I like polls. I follow polls. Last year, like millions of Americans, I was almost obsessed with polls, and developed a massive man-crush on Nate Silver of the top-notch polling site, FiveThirtyEight. I like it when polls tell me things I suspect are true, or want to be true, such as the recent poll from ABC demonstrating that a narrow plurality of Americans support marriage equality.
But I have never been as distressed by a poll as I was by the much-discussed, much-lamented one released last week by the Pew Forum. The Religious Dimensions of the Torture Debate made it very clear that church-going Christians in general, and white evangelicals in particular, are much more inclined to see torture as at least sometimes both necessary and justified than are their secular counterparts. It wasn’t that I didn’t think that the poll could be true; indeed, I understand all too well the political and theological heresies which are rife in the American church and which encourage this abhorrent and biblically indefensible notion to flourish. (Is Mel Gibson’s snuff film about our Savior to blame? Is it that most folks completely misunderstand — and many pastors misrepresent — atonement theory?) It’s that on an emotional level, I didn’t want it to be true.
As a self-described progressive evangelical, my views on many issues diverge from most who describe themselves as “deeply religious” or “born-again.” I support marriage equality for all; I am prayerfully, at times reluctantly, firmly pro-choice. I believe that wise stewardship over creation means understanding that all of creation — and not merely human beings — are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights. My veganism and my feminism, far from existing uneasily alongside my Christian faith, are indeed rooted in my own understanding of Jesus and His call upon my heart. I expect to have arguments about sexual ethics with my more conservative fellow Christians. I expect to engage in the old “complemetarian versus egalitarian” debate about gender roles. But I never seriously expected to need to explain to a fellow Christian that torturing another human being was fundamentally incompatible with our faith.
(Before going further, let me recommend Mercer University professor and Christian ethicist David Gushee’s very fine post about the poll.) Continue reading ‘Shame and scandal: an evangelical reflection on the torture poll’
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