In June of this year in America, I offered the concept of cosmopolitanism as an important corrective to the nationalistic tendencies that are so prevalent in today’s political and social discourse. Rather than look at our country’s boundaries as the limit of Christian justice or mercy, I proposed that thinking of ourselves as citizens of the world is a better way to face climate change, massive migration and constantly erupting movements to war.

In the interest of providing an alternative to the aggressive tone so frequently found in contemporary debate, I propose another term, “social trust,” as foundational for a more stable and reconciled polity, which would promote relationality rather than alienation. Recently, the widespread collapse of social trust has led to a summons to work for its restoration in a variety of significant institutions. 

I first began to recognize the importance of social trust when I listened to remarks by Angela Merkel when she stepped down in 2021 after 16 years of leadership as German chancellor. She awakened in me an appreciation for the importance of social trust in daily exchanges in varying social institutions. Her remarks were brief but noteworthy. She declared, “The most important capital for politics is trust.” She added:

Our democracy thrives on both our ability to engage in critical debate and to self-correct. It thrives on the constant balancing of interests and on mutual respect. It thrives on solidarity and trust—including trust in facts—and it thrives on the fact that protest must arise wherever scientific findings are denied and conspiracy theories and hate speech are spread.

Her comments were heard worldwide. They resonated especially well with those who were concerned about particular institutions that were losing their credibility. 

The absence of social trust

The recognition of the importance of social trust had also been made earlier in Francis Fukuyama’s 1995 book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. A few months after its publication, Fukuyama wrote in The Atlantic that “[t]rust is the single most important commodity that will determine the fate of a society.”

Trust also has a transactional element. As Kenneth Arrow noted 50 years ago, “Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over a period of time.” More recently, in their study “Trust,” the economists Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser wrote, “Trust is a fundamental element of social capital—a key contributor to sustaining well-being outcomes.” 

Trust is then the fundamental resource that provides the stability, development and sustainability of any institution. Without it, the institution does not function; with it, it can thrive. 

Still, as we become aware of the necessity of trust, we are also witnessing its collapse across a wide variety of social institutions. So evident and problematic are these developments that the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Daedalus, recognized recently its diminishment by dedicating an entire issue to the topic, titled “Institutions, Experts and the Loss of Trust.”

Distrust and the church

One can argue that the first institution to suffer a serious loss of trust in our current milieu was the Catholic Church itself. The sexual abuse scandal was shocking to almost everyone, not only because of the horrific nature of the crimes but also due to the callous disregard of the hierarchy, which failed to address matters of accountability and reform in light of the scandal. In many instances, it was not until the legal arm of state governments adjudicated and published the crimes committed that some church leaders finally began to restore order in the church. By then, however, many members had not only lost their respect for the church but had also disavowed any trust in it. 

It is hard to grasp the profundity of this loss of trust. After all, among all social institutions, the church was the one that claimed an ability to know and express moral teachings, both locally and universally. That the matter was about sexual activity was particularly problematic, inasmuch as church teachings on lesser sexual matters like masturbation and contraception were seen as so relentlessly rigid. The violence of the abuse scandal, coupled with the mendacious cover-ups, undermined the social trust in a global institution that purportedly served as a moral compass for societies. 

Of course, many might recognize the diminishment of the church’s role as not entirely a bad thing; that diminishment might have actually served as an important moral corrective. Still, the shift arose not because of any thoughtful or sustained deliberation but rather as an effect of social distrust. 

The rise of populism

Social distrust spread rapidly elsewhere. The rise of populism in the United States, Brazil, India, Hungary and elsewhere led to the palpable rejection of governments’ ordinary ways of proceeding; this helped launch a second wave of social distrust. 

As populism challenged governmental accountability and reliability, its distrust of government spread to distrust of many media outlets. What was once considered the source of reliable information was seen as less so. Indeed, the “news” took a hit through both the unchecked proliferation of fake news and the politicization of actual news. Any confidence that what we see is in print is real has been greatly diminished.

When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in 2020, health officials had to contend not only with the challenge of fighting the coronavirus but also with those who doubted the vaccines and quarantines. Rather than accepting the credibility of both of these life-saving policies, it seemed that those who actively sought to challenge these medical strategies recognized that seeding social distrust was to their advantage. Of course, many still recognize the credibility of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health services, but the competing claims of those agencies and those of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. demonstrated the gap created by social distrust. 

Only weeks after Covid broke out, the nearly 10-minute-long murder of George Floyd in broad daylight by police officers allowed white America to see what Black people and other people of color knew too well: Police protection was often experienced in America differently according to racial differences. If Black lives do matter, then the social institution of public safety needs more scrutiny—a scrutiny that leads to prudential reforms and therein to a restoration of social trust. But many of those reforms have not yet materialized.

Instead, the incredible brutality of today’s ICE raids only further alienates us from social trust in police activity. One only sees in these violent abductions a form of governmental agency that we have never before witnessed, and the repercussions these raids will have on those social institutions that are preserving law and order are frightening.

We have also seen bold attempts by a variety of forces to discredit universities. The impact of these attempts can be severe, affecting everything from financial security to intellectual freedom. It is precisely by engaging social trust that many of these universities now under threat are fighting back. Their recognition of the need to foster social trust helps us to see how much we need to attend to it.

As Fukuyama, Merkel, Arrow, Ortiz-Ospino and Roser have noted, to overlook social trust is to overlook one’s constituents. In the transactional nature of social trust, institutions and their leaders depend on transparent partnering.

Summoning trust

In Daedalus, the scholar Sheila Jasanoff argues in “The Discontents of Truth & Trust in 21st Century America” for pathways to better practices that could garner social trust. Jasanoff, the Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Harvard University, critiques the singularity of the argument that “science speaks for itself,” whether on the effectiveness of masks, vaccines or quarantines. 

Jasanoff contended that “insisting on the superior authority of science without attending to the politics of reason and persuasion will not restore trust in either knowledge or power.” She argued instead that “trust can be regained with more inclusive processes for framing policy questions, greater attentiveness to dissenting voices and minority views, and more humility in admitting where science falls short and policy decisions must rest on prudence and concern for the vulnerable.”

In the same journal, the noted American sociologist of religion Robert Wuthnow wrote “Religion, Democracy & the Task of Restoring Trust.” He looked at religious organizations and examined “the documented alienation induced by religious leaders who align themselves with political candidates and policies, especially on the right.” Wuthnow wonders whether “religious leaders seeking to curb what they regard as secularity by engaging in partisan politics may be harming rather than strengthening their own institutions.” Wuthnow is even more concerned with religious leaders’ participation in the politicization of trust, or as columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. has termed it, “the weaponization of mistrust.” 

Wuthnow writes:

The more pressing question is whether religion, especially when it is politically weaponized, encourages or discourages trust in other institutions: science, medicine, higher education, government, the media? The history of religion in this regard is quite mixed, as debates about the teaching of evolution, faith healing and scientific medicine, and antivaccination crusades have shown.

He concludes: “In the current ‘post-truth’ context, in which any statement can be called ‘fake news’—or denied having been uttered at all—distrust has become a political weapon wielded for partisan purposes, including by religious leaders.”

These writers are inviting us to address the distrust and to see how to counter claims by actual engagement. We must take the distrust seriously. Advocating for those most alienated by social distrust begins the process of repairing the trust needed to function as a just and hospitable society.

Positive signs

One example that I found enormously helpful was the action taken by Pope Leo’s first episcopal appointment in the United States, Bishop Michael Pham, who encouraged his priests in San Diego to go to the courts as witnesses to proceedings against some immigrants detained by ICE. By serving as witnesses to the immigrants’ proceedings, the clergy are seen as defenders of the truth and help prompt our courts to accountably adjudicate. Transparency helps flip social distrust.

Similarly, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, effectively promoted social trust when he lamented the great harm the “Big Beautiful Bill” would cause, writing that “the final version of the bill includes unconscionable cuts to healthcare and food assistance, tax cuts that increase inequality, immigration provisions that harm families and children, and cuts to programs that protect God’s creation. The bill, as passed, will cause the greatest harm to those who are especially vulnerable in our society.” 

Another good example of working to restore social trust can be found in Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez’s calls for reform of immigration law; Another has been the work of the indomitable Brian Strassburger, S.J., and William Critchley-Menor, S.J., whose account of witnessing the work of ICE and its courts in Texas was published in America. In Florida, Archbishop Thomas Wenski brought attention to the plight of those in “Alligator Alcatraz.” In each of these cases, we see a prompt to society to heed the injustices brought on the vulnerable and therein to embrace and promote social trust. 

We need to recognize the importance of the body politic and the social trust that allows it to advance. Angela Merkel’s own words bear repetition: “Our democracy thrives on both our ability to engage in critical debate and to self-correct. It thrives on the constant balancing of interests and on mutual respect. It thrives on solidarity and trust.” At this point in our history, we must work to restore that trust, first by protecting those most harmed by its loss and then by addressing not only the cause of the distrust but also the ways we can restore the trust we need. 

James F. Keenan, S.J., a moral theologian, is the Canisius Professor at Boston College.