Christians and torture shocker

Here's a shocker: a new Pew poll finds that Christians support torture more than non-believers do. What's more, Evangelicals are more pro-torture than white mainline Protestants and white non-Hispanic Catholics -- but that Catholics and Evangelicals are more pro-torture than average Americans.

And get this: the more often you go to church, the more pro-torture you're likely to be!

What on earth are these Christians hearing at church?! Very sad indeed.

UPDATE: Mercy! This thread attracted gobs of comments overnight. Having read through most of them, I wish to associate myself with this one from Jon W., commenting on the various remarks:

I'm sorry, but I'm getting just a little nauseous, here. I don't like defending the Evangelical church. I'm a Wheaton grad who became Catholic because the Evangelicals drifted about like chihuahuas in a dinghy and were philosophically and doctrinally unserious, but, holy cow: stop the self-righteous moral masturbation already.

Yeah, the Evangelicals have drunk some serious Republican Kool-Aid and are currently thrashing around as the cyanide works its way out of their system, but you do notice, don't you, that their moral stands are generally opposite those of the cultural powers-that-be, and all your moral stands are completely in accordance with the cultural powers-that-be?

They Evangelicals are some of the only ones holding a traditional moral line on so many issues, and they're constantly being told that their views are patriarchal, retrogressive, racist, homophobic, bigoted, oppressive, repressive, and just, plain, gob-smackingly dumb.

But they are! you protest. The ancient orders and traditional ways of life were nothing but one long record of whips and chains and wicked, abusive fathers and hateful, spiteful mothers and now we have achieved the magical Liberal fairyland of goodness.

Bull. The Evangelicals are trying to defend ways of life that nurtured millions of people for thousands of years and take seriously a moral order that produced great men and women, great art, solid, loving people devoted to Christ, to God, and to the just and right. And the Republicans were the only party that didn't spit in their faces every chance they got. (Only sometimes.) Is it any wonder they feel a loyalty?

It's stupid. I agree. The Evangelicals have enabled one of the most disastrous presidential administrations ever and are seriously implicated in some very unserious positions towards markets, capitalism, and apparently torture, too. But if hyper-social-individualists with an antipathy towards Western Christian civilization and a need to be "revolutionaries" were not continually trying to take a steaming crap on everything Evangelicals have always held dear they might find Evangelicals giving them an ear when they tried to explain to the Evangelicals that their traditional ways of taking care of the poor were inadequate (if indeed they were), or that they needed to treat prisoners as true subjects of human rights.

This is making me sick. Try taking a moral position that's not rubber-stamped by either the university or the Academy (AMPAS), and see how you like it.

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