I spent the afternoon talking with a group of senior students at Luther Seminary about secularism and ministry. We're reading Charles Taylor's A Secular Age together and talking about how we got to be the sort of society we are, where it is just as likely that people don't believe in God as do. And I was making the argument that many critiques of Christianity held by those who reject faith are critiques I also hold, and the actual gap between our way of thinking faith and life is not so broad, aside from the fact that they are being critical outside and I'm being critical inside. Okay, that is true to some extent. But reading through the comments on blogs responding to the Pew survey showing church-going correlates with the highest support for torture makes me reel at how grossly Christianity is mis-understood, or at least what an in-credible version of this faith is out there. Come on, pastors and theologians! We've got so much work to do to speak wisely and clearly about this life-giving tradition. Here's how the post on The Atlantic's blog starts (note the title--ugh!):
Apr 30 2009, 2:29 pm
Pew: Church-Goers Like Torture More
They were told not to damage the grass of the earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were allowed to torture them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torture was like the torture of a scorpion when it stings someone. -Revelation 9:4,5, NRSV
According to a new study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, those who attend church at least weekly are more prone to say that torture is justifiable. Suffice it to say that, in the eyes of those who support the use of torture, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Abu Zubaydah do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.
Here are some choice quotes from the blog, The Friendly Atheist (written by the author of I Sold My Soul on Ebay)
What allows them to accept torture is that, as insular groups, they have created a culture of the ‘other’. It’s the same sort of culture that allows any group to dehumanize another.
It’s what allowed the Imperial Japanese armed forces, the Third Reich and the Shankhill Butchers to do the things they did. Now, it doesn’t matter if non-christian non-whites are tortured, as they are not quite as human as ‘us’, you see?
Darwin's Dagger Says:
May 1st, 2009 at 9:00 am
The God they believe in couldn’t find any better way to offer salvation than to have himself tortured to death. With this kind of violence at the heart of their belief system, I’m not surprised that they think torture is OK.
Brooks Says:
May 1st, 2009 at 9:38 am
This isn’t the evidence of a fundamental difference between morals of theists and non-theists that same commentators are trying to make it. Take a look again at those numbers. They say that, roughly 40% of atheists, 50% of Catholics and mainline Protestants, and 60% of evangelicals, support torture. That’s hardly a huge difference. And given the sample sizes the statistical error alone is +-5%.
I think that’s a good point, but whether it’s a correlation or causation, I think it also disproves the claim that being a Christian will automatically make you more moral than the rest of society. As for why specifically those evangelicals would support torture, as already stated, I think it’s because they already have a warped sense of morality as it is. Most of them already believe that eternal torture in hell is perfectly justified although they may deny that it is eternal torture. They also believe that it’s ok for God to do whatever he wants because he’s God and I think many of them wish for a Christian theocracy where they get to rule the world. As for the question if they would allow other countries to do the same, I somehow doubt it. Most fundies consider themselves to be more human than anyone who disagrees with them and that anyone who defies their theology doesn’t deserve the same rights and privileges as them. So while they might think it’s justifiable for them to torture people, I doubt they’d let other people do it to them because they consider themselves to be more important and more deserving than the rest of society.
Okay, folks, this ought to really motivate us to 1) actually get serious about becoming the kind of people who love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us every week in church and 2) offering another version of Christianity in which Jesus' crucifixion was God's NO to torture, and our lives are not lived as 'better than thou' but 'servant of thou'. Because that version is not the loudest in our time. The headline is, 'Church-goers like torture more.'
Anon and peace,
Chris