Christians confront torture ("Who would Jesus torture?")

[sabra]

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/15843819.htm

Christians confront torture
(MCT)

COLUMBIA, S.C. - "Who would Jesus torture?"

The Rev. Neal Jones thinks he knows the answer to the question posted on the bumpers of some passing cars: No one.

He and his parishioners at Columbia's Unitarian Universalist Fellowship say they are alarmed about the detention, treatment and trial of terrorist suspects and worry that the continuing debate will lower America's stature in the world.

"To me, it's our Christian duty to criticize our government when it is going astray," Jones said. "That is our prophetic duty."

...

"I worry that when we begin using the tactics of the terrorists, that means the terrorists have won," said Peter Kandis, president-elect of the board of trustees of the Unitarian church, on Heyward Street in Columbia, S.C.

[C_U_L8R]

1. Give that man a megaphone

[rodeodance]

2. a BIG one.

[Dhalgren]

3. Fundamentalist, RW Christians in this country worship Satan...

[SquireJons]

18. Well, it does seem that they are lead by many little satans n/t

[saigon68]

23. Here are 2

[BOSSHOG]

4. bush, rove, dobson, falwell, robertson, limbaugh, hannity

The above listed scum plus many others of their ilk will get an incredibly rude awakening when they go knocking at the pearly gates.

[Polesitter]

6. Don't forget Alan Dershowitz who came out early for tortute

under certain conditions. So has Hillary Clinton.

Hypothetical - someone grabs your child and you are fortunate enough to grab them. I would have no hesitation about slow torture until the child is released. But that is precisely why the government takes over rather than families personally affected by acts of terror and kidnappings and such. Cases in criminal court are New York vs. Asshole Terrorist Jones, not Victim Family Smith vs. Asshole Terrorist Jones - to ensure that the prosecuting team can be more objective than those who would literally do anything to save their child.

[BOSSHOG]

7. Welcome to DU polesitter

Torture is an inadequate tool to have in one's bag.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

12. two GOPers spake the truth about torture

IT DOESN'T WORK.
ALL TOO OFTEN, THEY LIE SIMPLY TO STOP THE PAIN. Terrified people will say anything and everything to make it stop. Stalin knew this. So did the nazis. Japanese knew this as well, so they used long marches to weaken the spirits of hundreds of thousands of POWs while culling out the weakest. Even the CIA has said repeatedly that torture does not work.

The false argument raised by that idiot dershowitz and others runs like this: "If we know this guy is a bad guy, and he has the secret to where a dirty bomb is ticking in NYC, I support torture in order to save lives."

Lets do some numbing numbers. of the 20,000 people renditioned, taken off the streets in the US and elsewhere, and either put in US prisons, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, or those non-existant torture centers and prisons that Bush admitted to last month, NOT ONE RESULTED IN FINDING A TICKING BOMB ANYPLACE IN THE WORLD.

So, assuming that even half of those people were abused in some fashion, 10,000 people have been illegally tortured in the pointless search of a nonexistant threat.

Wait 10,000 is too large a number. As stalin said, one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. Let's say that YOUR FAMILY is taked into custody. And you get to decide which half gets waterboarded, their fingernails pealed off, and told that the wires superglued onto their genitalia is hooked up to an electrical generator. How do you like them apples, huh?

The problem with this argument is that you will never, ever see it in real life. In Tom Clancy novels? Sure. Hell, he even used CIA declassified material to come up with that hijacked plane hitting Congress years before 9/11.

on edit. the two senators brave enough to stand up to Gonzo torture plans were Lindsey Graham and McCain.
While I do not trust them on a whole range of issues, I applaud their effort to do the right thing on this issue.

[karynnj]

17. McCain/Graham/Warner took out explicit permission to

torture - but left the defining of what torture is to the man asking to be allowed to torture. As Kerry said. "This bill allows torture."

The people who stood up against torture included:

- Senator Kennedy who had an amendment that list about 10 types of specific torture - including waterboarding - and wanted them explicitly banned. The amendment failed mostly on party lines.

- Senator Kerry - who spoke out very clearly several times - saying bluntly "Absolutely no torture" and in one response speaking of how bad it was that the US was even discussing allowing torture.

-Senator Dodd - who spoke of his dad's work on the Nuremberg trials and against torture.

-Senator Leahy - who was awesome.

(There were other Democrats who spoke out.)

My concern seeing your comment is that it makes the same assumptions that a NY Daily News editorial did - that McCain et al's amendment bans torture - making Hillary, who voted against it because it allowed torture - seem less against torture than McCain - which is simply not true.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

19. you are correct. I did not mean to give that impression. still

TORTURE DOES NOT WORK. If nothing else, it is simply unAmerican. But it is something else. It is immoral, unethical, illegal, and just plain wrong.

[Canuckistanian]

20. The only sure thing torture leads to

Is MORE torture. Torturers and the governments that use them ultimately find that it's useful for ONE purpose only - terrorizing their own populations into submission.

But it's a zero-sum game.

[The Stranger]

16. The torture hypotheticals are nothing but lies in themselves.

Complete fabrications that somehow confuse the weak-minded into thinking that timeless prohibitions should fall now.

[boilinmad]

15. Boy oh boy.....

...I'd give anything to be a fly on the wall when they arrived. Of course id have to leave the celebratory party down here, but it would be worth it, im sure.

[LiberalEsto]

5. Thanks for posting this

I e-mailed it to everybody in our UU congregation in Maryland

[LynnTheDem]

8. Well no worries about US torture lowering America's stature in the world.

It can't get much lower that it already is.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

22. you said a mouthful.

A lot of my friends in europe and asia scratch their heads at what has happened to this country.

[LynnTheDem]

9. And when you use the tactics of the terrorists it doesn't just mean

the terrorists have won.

It means you ARE a terrorist.

[sinkingfeeling]

10. Wow, some people who really understand Christianity.

[Supersedeas]

32. when the TV Political Evangelicals are undressed

[SquireJons]

11. Unitarians are not Christians

At least not in the way the term is used today. They are not fundamentalists, born again, charismatic "christians."

I used to consider myself a christian. Not because I believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, but because I believe in the philosophy he preached. These days the term has been hijacked and is closer to being the definition of fascist. A closed minded, willfully ignorant bully.

So, to say that 'christians' are questioning the role of torture in U.S. foreign policy is highly misleading. Many Jews, Episcopalians and even many Catholics have spoken out against torture, but they are drowned out by the repulican controlled media who only focus on the relatively small population of what is these days referred to as 'christians.'

When Falwell comes out against torture, I will know that the GOP has lost the religious wing nuts. But not until then.

[intheflow]

13. Read the article. It's not only about UUs.

And this UU church, in South Carolina, is obviously still attached to its Unitarian and Universalist Christian roots. Nothing wrong with that, imo.

While there are notable exceptions, our typical Sunday service is not so unlike the typical Protestant service from which our denomination derives.
http://uu.columbia.sc.uua.org/

[noonwitch]

14. I consider myself a christian, but generally don't use that label to describe my faith

I attend a Unity church, so it's similar to UU in the sense that it embraces all spirituality, not just the christian kind, but it is a bit more christian in nature than UU, and is defintitely "new age". I was raised UCC, so I have a bit more of the biblical Sunday school teaching than a lot of Unity people do. Unity has a "metaphysical" approach to scripture that I appreciate on one level, but also strongly believe that the Sermon on the Mountain is to be taken as written and put into practice whenever possible.

My main reason for believing in Jesus' teachings is that I have seen and experienced the Holy Spirit working, by participating in prayer circles and other of those type of experiences. There's really no turning away from it, once you have felt it move through you.

[kineneb]

33. many U. Methodists take same positron

I even heard the pastor at "my"* church mention, during a sermon, the local high school kids who had marched with "Who Would Jesus Torture?" signs.

*I play service music for them. I am a Buddhist, but consider Jesus to be at least a Bodhisattva, and try to follow his universal teachings.

[olddad56]

21. isn't the Christain concept of hell the ultimate torture chamber?

I'd say if you are a Christain who believes in hell, you believe in torture.

[CJCRANE]

24. But God decides on who goes there, not mere mortals.n/t

[dad]

27. I was just going to say that - God believes in torture.

Eternal torture in hell supposedly. Hey I didn't invent the religion, but I'm just saying. Jesus would torture.

[CJCRANE]

28. This is getting into theological

territory...

I think you have to distinguish between the Abrahamic God and his followers.

Just because God does something doesn't mean his followers are allowed to do it.

As for Jesus, I think the guy depicted in the New Testament wouldn't torture, but if you believe that he's the same guy as in the Old Testament, then maybe he would.

[davekriss]

31. Jesus as depicted in the New Testament...

...would not torture anyone. Nor would he kill anyone. He would heal, comfort, bind the wounds of the broken hearted, enlighten us on "the way" to cooperative, communalist living filled with compassion and gentleness and joy, and say "follow me!". Those that choose not to follow, who defiantly cling to their own self-importance and independence from the Unmoved Mover at the root of all things, they experience hell. It is a choice. Every action will have its reaction; what actions we put forth will either engender peace and good will, or they will not. And what goes around, comes around...

How can anyone conclude anything else? When asked what were the greatest commandments, Jesus answered to love God with all one's heart, mind, and soul; and to love one another as we would love ourselves. From this, he said, all else follows. Who, believing this, would torture another human being? Who, believing this, would condone war, especially the unjust wars exampled by the Bush administration?

[LanternWaste]

37. It's merely the complete and absolute absence of God from that individual

Hell is considered merely the complete and absolute absence of God and His influences from that individual. The whole "fire and brimstone" things is so very 200 years ago.

[Marthe48]

25. I'd rather be blown up

than live knowing that a single person had been harmed to save my life.

Am I wrong? My statement is about as extreme as the example that its ok to torture someone who knows where a bomb is. Most of the time the current U.S. intelligence community (Bush yesmen) can't find its ass with both hands, how plausible is it that our agents would actually have an terrorist in hand with knowlege like that? The argument for torture is as juvenile and shallow as the rest of this demented cabal's policies.

Torture is wrong, talking about condoning it is wrong, and I am heartbroken that this country stepped over to the dark side by legalizing torture.

[pinerow]

26. If I read the new Testament correctly...Jesus was tortured a bit..

I doubt he would wish that on anyone...:toast:

[colorado_ufo]

29. Amen.

[crim son]

30. Yippee.

It's about fucking time.

[JohnyCanuck]

34. Well according to some Christians,

He is going to send every single one of us who don't believe he is the Messiah and/or the Son of God to be burnt alive in hell's lake of fire for all eternity. Makes waterboarding sound like a day at the park.

[SquireJons]

35. If you believe that everything is according to Gods plan...

Then God is the biggest mass murderer of all time. THAT part of christian teaching is the largest pile of hooey going. There may be a god, or not (we won't know until we're dead). But the idea of an interventionist god is rather delusional and self serving, it seems to me.

[Strawman]

36. Don't you remember the parable of the Good Samaritan Torturer?

The man who saw someone in trouble on the side of the road and waterboarded him because he was a suspicious looking Ay-rab?

[sakabatou]

38. Rev. Neal Jones

:yourock::applause::yourock::applause::yourock::applause::yourock::applause::yourock::applause::yourock::applause: