical standards perceptions of bank managers effectively collapsed as their actual power collapsed.
Or to put it another way, banks are now seen as institutionally remote from 'struggle street'.
In terms of public perception, surely the same could be said of 'The Church'?
Way forward
It's probably a no brainer, but this analysis reinforces the notion that having a strong local presence is critical for bolstering community trust in the church's message.
There is much more that could be said.
What is the take home message for you?
