Bible Thumping Torture Lovers?
By Pat Racimora on May 2, 2009 at 11:05 AM in Christianity, Current Affairs, Religion, Torture
“Church Goers Like Torture More!”
“The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists.”
“Support for terror suspect torture differs among the faithful.”
That’s what the headlines blare, based on a recent survey conducted by the research arm of the prestigious Pew Charitable Trust.
To briskly summarize, frequent churchgoers and White evangelicals, followed fairly closely by White non-Hispanic Catholics approve of the use of torture more than do mainstream Protestants, those unaffiliated with any religion, and non-churchgoers.
If we stop right here and try to figure out why these results are as they are (setting aside for the moment Eastan McNeal’s recent excellent post about the survey’s methodology), the mind runs happily amok with what feels like obvious reasons. My friends and I came up with a few:
“Maybe the Bible-thumping “torture-lovers” see certainty and intolerance as two sides of the same coin. It’s easier to dehumanize people who exhibit the attributes that are the object of the intolerance.”
“God and Country are one in the same to religious fundamentalists, so ‘not country’ is heathen and the welfare of such people is not any concern.”
“If you’re a fundamentalist of any religion (or ism) there is pure unadulterated and unquestioned Truth. Once you’ve got that on your side you no longer need to question things as much.”
“Anything designated as evil does not need to be treated as a human.”
“The more conservative active church goers are more likely to have a good/evil, black/white, us/them, heaven/hell, saved/damned mindset. Compassion can then be eliminated towards those on the wrong side of the comparisons.”
But, I dared to look a little deeper at some other Pew survey work. It turns out that almost 50% of Americans believe that torture is acceptable “often” or “sometimes,” and that view has not changed significantly over the last couple of years. Republicans and Independents approve of torture more than do Democrats. Differences among men and women are small, as are differences regarding age and educational level. However a greater number of older people (33%) than younger people (23%) say torture should never be used. (Go seniors!)
But here is the bottom line. In the Pew survey, plenty of Democrats, mainstream Protestants, infrequent churchgoers, and religiously unaffiliated people DO believe torture is acceptable, and plenty of Evangelical Christians, non-Hispanic Catholics and frequent churchgoers are NOT in favor of torture. See the data for yourselves:
So, there is statistical significance and there is practical significance. In very practical terms, that means that if you meet up with an Evangelical Christian who attends church frequently or a Unitarian who attends services once a year, you might go with the probabilities and guess their view on torture correctly. And you will also be wrong often enough.
Your take?
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