Did Rick Warren Do Enough to Stop Torture?

A religious conservative being selectively outraged?? Couldn't be. If there were an anti torture constituency then Warren and other Christian leaders would have been all over it.

No anti-torture constituency? Sure there is!

Of course, they're not in his pews.

Rick Warren sounds kind of pathetic here.

It's time we tossed the whole lot overboard. Rich People, Politicians, Pastors of Mega Churches, TV Experts, Pundits, Media collaborators and anyone whole continues to make excuses and do their bidding. We the people of the United States continue to elect and support a group of egomaniacs totally unsuitable and incompetent to provide leadership at a time of global peril. Rick Warren is just another one in a long line of dishonest attention seeking media hounds who hides behind his title of Pastor. He claims he's not a policy person. He's fully immersed in policy. That's what the faith based initiatives were all about. Getting religious people involved in policy. Now that there's an issue that requires actual critique of the government, he decides he doesn't know anything about policy. Please stop providing a forum for Rick Warren and his like until they come clean about their real agendas.

Of course there should be "soul-searching going on among religious conservatives on this issue -- especially now that it's become clear that the administration they supporpted authorized, layed the groundwork for, and in some cases, directly encouraged torture?" I just read in Jerome's commentary on Isaiah 6 that the reason that the prophet Isaiah did not see a vision of the Lord until the year that King Uzziah died, and that Isaiah regarded himself as a man of unclean lips, living in the midst of a people of unclean lips, is that they cowardly failed to denounce the impiety of King Uzziah. Isaiah repented, went forward as a true prophet of God, and paid the ultimate price by being martyered (he was sawn in two). How many of us guilty bystanders are willing to do the same?

I would like to think that Warren was being sincere when he said that he was 'totally against torture'.

But his actions lead me to believe otherwise.

From the beginning, the so called "war on terror" had a decidedly anti-Muslim bent, and because of this, evangelicals not only tolerated, but tacitly approved said war, including some of its excesses. After all, some of Pres. Duh's phraseology, e.g. "axis of evil", "evildoers", "Operation Infinite Justice"(the original name of the Afghanistan war) wasn't exactly intended to rally the secular community, was it?

Not only that, but the evangelicals worked actively to secure Duh's reelection in 2004 notwithstanding the fact that torture allegations had already surfaced.

There will be no soul-searching as Mr. Waldman suggests, because anyone who condones torture, regardless of the reason, has no soul to search. Such people have already sold their soul for earthly ends.