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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNo, American Christians Should Not Support Torture - ThinkProgress
No, American Christians Should Not Support Tortureby 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 CIAs use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques on prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay and other prisons. The summary described the agencys 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 CIAs 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 CIAs techniques as torture, and most 59 percent thought the agencys 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 CIAs 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 Christs 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 CIAs techniques werent 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
NoJusticeNoPeace
(5,018 posts)1. So the overwhelming majority of so called American Christians are good with torture
This does not surprise anyone, I hope.
AuntPatsy
(9,904 posts)2. K & R
choie
(4,102 posts)3. Or excuse it
N/t