jakerasmussen.com

As I sit at a new coffee house, Coffee Pointe, on Speedway and Tucson Blvd I am making my rounds on the blogs that be.  I came across this one below from Ed Stetzer’s Blog.  I don’t find it all that shocking that Americans don’t find a lot of confidence in organized religion.  But, I can’t help but to ask myself, why is it so low?

What can we as a church do to bolster confidence in the American people and the people around the world?  It has taken a long time to get where we are today and I don’t think it would take that long for the confidence to rise.  If those who say they have been transformed because of Jesus start living like it then confidence would HAVE to go up.

From the Foster Letter (see www.garydfoster.com)

The 2008 Harris Poll of American leadership confidence has measured the confidence finds 15 of the 16 items listed show a fall in confidence from ’07. They are leadership in medicine down from 35% to 28%, the White House down 22% to 15% and small business leaders from 54% to 47%,. Wall Street, major educational institutions, the courts and the justice systems also saw significant declines.

The 6 institutions enjoying the highest confidence of Americans are:

The military (51%); Small business (47%); Major educational institutions (32%); Medicine (28%); Organized religion (25%): The Supreme Court (25%).

The lowest levels of confidence are in:

The Congress (8%);
The press (10%);
Organized labor (11%);
Wall Street (11%);
Major companies (14%).

(Pastors Weekly Briefing 3/7/08, cited in the Foster Letter).