On Christians and Torture…

News broke 10 days or so ago about a Pew poll that showed Christians of most stripes (they cited Catholic, Evangelical, and mainline, but no word about Orthodox, pentacostal, mennonite, or others….) having a higher reported tolerance for the use of torture on ‘suspected terrorists’ in the GWOT than other segments of American society.

Some links and meditations on the subject that I’ve found thought-provoking:

• Christianity Today has a good article by David P. Gushee entitled “5 Reasons Torture is Always Wrong: And Why there should be No Exceptions”.
• Tony Campolo wrote in the Huffington Post on “Is Christianity a Casualty of War.” Money quote from Campolo is : “The question is would Jesus ask, ‘What doth it profit if you gain information from a tortured terrorist and lose your own soul?'” (Hat tip: Matthew Sheeden).
• And Andrew Sullivan has two posts worth of analysis on this poll as part of his ongoing political analysis of the whole torture mess.

That question from Campolo is haunting to me…