Torture prompts soul-searching

Among evangelical leaders, debate over the use of harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists has prompted introspection about faith, ethics, the Golden Rule, just wars, Jack Bauer and Jesus.

A number of evangelical leaders have made opposition to torture without exceptions a moral cause over the past three years, part of a broadening of the movement's agenda beyond traditional culture war issues. Others in the movement, including many Christian right leaders, have largely resisted or stayed silent.

"I have said before that torture is like a bone caught in our throat — we can't swallow it and we can't spit it out," said David Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta and president of Evangelicals for Human Rights. "I think we're still there."

The poll data from a survey of 742 U.S. adults by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found 62 percent of white evangelical Protestants said torture of a suspected terrorist could be often or sometimes justified to obtain important information.

By contrast, 51 percent of white non-Hispanic Catholics, 46 percent of white mainline Protestants and 40 percent of the religiously unaffiliated held that position.

Those who attend religious services at least once a week were more likely than those who rarely or never attend to say torture is sometimes or often justified in that scenario — 54 percent to 42 percent.

The findings immediately prompted questions for evangelicals: How exactly did poll participants define torture, since the survey did not? Did evangelicals reach their conclusions because of their religious beliefs or their politics or ideological leanings? How do you untangle those factors from each other?

Pew officials later updated the analysis to emphasize that religion "is only one of many factors" — and that political party and ideology are much better predictors of opinions on torture than religion

"My experience is that people who are comfortable supporting torture support it because they think it's going to produce information our country needs," said the Rev. Richard Killmer, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister and executive director of the interfaith National Religious Campaign Against Torture, which formed in 2006. "I don't think they would shy away from use of the word 'torture.' "

"During the last eight years, people have been concerned about this ticking time bomb thing and Jack Bauer and '24' and all that," said the Rev. Killmer, referring to the TV drama in which the protagonist takes a by-any-means-necessary approach to extracting information from terror suspects.