Evangelicals Support Torture

[AtomicKitten]

from http://americablog.blogspot.com/
Evangelicals support torture

If that isn't the biggest bunch of garbage you've ever heard, well... It never ceases to amaze me how un-Christian and fringe America's religious right leadership truly is.

Their latest target? They're upset about a religious effort to oppose torture. And apparently, even more bizarre, their argument goes something along the lines of: There is torture in Saudi Arabia and China and North Korea so why should we be upset about it in America?

Well, here's a thought. Because some of us don't want to live in Saudi Arabia, China or North Korea. And because some of us actually expect more from America than we expect from a communist dictatorship. I mean, do these people use the same arguments about the Ten Commandments? Hey, God's law is a good idea, but let's face it, Godless murderers don't abide by God's law, so why should we?

These people are an ongoing embarrassment to everything God and Jesus and religion stand for. They're an embarrassment to all Christians, and especially, evangelicals. They're not people of faith, they're not Godly, they're not Christian. They're simply some very angry, nasty, hateful far-right conservatives who like to wrap their hate in the mantle of God because otherwise they'd be exposed as the out-of-touch kooks they really are.

It's high time real evangelicals and real Christians stood up to these sick brutes and told them enough is enoug

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Evangelicals Wrong to Endorse Anti-Torture Statement, Says Activist
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/7/122006c.asp

By Chad Groening
July 12, 2006

(AgapePress) - A conservative Christian leader says the organization known as the National Religious Campaign Against Torture isn't saying anything about torture in places like North Korea, China, and Saudi Arabia -- but instead is focusing its ire upon the U.S. and the Bush administration.

Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist Committee of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), based in Washington, DC. Tooley says he has reviewed the declaration issued by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and has noted the document does not say anything about torture in places where it really occurs. That causes him to question the group's motive.

"If this group were genuinely interested in torture, of course they would be addressing those regimes that actively and deliberately do practice torture rather than focusing exclusively on the United States," he comments. He says he detects a "double standard" in the campaign against torture. " is primarily a creation of the religious left and whose interest is not so much in torture, per se, but about opposing U.S. foreign policy."

Among other things, the Campaign's statement calls for an independent investigation into what it describes as "severe human rights abuses" at U.S. installations like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. It also implies that President Bush was less than sincere when he signed into law a piece of John McCain-sponsored legislation reaffirming a long-time international ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and on torture.

It is unfortunate, says the IRD spokesman, that some high-profile leaders like mega-church pastor Rick Warren and Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals have signed on to the document.

"A growing number of evangelicals are ultimately repeating the same mistakes that mainline Protestant church leaders first started making 50, 60, 70 years ago," he states. As a result, says Tooley, those denominations suffered deep theological divisions and great declines in membership.

[joemurphy]

1. It's better not to think. It's difficult for one thing. And for another

the devil may be implanting the wrong kind of thoughts. Better to just go along with our President. After all, God anointed him, and if he thinks torture is OK, well, it must be OK with God.

[ms liberty]

2. Well hey, it was good enough for Jesus....

hopefully I don't need the sarcasm smiley for ya'll to get that statement?

[Douglas Carpenter]

3. "It's high time real evangelicals and real Christians stood up to these

sick brutes and told them enough is enough."

It is a good thing that there are Evangelicals and other Christians who are speaking up against this kind of evil.

link for Sojourners:


http://www.sojo.net /

link for Sojourners Magazine:


http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.home

Interview on Democracy Now with Rev. Jim Wallis (founder and leader of Sojourners) - link:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/26/1355204

[AtomicKitten]

4. precisely why I posted this

Some people at DU have expressed not wanting anything to do with religious folks, but just as Ann Coulter's column was dropped because of complaints from conservatives, the religious left are the ones that speak to this issue the most convincingly.

Thanks for posting the link to Sojourners Mag. This does put Obama's speech into perspective, doesn't it?

[LittleClarkie]

7. And these folks as well

http://www.christiandemocrats.org/

http://catholicdemocrats.org/

[Ringo84]

5. Tsk Tsk

Evangelicals are the biggest kooks and anti-americans around. It shows by the policies and the people they support and don't support. It only reinforces my pride in being a theological liberal.

"The 'Religious Right' is neither'.
Ringo

[IndianaGreen]

6. More evidence that Marx was right about religion being an opiate

for the masses.

[sandnsea]

8. Crackpot Conservatives

I think we're down to a small enough number that we can start marginalizing them even more by just lumping them all into one pile of crackpots and pushing them off the figurative cliff.

As if opposing torture in our own country means it isn't opposed in other countries. That's crackpot thinking if I ever heard it.

[NMMNG]

9. What a bunch of whackjobs

But I know better than to expect anything else from them. :shrug: