<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the Pew Research Center released a survey The unaddressed question is, however, why white mainline Despite the fact that evangelicals garner most media And it isn’t just torture.\u00a0 <\/span>In recent years, mainline Protestants were also the What makes mainline Protestant reject violence?\u00a0 <\/span>Critics argue that mainline Protestants But mainline Protestant apprehension regarding torture is The most significant Christian theological question is:\u00a0 <\/span>What does the death of Jesus on the Evangelicals believe that Jesus’ death on the cross–with all Mainline Protestants generally reject this conception of We don’t typically think of theology as having immediate Although some people think that mainline religion is <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Earlier this week, the Pew Research Center released a survey on the views of religious Americans regarding torture.\u00a0 They survey found that white evangelical Protestants were the most supportive of torture–only 16% of evangelicals reject the use of torture.\u00a0 A whopping 62% of white evangelical Protestants think that torture is justified in most or many…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,13,14,9,370],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christians","category-evangelicals","category-mainline-protestants","category-religion-in-the-public-square","category-torture"],"yoast_head":"\n
\non the views of religious Americans regarding torture.\u00a0 <\/span>They survey found that white
\nevangelical Protestants were the most supportive of torture–only 16% of
\nevangelicals reject the use of torture.\u00a0
\n<\/span>A whopping 62% of white evangelical Protestants think that torture is
\njustified in most or many circumstances.\u00a0
\n<\/span>Since the findings became public, numerous columnists, pundits, and
\nbloggers have opined on why evangelicals support torture.<\/p>\n
\nProtestants–those belonging to the historic “brand name” churches–do not
\nsupport torture.\u00a0 <\/span>Indeed,
\napproximately twice as many mainline Protestants (31%) believe that torture is
\nnever justified and an additional 22% think it is almost always wrong.\u00a0 <\/span>Their attitude toward torture is nearly
\nopposite of evangelical Protestant opinion.\u00a0 <\/span>More than half of mainline Protestants reject the use of
\ntorture against other human beings as justifiable means to political ends.\u00a0 <\/span>They are the religious community most
\nstrongly opposed to torture.<\/p>\n
\nattention, they do not represent the entire Protestant community.\u00a0 <\/span>Depending upon what survey one
\nbelieves, mainline Protestant churches–even after many years of numerical
\ndecline, internal struggles, and bad press–still comprise somewhere between
\n15-20% of the American population.\u00a0
\n<\/span>The Pew survey on torture makes it startlingly clear why mainline
\nProtestantism remains an important constituency in American political life:
\nMainline Protestants are the nation’s moral conscience.<\/p>\n
\nreligious group that most strongly opposed the Iraq War, rejected
\nwaterboarding, and expressed worry about the admixture of religion and politics
\nat the nation’s military academies.\u00a0
\n<\/span>In every survey, mainline Protestants see torture, violence, and
\nmilitary intervention as the strategies of last resort in national politics.<\/p>\n
\nare wimps, theologically soft, and adhere to an “unmanly” and “feminized”
\nversion of Christianity (if you don’t know, this is an unoriginal critique–it
\ngoes back to the nineteenth century) with no stomach for hard decisions.\u00a0 <\/span>Real Christians, they will insist, are
\ntough and know when to wield the sword in defense of faith and democracy.<\/p>\n
\nmore than taste or a matter of character.\u00a0
\n<\/span>No, the divide between evangelical Protestants and mainline Protestants
\nregarding violence is a sharp difference in theology that continues to shape
\nthe two communities.<\/p>\n
\ncross mean?\u00a0 <\/span>In the last century,
\nevangelicals and mainliners have answered this question in surprisingly
\ndifferent ways.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n
\nits brutality–saves them.\u00a0 <\/span>Put
\nbluntly, an act of political torture resulted in their “personal salvation” and
\nentry into heaven. Jesus’ death “substitutes” for the death of Christian
\nbelievers and, in that his suffering, the rest of humanity is granted a
\nreprieve for their sins. In a very real sense, God allowed the Romans to kill
\nJesus in order that God might accomplish a holy end.\u00a0 <\/span>Hence, they don’t see torture as fundamentally bad.\u00a0 <\/span>Indeed, some evangelical theologians
\nargue that torture is redemptive–that one person may die for the sake of the
\nwhole community.<\/p>\n
\nJesus’ death.\u00a0 <\/span>Instead, they argue
\nthat Jesus was a victim of political violence that revealed the essential
\nruthlessness of sin.\u00a0 <\/span>And, in that
\ndemonstration, he also demonstrated that to “lay down one’s life for one’s
\nfriends,” instead of revenge, was the way to redeem the world.\u00a0 <\/span>Mainline theologians switched the focus
\naway from the violence-as-salvation toward self-sacrificial love as the route
\nto human wholeness.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>They do
\nnot believe that Jesus’ suffering was good.\u00a0 <\/span>They believe that it was a demonstration of the evil of a
\nhuman political system that placed Caesar before God.\u00a0 <\/span>Torture, as Jesus himself suffered, has no redemptive qualities.\u00a0 <\/span>Salvation occurs as one loves one’s neighbor
\nas one’s self.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nsocial consequences.\u00a0 <\/span>But, in the
\ncase of torture, the difference between evangelicals and mainliners should
\nunderscore that the fact that theology is important.\u00a0 <\/span>The ways in which different religious communities interpret
\nthe meaning of scripture has profound political implications.\u00a0 <\/span>This isn’t an obscure argument between
\nrival religious groups–it is a meaningful difference in a fundamental way of
\nunderstanding the nature of suffering, sin, and human nature based on sacred
\ntexts.<\/p>\n
\nirrelevant and deserves to go the way of the dodo, I don’t.\u00a0\u00a0Their churches may be small, their congregations aging, and their worship, well, can be dull. \u00a0But they are also right. \u00a0W<\/span>hat would we do without them?\u00a0 <\/span>Somebody’s got to protect America’s
\nmoral conscience by respecting the dignity of every human being.\u00a0 <\/span>And, while there may be some individual
\nexceptions to the rule, from the results of the Pew survey, it doesn’t look
\nlike we can depend on white evangelical Protestants to do so.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n