Testament

A recent survey of 742 adult Americans conducted by the Pew Research Center indicates that the more regularly a person attends church, the more likely that person is to say that torturing terror suspects is sometimes or always justified. Among persons who identified themselves as “white, Evangelical Protestants” more than 60 percent indicated torture was at least sometimes ok. Not surprisingly, at least to me, those persons who reported no religious affiliation were least likely to support torture under any circumstances. I have to admit that I am not a statistician and I cannot critique the reliability of Pew’s methods, but they are an accepted source of national polling data and there is little reason to believe that the results are skewed. It would also be fair to say that the poll didn’t determine who was more likely to contribute to charity or help a stranded stranger in need, but the fact that my reaction to reading the poll results was “oh duh” does not constitute a public relations victory for Evangelicals.

We all know Christians who are exemplary people and who are kind, charitable, tolerant and loving. Many of us also know persons of other religious affiliation who display the same characteristics, so I am not trying to repudiate Christianity specifically, or religion in general, but it is more than just an irony that the most vocal of Christ’s self-proclaimed followers are generally the ones who endorse violence, aggression, exclusion and harsh treatment of the defenseless. I can imagine the howls of righteous indignation emanating from deep in the heart of Texas, but I know what I see.

Christ, who was himself mercilessly tortured to death by the Romans, was pretty much the quintessential drug-free hippy, whose message of love, forgiveness, tolerance and rejection of material wealth is not so much denied as parodied by the modern American “Religious Right”. The problem is that many “Christians” are just Old Testament literalists who are in love with an angry God and are misanthropic despisers of human diversity. No sane person can read the Bible and tell me they can imagine Jesus turning up the voltage on the testicle electrodes or stuffing the wet sock in some douche-bag’s mouth.

2nd Peter, Chapter 2, Verse 1 says, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily (sic) shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.” Peter was trying to prepare the faithful to understand that cynical, sociopathic, manipulative, self-interested deceivers would try to hijack Christ’s message of hope and forgiveness and turn believers into an army of soulless automatons doing their evil bidding, and that this would pretty much suck. Thanks to the Pew Research Center we can confirm that Peter’s concerns are still valid.