Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy
to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of
man. - Luke 21:36
Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy
to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of
man. - Luke 21:36
Seeing a CNN poll that claimed that churchgoers are more likely to support torture than non-attendees are compels me to speak out.
WASHINGTON (CNN, April 30th 2009) — The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new analysis.
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than 6 in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only 4 in 10 of them did.
The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants, and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.
While the pole was too small to have any real accuracy and the CNN bias may have played a role in these results, the fact remains that many Christians do support torturing suspected terrorists to extract information.
In 2009 you could Google “Christians and torture” and see the backlash. Here are two quotes off the net:
“Actually, if you believe the Bible is the literal word of God, it makes sense that you'd be for torture. Indeed, hell is the ultimate example of torture.”
AND
“When you add in the 17% who say that it is rarely justified, you get to a stunning 79% of evangelicals who would gladly put you on the rack and tear your limbs out.”
Of course, these statements are not true, yet it will make the job a lot harder for any brother or sister who tries to witness to this peer group. Jesus said the world would hate us for righteousness sake. However torturing people is not righteous.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for
righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
- Matthew 5:10
Not every Christian supports torture and many have spoken out against it. For example, the Rutherford Institute posted this article at their website:
WASHINGTON, DC -- The Rutherford Institute, along with other non-governmental organizations, has filed a friend of the court brief in the U.S. Supreme Court urging the Court to accept review of a case in which 17 Chinese Muslims, known as Uighurs, seek release from Guantanamo now that they have been recognized not to be enemy combatants.
[…]
"The courts, the United States military, and the former administration under President Bush have long recognized that these men are not 'enemy combatants,' and do not pose a threat to the United States," said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. "When our government lacks a legal basis to detain people and there is no evidence that they pose a threat to the United States, they should be released promptly.
Unfortunately, the world tries to ignore exemplary Christian behavior and instead parading the examples of bad behavior to embarrass us. They would rather remind us of the Spanish Inquisition than reflect on the life of Mother Teresa.
Before we continue, we should define what it mean s to torture suspected terrorists to extract a confession.
tor·ture (tôrchr) n. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language
1.
a. Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion.
b. An instrument or a method for inflicting such pain.
2. Excruciating physical or mental pain; agony: the torture of waiting in suspense.
3. Something causing severe pain or anguish.
tr.v. tor·tured, tor·tur·ing, tor·tures
1. To subject (a person or an animal) to torture.
2. To bring great physical or mental pain upon (another). See Synonyms at afflict.
3. To twist or turn abnormally; distort: torture a rule to make it fit a case.
Torture Collins Essential English Dictionary
[-turing, -tured]
Verb
1. to cause (someone) extreme physical pain, esp. to extract information, etc.: suspects were regularly tortured and murdered by the secret police
2. to cause (someone) mental anguish
Noun
1. physical or mental anguish
2. the practice of torturing a person
3. something which causes great mental distress: she was going through the torture of a collapsing marriage [Latin torquere to twist]
In defending the treatment of suspected terrorists, some conservatives have made comments like the following:
"Some of these terrorists who are not recognized as soldiers don't deserve to be treated as soldiers." Jim Phillips of the Heritage Foundation (Wikipedia)
This is true if they are not soldiers they do not deserve to be treated as soldiers. It is also true that if they are human beings, we as a Christians have a duty to treat them humanly.
Those who play down the pain, that the detainees being tortured suffer, are ignorant or dishonest. Terrorists are often willing to die for what they believe in. The pain would have to be excruciating in order for interrogators to get any kind of confession, or betrayal of their comrades, out of such men.
According to a contributor at Wikipedia, by 2008 there had been at least four suicides and hundreds of suicide attempts in Guantánamo that are in public knowledge. Probably many other suicides attempts remain classified information.
Sleep deprivation, forced drugging and waterboarding. All of these tortures will leave permanent scars on the soul. Some accounts have detainees literally pulling out their own hair.
The attacking of the detainee’s religious beliefs by defacing of their Koran, forbidding prayer and the services of prostitutes, has been reported to happen to detainees at Guantanamo bay.
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. - Matthew 7:12
Other reported abuses include:
Their tormentors chaining captives hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor for 18 hours or more, thereby forcing them to urinate and defecate on themselves.
Subjecting Detainees to extremes of temperatures, barefoot with the air conditioning had bought the temperature close to freezing or the air conditioning being turned off in an unventilated room, making the temperature over degrees 100F.
There are different opinions on how effective these torture techniques are in extracting confessions. When the individual cracks, he may tell you what he thinks you want to hear; he is not interested in telling the truth, he is only saying what he believes is necessary to end his suffering. A more effective way to gather information may be to release suspect (for which there is no proof of wrongdoing) and then track them. With a legal search warrant his phones could be tapped, his mail and email read. With a little follow-up, you may be able to gather more information and more reliable information than you do by torturing a suspect who is out of circulation with his coconspirators.