{"id":768,"date":"2019-09-26T10:53:14","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T15:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/markteasdale.net\/?p=768"},"modified":"2019-09-26T10:53:19","modified_gmt":"2019-09-26T15:53:19","slug":"public-trust-and-the-prophet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markteasdale.net\/index.php\/2019\/09\/26\/public-trust-and-the-prophet\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Trust and the Prophet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last week Pew Research Center released a new study that\nlooks at the how extensively Americans trust people who hold various positions\nof authority (find it here<\/a>).\nThe specific positions they considered were: K-12 public school principals,\npolice officers, military leaders, religious leaders, local elected officials,\nmembers of Congress, journalists, and leaders of technology companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to determine the extent of trust Americans have in\npeople who hold these different positions, Pew asked four nearly identical\nquestions related to each position. To quote the report, \u201cThe\nquestions focus on how often those who have positions of power and\nresponsibility in these groups care about the people \u201clike you\u201d or those they\nserve, whether they handle the resources available to them in a responsible\nway, the degree to which they provide fair and accurate information to the\npublic, and whether they admit their mistakes and take responsibility for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report also broke out the responses by the age,\nreligion, political orientation, and education of the respondents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is likely not surprising about the report is that many\nAmericans have serious reservations about the trustworthiness of Congress and\nother elected officials as well as tech company leaders. What may come as a\nsurprise is the ambivalence trending to mistrust of religious leaders, with\nAmericans often showing greater support for police and military leaders than\nfor religious leaders. The break down can be seen in the table below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\"Compared<\/a>\n\n\n\n

Particularly in an age when the Evangelical Protestants in\nthe United States are trying to ratchet up their public proclamation of the\ngospel and the Mainline Protestants are seeking to be a \u201cprophetic voice\u201d that\ncries out against injustice, these statistics are startling. They suggest that\nmost Americans are not inclined to trust the messages coming out of the church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not to say that the church, in whatever stripe it claims,\nis useless. Rather, it is to say that the church and other religious groups are\nonly meaningful for those who are already<\/em> in them. A later graph makes\nthis clear, showing that most people think that religious leaders are doing a\ngood job of caring for those who are already under their care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\"Three-quarters<\/a>\n\n\n\n

The message of Americans to the church and other religious\nbodies seems to be, \u201cIt\u2019s fine for you to take care of those who find you\nmeaningful. However, we have no real interest in what you have to say in the\npublic square. In fact, we\u2019re fairly certain that we couldn\u2019t trust much of\nwhat you had to say even if you did say something.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This message is even starker when controlled for political affiliation.\nThose who identify with the Democratic Party, which means that they lean to the\nleft politically in Pew\u2019s estimation, are far less trusting of what religious\nleaders have to offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\"Republicans<\/a>\n\n\n\n

This statistic should be a matter of significant concern,\nespecially for leaders in Mainline Protestantism who are banking on capturing\nthe cultural zeitgeist of the late 2010s by throwing their support behind more liberal\nand progressive causes. Some of the very groups that they have targeted,\nincluding the police and military, retain a higher trust level amongst the\nAmerican populace than religious bodies do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, it seems that Mainline Protestants as a whole are\na bit less optimistic about their own trustworthiness than their Evangelical\npeers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\"Frequent<\/a>\n\n\n\n

This chart has a great deal to break down in it, but for the\nsake of this article, the chief items have to deal with the consistently lower\nscores the Mainline Protestants give religious leaders compared to Evangelical\nProtestants. It is difficult to be a credible witness to those in the public\nsquare when those inside the organization are uncertain about their leaders\u2019 own\ncredibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not to suggest that Mainline Protestants need to\nabandon their calls for justice. To be a witness for Jesus Christ in the public\nsquare is not always to be popular. It also is to publicly care for the \u201cleast\nof these.\u201d The racial breakdown on who most trusts police makes it clear that overall\ntrust level belies a serious difference for how different groups of Americans\nexperience the police as leaders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\"Large<\/a>\n\n\n\n

The church should address this. However, the overall\nthinking of the American people related to religious leaders suggests that the\nchurch needs to be wise in its strategy. When those who are relatively less\ntrusted mount a public attack on those who are relatively more trusted, it is\nnot likely to win public support or political action. This is especially true\nif those within the church are split on whether to trust their leaders\u2019 own\nactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were different approaches that the biblical prophets\nused to share their message in the public square. Some, like Ezekiel, used\nover-the-top object lessons to garner attention, some, like Amos, burst on the\nscene and declared a wildly unpopular message in a politically fraught place,\nand some, like Isaiah, advised the king as part of the royal court. Each found\na way to speak God\u2019s word in a way that conveyed it with power and called its\nlisteners to take notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the context the church finds itself in today vis-\u00e0-vis\nthe trust of the American people, it must consider how it can speak\nprophetically such that people can recognize the authenticity and\ntrustworthiness of its voice. Then, like those who heard the prophets, it will\nbe up to them to decide how they will respond. At least, though, they will not\nbe able to dismiss the message because they think it comes from a basically untrustworthy\nmessenger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Religious leaders are not garnering high levels of trust among Americans. This requires them to think carefully about how they will participate in the public square. A rethinking of what it means to be “prophetic” is in order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Public Trust and the Prophet\n\nReligious leaders are not garnering high levels of trust among Americans. This requires them to think carefully about how they will participate in the public square. A rethinking of what it means to be \"prophetic\" is in order.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16,22,7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church","category-mainline-protestantism","category-statistics","category-usa","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8UNUk-co","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/markteasdale.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/king_curtis.jpg?fit=500%2C280&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markteasdale.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markteasdale.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markteasdale.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markteasdale.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markteasdale.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/markteasdale.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":770,"href":"https:\/\/markteasdale.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions\/770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markteasdale.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markteasdale.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markteasdale.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markteasdale.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}