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WillyT

(72,631 posts)
Fri Dec 19, 2014, 03:21 PM Dec 2014

No, American Christians Should Not Support Torture - ThinkProgress

No, American Christians Should Not Support Torture
by Jack Jenkins - ThinkProgress
Posted on December 17, 2014 at 4:28 pm Updated: December 19, 2014 at 1:07 pm

<snip>

Last Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a harrowing executive summary of a new report detailing the CIA’s use of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” on prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay and other prisons. The summary described the agency’s willingness to use brutal methods such as water-boarding, force-feeding, and sexual threats, and ultimately condemned such tactics as inhumane and ineffective for fighting the war on terror.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and other former staffers from the George W. Bush White House took to the airwaves to try and defend the policies, but many such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) quickly labeled the CIA’s methods as torture, and thus inhumane. But as Sarah Posner reported over at Religion Dispatches, a recent Washington Post/ABC poll showed that the majority of Americans would not classify the CIA’s techniques as torture, and most — 59 percent — thought the agency’s treatment detainees was justified. Posner lamented this fact, but also noted another unsettling trend: Christians polled were actually more likely than the general public to support torture.

“Just 39% of white evangelicals believe the CIA’s treatment of detainees amounted to torture, with 53% of white non-evangelical Protestants and 45% of white Catholics agreeing with that statement,” Posner writes. “Sixty nine percent of white evangelicals believe the CIA treatment was justified, compared to just 20% who said it was not … A full three-quarters (75%) of white non-evangelical Protestants outnumber the 22% of their brethren in saying CIA treatment was justified. White Catholics believe the treatment was justified by a 66-23% margin.”

These numbers are appalling, theologically repugnant, and frankly confusing. Christianity is a tradition whose savior, Jesus Christ, was arrested, wrongfully accused, and tortured — things the gospel stories make clear were gross mistreatments. Christ was also crucified, a form of capital punishment that was specifically designed to torture right up until the moment of death, with many ancient victims suffering for hours or days before succumbing to dehydration, asphyxiation, or cardiac arrest, among other stomach-turning ends.

In fact, Christians often wear a symbol of this torture, the cross, around their necks, supposedly as a reminder of the tragedy of Christ’s death — and phenomenal triumph that his resurrection represents.

And yet somehow, there are millions of Christians in the United States who are either willing to pretend that the CIA’s techniques weren’t torture, or hold that torture itself is justified within Christianity.
On the second point...

<snip>

More: http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/12/17/3604860/christians-shouldnt-torture/



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No, American Christians Should Not Support Torture - ThinkProgress (Original Post) WillyT Dec 2014 OP
So the overwhelming majority of so called American Christians are good with torture NoJusticeNoPeace Dec 2014 #1
K & R AuntPatsy Dec 2014 #2
Or excuse it choie Dec 2014 #3

NoJusticeNoPeace

(5,018 posts)
1. So the overwhelming majority of so called American Christians are good with torture
Fri Dec 19, 2014, 03:22 PM
Dec 2014

This does not surprise anyone, I hope.

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