A new study suggests that evangelicals are the most likely religious group to justify torture. Around 60 percent of evangelicals said use of torture against suspected terrorists can often or sometimes be justified, compared to 50 percent of Catholics 46 percent of white mainline Protestants who said the same thing, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. David Neff takes a look at the survey over at CT’s liveblog.
Meanwhile, the latest national survey suggest that overall support for legal abortion is down 8 percent from last August. Just 23 percent of white evangelical Protestants now favor legal abortion, down from 33 percent in August and mid-October and 28 percent in late October.
Also, a new Quinnipiac poll suggests that while Catholics support same-sex civil unions 68 -27percent, evangelicals oppose the unions 61-34 percent. Catholics support gay adoption 61-33 percent, while evangelical Christians oppose gay adoption 64-30 percent.
I received an e-mail from reader John Mills, who express his frustration with how evangelicals deal with torture:
Should we be standing against abortion & gay marriage? Certainly, but we should do the one and not neglect the other. This is an issue with terrible moral implications. If we can boycott Disney for it’s pro-gay agenda and deny communion to Joe Biden for being pro-abortion, why are our churches silent about torture? Why are we not denying entrance to our churches of Bush, Cheney, and the authors of these memos?
The real issue for the church is why are we not talking about this? Why have we not been talking about this? Were are the Christians that work for the CIA and the military that have refused to participate and resigned or been court-martialed rather than participate in a patently immoral activity?
If the church can’t hold a moral line on this issue, which is easy to be against, then we really have lost everything. The church is dead.
Do you agree with Mills?
