Christianity gone wrong

It's an art form to write a good web headline and teaser that gets someone to click and read a story they might not otherwise think they have an interest in. The Washington Post has a great example: "How the Faithful Justify Torture," The more you go to church, the more you approve of torture.

The essay, by Professor Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, is interesting:

The more often you go to church, the more you approve of torture. This is a troubling finding of a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Shouldn't it be the opposite? After all, who would Jesus torture? Since Jesus wouldn't even let Peter use a sword and defend him from arrest, it would seem that those who follow Jesus would strenuously oppose the violence of torture. But, not so in America today.

Instead, more than half of people who attend worship at least once a week, or 54%, said that using torture on suspected terrorists was "often" or "sometimes" justified. White evangelical Protestants were the church-going group most likely to approve of torture. By contrast, those who are unaffiliated with a religious organization and didn't attend worship were most opposed to torture -- only 42% of those people approved of using torture.

One possible way to interpret this extraordinary Pew data is cultural. White evangelical Protestants tend to be culturally conservative and they make up a large percentage of the so-called Republican "base". Does the approval of torture by this group demonstrate their continuing support for the previous administration? That may be.

But I think it is possible, even likely, that this finding has a theological root. The UN Convention Against Torture defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person..." White Evangelical theology bases its view of Christian salvation on the severe pain and suffering undergone by Jesus in his flogging and crucifixion by the Romans. This is called the "penal theory of the atonement"--that is, the way Jesus paid for our sins is by this extreme torture inflicted on him.

I'm not sure I agree that Christians are okay with torture because Jesus was tortured--but I think it's a pretty big problem that Christianity seems to have evolved to a point where its staunchest adherents don't think it gets in the way of supporting torture.

That's kind of a big tent, by any measure; with some problematic tent poles.

I'm curious if the very Christians who are so eager to flog Islam, regardless of their degree of knowledge or sincerity, will look in the mirror.