Here's a shocker: a new Pew poll finds that Christians support torture more than non-believers do. What's more, Evangelicals are more pro-torture than white mainline Protestants and white non-Hispanic Catholics -- but that Catholics and Evangelicals are more pro-torture than average Americans.
And get this: the more often you go to church, the more pro-torture you're likely to be!
What on earth are these Christians hearing at church?! Very sad indeed.
UPDATE: Mercy! This thread attracted gobs of comments overnight. Having read through most of them, I wish to associate myself with this one from Jon W., commenting on the various remarks:
I'm sorry, but I'm getting just a little nauseous, here. I don't like defending the Evangelical church. I'm a Wheaton grad who became Catholic because the Evangelicals drifted about like chihuahuas in a dinghy and were philosophically and doctrinally unserious, but, holy cow: stop the self-righteous moral masturbation already.Yeah, the Evangelicals have drunk some serious Republican Kool-Aid and are currently thrashing around as the cyanide works its way out of their system, but you do notice, don't you, that their moral stands are generally opposite those of the cultural powers-that-be, and all your moral stands are completely in accordance with the cultural powers-that-be?
They Evangelicals are some of the only ones holding a traditional moral line on so many issues, and they're constantly being told that their views are patriarchal, retrogressive, racist, homophobic, bigoted, oppressive, repressive, and just, plain, gob-smackingly dumb.
But they are! you protest. The ancient orders and traditional ways of life were nothing but one long record of whips and chains and wicked, abusive fathers and hateful, spiteful mothers and now we have achieved the magical Liberal fairyland of goodness.
Bull. The Evangelicals are trying to defend ways of life that nurtured millions of people for thousands of years and take seriously a moral order that produced great men and women, great art, solid, loving people devoted to Christ, to God, and to the just and right. And the Republicans were the only party that didn't spit in their faces every chance they got. (Only sometimes.) Is it any wonder they feel a loyalty?
It's stupid. I agree. The Evangelicals have enabled one of the most disastrous presidential administrations ever and are seriously implicated in some very unserious positions towards markets, capitalism, and apparently torture, too. But if hyper-social-individualists with an antipathy towards Western Christian civilization and a need to be "revolutionaries" were not continually trying to take a steaming crap on everything Evangelicals have always held dear they might find Evangelicals giving them an ear when they tried to explain to the Evangelicals that their traditional ways of taking care of the poor were inadequate (if indeed they were), or that they needed to treat prisoners as true subjects of human rights.
This is making me sick. Try taking a moral position that's not rubber-stamped by either the university or the Academy (AMPAS), and see how you like it.
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Hi Gwen,
Don't sweat the atheist thing, I was just being nitpicky.
Are you Eastern Orthodox? I was once. I know all about the differences between the literalist Protestant interpretion versus the Orthodox patristic exegesis. My responses were mostly aimed at the literalist interpretation, since that one is the most prevalent in the US, as well as most relevant to the discussion. I apologize for any misunderstanding on that part.
The "Apostolic tradition", while it certainly has more going for it than the Protestant, offers no reason to see it as absolute and infallible. You're correct, the bible is the product of Orthodox tradition, but who made Orthodox tradition? MAN made Orthodox tradition. To expose the bible for what it is, is to expose the men who invented it--the early apostolic church--for what they were: fallible, confused, violent, hungry for power, sometimes lofty and sublime, mostly boring.
You say: "the source of my religion is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as witnessed by his apostles and in successive generations by His Church and as made present to all of us here and now by the work of God the Holy Spirit." That's just an opinion, a speculation, but you state it as if it were an undeniable fact. If it were a fact, there'd be no reason to refer to it as faith. Faith is believing in that which you cannot prove. There is no objective evidence of the virgin birth, resurrection, ascension, nothing that would stand-up in a real court, except maybe the phony "court" of Lee Strobel, but I digress.
Nobody is under any moral obligation to believe the dogmas of the church, just because the church says so, just as no one is obligated to believe the bible, just because "the bible says so". "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." The church has not provided that evidence.
To be sure, the church has invented some beautiful iconography, solemn liturgies, uplifting homilies, and even some insightful readings of the bible. But dazzling as it all can be, none of it proves anything about the resurrection, the healing power of relics, and all the other hokem the church has dreamt up over the centuries.
As far as the bible goes, you'd think the early apostles could have come up with a more logically coherent form of scripture. If the bible, with all its contradictions, cruelties, injustices and absurdities is the best that apostolic tradition could come up with, then it doesn't say much for apostolic tradition.
Orthodox/Apostolic exegesis, with some exceptions, is more or less the same method as the Protestants'. The bible is to be read in its most plain, literal meaning. The verses I cited above cannot be made "better" by interpreting them "in light of apostolic tradition", "liturgically", "sacramentally", or anything like that. Deuteronomy 13, for example, means what it says: to kill unbelievers; no honest apostolic scholar is going to deny that.
Just because "the majority" of Christians read the bible in this manner doesn't necessarily prove it to be right. The bible still says what it says, and you can't get away from that.
I hope all goes well for you, Gwen.
CG
"Your Name" @ 12:02 PM, May 1:
His point is probably that there is so much hatered toward Christians that they will turn desperately to anyone who claims to be on their side.
"Desperately"? Eighty percent of the American public describe themselves as "Christians," we atheists only make up about thirteen percent. Certainly, outnumbering us six-to-one, you all can not be so consumed by fear that you have entirely thrown off any semblance of moral sensibility and descended to complete depravity:
Therefore, they end up supporting someone like Adolf Hitler or George Bush.
I refuse to accept voting for a Hitler as a desperate act of fear. It was instead the act of a mob of bullies, thugs, moral monsters who knew and rejoiced that they had the power of a majority and took the worst possible advantage of the opportunities for self-indulgent cruelty which that fact afforded.
You have to understand that Christ IS a FACT to a Christian. People forget God is supernatural....people believe someone studies real hard, gathers clues, and makes a best guess.
If you asked God right now...if Jesus Christ really is the one who will save me then I will follow him....well, it become a fact to you as well. God puts that fact into your mind to the point where it is more a fact than your own name. Thats why people who were burned alive did not deny Christ. You see, a real Christian would die for that--not blown themselves and others up for it. A real Christin cannot un-believe. I say a real Christian..not one professing to be for his own reasons.
Also, waterboarding was devised to NOT torture people. I would do it but I understand the pressure the government has to protect the world. And if your so naive as to think that democrats care that we poured water over 3 serial killers heads(one who planned 911 and chopped off someones head on the internet) than I feel sorry you. Democrats dont seem to care that a babies head is crushed by forceps---so dont think for a minute this is not about politics--the need to paint your opposition as evil. Please dont tell me your that stupid.
People are like drones spewing out the party line. No one uses actual wisdom or unbias thinking. Its the "world according to my own personal baseball team". One side says safe..the other says out..when they have both witnessed the same play. Very few want to actually know the truth. They simply want the truth to be what they want it to be. Atheists dont want there to be a God but all the wishing in the world is not gonna destroy the one who created them. They can make their snide remarks in this world as if that somehow will achieve something but they will stand before God speechless in the end.
So dont look for another clue because you dont have a clue. if you did you would see the glory of God through the Universe he has made. Just tear down that wall of arrogance and ask God to give you the truth--that you sincerely want his Love --and it will be Game Over. What...your afraid? Dont be.... Christianity is not what you thought it was and Christ is fulfillment of everything you never saw in a person. Yes...the world will now hate you and make fun of you but when the world is gone..you will be left standing.
I meant NOT do it on the waterboarding thing in my last post
Why is this such a shocker? I have always found white evangelical Christians to be among the most evil-minded people you will ever meet. Not all of them obviously, but as a group, they are generally racist and are eager to support any war that kills brown people. The USA executed Japanese soldiers for waterboarding in WWII. While I don't support the death penalty, I consider anyone that participated in waterboarding to be a war criminal, and anyone that supports the actions of these war criminals are traitors to humanity.
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