Ouch. That hurts.

What do these statistics say about Americans in general and white American evangelicals in particular? Why would white evangelicals be most likely to support torture? Could some conventional theological assumptions of evangelicals have anything to do with it?

Those are some loaded and very tough questions. I don't even know where to start. But as a white evangelical myself, I'm not sure I would blame it exclusively on any theological assumptions... maybe a better way to put it would be that white evangelicals tend to be "civilly religious," and that being an American and being a Christian often get intermixed to the point that the ideologies get mixed up with each other. In short, what's good for America is good for America regardless, because America is God's country.

Or maybe I'm wrong.

Actually, I think that the explanation is much simpler than either you or Brother McLaren have posited. Far too many of us have ceded our thinking to politicians, media, and religious leaders. For example, if a Democratic president had been in office during the past 8 years, and the torturing had been initiated by men appointed by them, then I suspect that the loudest voices protesting against the abuse would be coming from Republicans and white evangelicals.

All of us - evangelicals, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, whatever - need to think through the positions that we have staked out. If we cannot personally reconcile our beliefs without the aid of Rush Limbaugh, James Dobson, Jim Wallis, et al, then we should be able to objectively evaluate public policy issues in the context of our upbringing, our religious faith, and our education. I lived through our involvement in Vietnam and changed from being fully supportive of our role there to being totally against the war. LBJ was a Democrat, but he should not have gotten us involved there. Those of us who supported Barrack Obama need to hold him accountable. Both he and John McCain said that torture is wrong and we should never go down that path again.

You make a valid point. One of the points that many Conservatives make is that prominent Democratic members of Congress were briefed and in the know and they failed to speak up. Well, let them too suffer the legal consequences of their actions.

I think you are wrong. If God intends to torture the majority of humans for eternity, and salvation is release from eternal torture, how are people who believe this picture of god prevented from using these methods? After 20 years of living with this monstrous Pharisee theology I realized I could never love such a God and would rather be lost than praise and worship such a being. Fortunately for all mankind and for the universe, there is no such being. This is the creation of religious fearmongers for profit.

jonabark, you beat me to it!

(Although I'd suggest you look a little more closely into the history of rabbinic thought. Eternal torture isn't really a Pharisaic idea.)

see below, I couldn't get your reply link to work at first.

In essence the idea of hell has very primitive roots. One of the most universal aspects of human culture is the treatment of prisoners of war, enemies, criminals etc which frequently involves extended torture leading to death, slavery, sexual subjugation or assimilation/redemption. In that sense hell is a mythologizing of cultural practice.

This is in reply to cipher whose reply link was not working. Yes, by referring to he Pharisees I am speaking of how the idea enters and becomes dominant in the New Testament. I see the roots going back to Zoroastrianism, and some pagan mythology and probably entering Judaism via the medo-persian empire. In many ways it is still somewhat spiritualized and vague until the Book of the Revelation at which it appears in its vengeful , hateful fruition, and then it deepens into its darksome orthodox form via post Constantine church leaders and medieval fantasies. I may be wrong but I do not see a direct route from Judaism to this doctrine. If you can recommend some writings related to the topic I would be very interested.

Really, anything that deals with the development of the Talmud would do it. You can find it in most libraries today. There is a concept of post-mortem judgment, but most rabbis rejected the idea of eternal suffering for all but a few irredeemable personalities, represented by archetypes of evil such as Pharoah, Amalek, etc.

I've even come across a reference that Zoroastrianism, in its earliest form, advocated universal redemption. I think it might have been more of a later Greco-Roman idea (but it's probably more complicated than that).

Yeah, including the book of Revelation in the NT might have been the factor most responsible for the theological nightmare conservative evangelicalism has become.

I've heard from a few different sources (and it seemed to pan out on wikepedia as well) that the majority view during the first few centures of Christianity was universal salvation. I believe Rome was the only one of the 5 or 6 main Christian centers that did not ascribe to universal salvation. Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that it was Rome that also became the Church of the Inquisition, and it was Western Christianity that splintered with the reformation, and then continued to splinter over and over again....? I wouldn't be surprised if there is a connection between "salvation of the few" theology and torture, and violent internecine quarrels....

I don't know that Rome was the only one - as far as I know, the Orthodox churches aren't pushing universal redemption, either - but it would be wonderful if true. Fundamentalists are always going on about how they want to get back to "real, original" Christianity...

I haven't done much research on this, but, for what it's worth, here's what wikipedia says:

Universalism was a fairly commonly held view among theologians in early Christianity: In the first five or six centuries of Christianity, there were six known theological schools, of which four (Alexandria, Antioch, Cesarea, and Edessa or Nisibis) were Universalist, one (Ephesus) accepted conditional immortality, and one (Carthage or Rome) taught the endless punishment of the lost.[3] The two major theologians opposing it were Tertullian and Augustine.[citation needed]

In the seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century Europe and America, other Christian reformers came to believe in a universally loving God and felt that God would grant all human beings salvation. They became known as the Universalists.

I don' t know - it's Wikipedia. As I said, I wasn't under the impression that the other schools were teaching universal redemption. My understanding has always been that it was a few stragglers - such as Origen - who pushed for it, and were dismissed or marginalized as a result.

On the other hand - if it is true, I have no trouble placing the blame at Augustine's doorstep. Miserable man. It's a cruel irony that Christian theology has been shaped by some of the most mean-spirited, dysfunctional personalities in history. Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin (that abomination) - they took a bad situation and made it worse than it had to be.

I didn't think the Evangelical view was "Universal" Redemption; I thought it was just redemption for those who accept JC as their Lord and Savior. I left Christianity for a time since I was told my Jewish father would not go to heaven if he did not accept JC as his Savior.

Right. As far as I know, evangelicals do not usually believe in universal
salvation.

Amen to that!
I just wish I could be sure that there were no such being, or that the concept of such a being did not reflect any spiritual reality. The physical universe itself seems to be "survival of the few", after all.....

I think white evangelicals are afraid. We want peace and security, but loving our enemies and turning the other cheek doesn’t bring results fast enough for us-- so some are willing to sacrifice our moral code to “serve the greater good.” Of course, “the greater good” is often what’s best for white, evangelical Americans. We need to look beyond nationalism and remember the compassion Jesus taught us to have for one another. -- Jenna at www.doubled-and-squared.com

Interesting article - I however cannot concur with the conclusions that Brian McLaren bring forward. Brian says : "Why would white evangelicals be most likely to support torture? Could some conventional theological assumptions of evangelicals have anything to do with it?"

I am not sure which theological assumption Brian is referring to. All I would say to Brian, as a European white evangelical christian (where a vast majority of white evangelicals are against torture), is the theological assumption you are pointing to, is most probably shared by most white evangelicals in Europe.

So this explanation, is absolutely not valid.

Tim02 -
I also am a European white evangelical Christian (though resident in North America for the last 4 years), and I think I disagree with your analysis. I think it has to do with the theology of power which in my experience most evangelicals absorb (rather than being taught). This is along the lines of: We want this to be a Christian country, so we should get a disproportionately high representation of Christians in all places of power, and then we should expect them to defend what we deem to be Christian values by whatever means are necessary.

In Europe that doesn't turn into a support for torture because the evangelical movements are generally quite small and unable to obtain anything like a dominant grip on society. But look back to when we were dominant and you will see some ugly phenomena (such as wholesale support for imperialist invasions to "civilise" the natives, thoroughgoing racist attitudes in the way the colonies and indigenous people were managed, etc.) We had the truth and we were going to force it down peoples' throats whether they liked it or not. [As a new Canadian I am beginning to learn just how appalling an assault was committed against First Nations peoples through (mostly church-run) residential schools in this country.]

But US evangelicalism (or at least the noisy unthinking bit of it) has gone one step further - and again it is a step that is inevitable if you decide to use worldly power as a tool of the gospel. They have conflated the interests of the empire with the interests of the church. So words like "freedom" are no longer defined by reference to scripture, but by reference to the loudest ideology in secular society (which in this context is yelling that freedom is something that "we" have and that "they" want to take away from us).

For Christian groups to achieve dominance in secular society is a very dangerous thing. We follow a Lord who gave no guidance for what to do when you are in a position of dominance - because He was trying to lead us along a very different route. Once you have abandoned Jesus' way of self-emptying in order to obtain power, why not give up his way of indiscriminate love in order to maintain power? After all, it's for a good cause, isn't it?...

In the end, this is about where we put our security - do we place it in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, or do we place it in devices for subjecting people to simulated drowning?

"For Christian groups to achieve dominance in secular society is a very dangerous thing. We follow a Lord who gave no guidance for what to do when you are in a position of dominance "

Meuring I really disagree with your belief that Christians should not seek office . And your example of what leadership I believe is from a secular view . Or possibly you are referencing leadership by Christians from what the Christian Right , religious Right tried to do . Christ gave us the example of leadership , of being in charge . He took the shoes off of his disciples and Washed THEIR feet .
To be a great leader , you need to be a great servant . I believe Christians should be in charge , much more would appear to get done that was good in my opinion .

Did I say that Christians shouldn't seek office? I don't think I did, though I'm pretty disgusted with the conduct of most of the Christians who have obtained high office both in the countries where I've lived and in the US.
I agree with you about servant leadership - but that generally doesn't happen through the official channels.
What we have seen more often from Christians in charge is domineering leadership. The crusades. The inquisition. The persecution of Jews throughout Europe. (What happened when the Christians reconquered Spain? - Jews were tortured, killed, subjected to forced "conversion" or expelled. And they fled not to another Christian state where they could expect more of the same but to muslim Turkey...) Church support for slavery and for the slave trade. (It was the Christians who weren't in a position of secular power that got slavery outlawed in the British empire, and it was apparently powerless black Christians that brought an end to the horrors of segregation and discrimination and lynchmobs in the US south.) Church support for 19th-century imperalism. Active church involvement in stripping the culture of indigenous peoples from them, through residential schools, through legal bans on traditional ceremonies, through physical dislocation. Church support underpinning dictators from Louis XVI to Franco to Verwoerd to Pinochet. Unthinking backing for whatever wars the US may decide to enter into.

I don't think it is an accident that Jesus chose not to be part of the religious establishment (like the pharisees and saducees), not to form close relationships with the Roman authorities (like the herodians) and not to attempt to wrest power out of their hands (like the zealots). The power which He brought was something quite different - the power of self-emptying and self-sacrifice and total love. A power which only really works if it is used from the bottom up, not from the top down.

I recently broached the subject to a friend of mine. I was complaining of the very thing that the poll Brian cites told me: too many American Christians were willing to accept torture, for whatever reason.

After asking rhetorically, "Who would Jesus torture?" my friend replied that it ought to be a no-brainer. Of course Christians shouldn't accept torture. After all Jesus, who himself suffered the worst kind of torture for our sakes, would never side with the torturers.