Southern Evangelicals And Torture: Who Would Jesus Torture

[tannybogus]

If you want to know why I cannot bring myself to call the base of the Republican party Christians, and instead use the term Christianist, a new poll helps explain why:

A new poll released Thursday (Sept. 11) finds that nearly six in 10 white Southern evangelicals believe torture is justified, but their views can shift when they consider the Christian principle of the golden rule.

The poll, commissioned by Faith in Public Life and Mercer University, found that 57 percent of respondents said torture can be often or sometimes justified to gain important information from suspected terrorists. Thirty-eight percent said it was never or rarely justified.
Southern evangelicals are therefore the mainstay of the torture regime in this country. The only point at which they even balk at torturing people who haven't been subject to minimal due process is when they are reminded that this could come back to hurt Americans. The idea that torture is immoral in itself seems alien to a majority of the millions who lined up to see Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ. Since the South was built on torture-slavery, this is not that historically surprising. Many ancestors of today's Christianists tortured African-Americans routinely. But the extent of Southern evangelicals support for violating one of the core moral absolutes of Christianity is striking.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/southern-evange.html

They would probably put Jesus in Gitmo!
:yoiks:

[firedupdem]

1. A lot of them are at KKK meetings on Saturday night and sit in

church on Sunday morning. Idiots!

[Bob Dobbs]

2. Fundamentalists are not Christian.

The voices in their heads are Satan.

[angrycarpenter]

3. They want a holy war.

Zealots love the idea of god approved violence. I wish the Bible had just been a few pages long for the sake of clarity. I can boil it down to three words "Jesus said love". Anything else is just rationalization for holy horror.

I live in the south. There is a lot of truth to this poll. Any preacher who would try to teach the true core of Jesus' teaching would find himself without followers. There is something in the southern mind that makes us act like a mob even in small groups.

[OwnedByFerrets]

4. US?

I am not mob oriented and live in the deep south of the south. Please be a little more careful with generalities.:)

[leeroysphitz]

5. Jesus would detain and torture every single BROWN mother fucker he ever came across .

Including himself and his mother(and his girlfriend and father and all of his disciples and followers and countrymen and early converts...).

[tannybogus]

6. Excuse me?? What point am I missing??? Sarcasm? nt

[Cell Whitman]

7. must be sarcasm

must be.

[BlooInBloo]

8. It's hard to find people less christian than christians.

[Cell Whitman]

9. tannybogus, thanks for the important post.

Have to say I am not surprised by the results.

One thing I do when I get one of those lying emails from my "Christian" friends is to send them the debunk and ask them to cc me on the correction when they send it out to all the people they sent the original lie. I tell them, "I am sure, as a Christian, you would not want to be party to spreading lies." I have actually had them cc me on the corrections a couple times.

I think someone, not Obama but surrogate, should broach the subject of Palin lying and what it is doing to her everlasting soul - it is sin.

[silverweb]

10. "I like your Christ."

"I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." ~Mahatma Gandhi

All too true.