When it Comes to Honesty and Ethics, Only a Third of Young People Trust Clergy Members

Actually, I think the far more interesting point is that only 50% of those 55+ trust the clergy. Those are the people who would have grown up in far more religious times, and yet even they don’t really trust the clergy.

Are you honestly saying that close to 30% of people 18-34 years old have been raped by clergy? Certainly, sexual abuse and coverups by clergy (or anyone else) is a problem, but this is ridiculous. There are plenty of areas where religion can be criticised without resorting to extremely exaggerated statistics that just make you look like you have an axe to grind.

I’m with you. My brain has encouraged me to do a lot of stupid shit.

Yeah i’d say those numbers are pretty close. Besides…ANY number of child abuse and coverups by clergy should mean 0% should be trusted. Just a fact. It’s institutionalized.

I blame it on Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, et al. They were determined to intertwine religion into politics, and I think that was a big mistake. I think that the fundamentalists and the evangelicals thrive on telling you that “You must believe X” and people get rather tired of that. I was born in 1970, brought up in small rural churchs, and war really always taught that religion was basically a moral guide, at least in that mode. It informed us to make our own decisions. That type of religion seems to be fading for the fire and brimstone fundamentalist kind.

If we’re realistic, we’ll recognize there is more than one thing involved in “trustworthiness”. It isn’t just basic integrity. The word has different definitions, depending on who’s in power.

Most of the groups in the above lists have quiet burdens which supersede behaving honorably with the rest of us. They aren’t moral obligations, but some of those people think of them that way.

Have you ever been shocked when a doctor, teacher, banker or someone else sells you out in favor of protecting a colleague? When I was young, that was one of the things that wiped out my idealism and forced me into the real world.

There were many times when supposedly decent people left me with two handfuls of, uh, something I didn’t want on my hands. When they had to choose between carrying out their professional obligations to patients, students, customers, et al, they defended colleagues who were in the wrong.

Standing up to one’s professional colleagues takes courage, and the consequences can be serious. If you don’t believe that, rent the movie “Serpico”. It’s fact-based.

I believe most people who go to nursing school have the best intentions. However, some of the things that happen when a nurse is burning out can be scary.

There’s also a problem of workplace politics. I once asked a clinic nurse for the name of a bad doctor who had behaved violently with me (needless to say, the doctor didn’t identify himself). The nurse said nothing. She just looked at me with one of those disturbing facial expressions which said she wasn’t going to risk trouble by giving me information I could use to file a complaint.

Taking sides with a patient against a doctor could have cost that nurse her job, and could have also made trouble for her if she tried to go to work in another medical facility.

I’ve read that American Protestantism may have a bigger abuse problem than Catholicism. The thing is, a lot of independent churches have no oversight, and so covering things up is much easier for those in charge. They even encourage members to deal with these issues internally and not to involve law enforcement. I can fully believe this to be the case, and if the victims manage to escape their faith and report what’s happened, there may be a huge scandal to come in the next few years.

Not arguing that they should be trusted, but that is super unlikely… the largest percent that has been Catholic in the US is 28%, and I’m betting many of those have rarely gone to church. The clergy are not all rapists – it just doesn’t work that way, we’d have heard about it a long time ago if they were. Saying that a whole-number percent of Americans have been raped by the clergy even is stretching it.

No scientists included in the list of professions?

You’ve completely missed the point I was making.

No I did not.

I suspect a lot of the little independent preachers rape/molest girls and women more often than boys, too, given the way purity and submission are woven into those particular faiths. And we, as a society, just don’t get as horrified by the rape of women and girls as we do boys- it’s normalized, to an extent.

Now, part of that is pretending it doesn’t happen to boys at all, which is no good. But once it is shown to have occurred the condemnation of the abuser(s) is swift and harsh. Men who have been shown to have raped girls and women are treated much more ambivalently, and their victims are blamed in the standard rape culture ways even when the girls are only 10 and 11 years old.

“Religious leaders are the ones who have led the charge against marriage equality. They’re the ones who vote Republican.”

Except for, y’know, the many religious leaders who don’t vote Republican. Such as those who are also part of an ethnic minority. Or those who are Catholic. Or those who don’t believe in a literal Bible. Or those who are, uh, Jewish.

In those cases, the problem of shuffling around the serial offender is taken care of by the decentralized nature of the denomination, which requires no cooperation from higher ups because they don’t exist.

I’ve read about the Hephzibah House. That’s just … wrong. I can’t believe anyone would send their children to such a place, or that the state would fund it! For fuck’s sake, the last thing you want to do to an abused child is abuse her more!

I understand it isn’t a Catholic only thing, but 30% is still far too high of a statistic there.

Old hippies, who remember incidents like the Chicago Democratic convention?

Bit worried that less than 80% of people don’t trust doctors! Then again, many Christians say ‘PUT YOUR FAITH IN THA LORDY’ and then go to the doctors and claim God made them better I mean ‘fgs’ guys.
And only 5% of republicans trust members of Congress! If they bothered to get off of their asses and vote, they could have who they want in office. Then again, creationists.
I think Matt Dillahunty would make a good Texan representative, most secular Atheists — or people with a half decent education would vote for him.
As a final not, does anyone know what this font’s called? It’s nice.

Welcome aboard the good ship Mischief Maker.