Pew Forum: The Religious Dimensions of the Torture Debate

Pew Forum: The Religious Dimensions of the Torture Debate

Pew Research recently provided some interesting, paradoxical (depending on your point of view), about American's viewpoint on torture. How do mainline American religions professing to be Christian feel about use of torture on suspected terrorists. Those who supported torture on an often or sometimes basis, basically boils down to this:


US overall - 49%
White Evangelical Protestants - 62%
White non-hispanic Catholics - 51%
White mainline protestants - 46%
Unaffilliated -40%


Now, just in case you think that these beliefs are just cultural, i.e. Evangelical, Mainline Protestants, Catholics all a more-or-less homogenious group, among themselves, because of their cultural religious upbringing, the survey further broke down these beliefs further by how often a person attends religious services.

Attend weekly - 54%
Attend montly or occassionally - 51%
Attend seldom or never - 42%



So while most run-of-the-mill Americans (in the religious sense) may be horrified at the teaching of hate and justifying of violence against Americans by some Islamic teachers, it appears that some of this same hate is being spread by some religions claiming to follow the Prince of Peace. I find that any religious organization that positively influences active violence or torture, or causes its members to be more accepting of such, against any other group, secular or religious, is reprehensible, and certainly non-Christian.

It would be interesting to run the same survey among other mainstream religious groups not claiming to be Christian.