My spirituality and torture post made some people angry, who claimed that the PEW polls on torture showing more church goers were supporters of torture than non-Christians were somehow unreliable or not representative.  

Now some other polls have emerged.

While they are on a smaller scale their finding make important portions of the conservative Christian community look even worse.

I found one to be particularly interesting. Dr. Richard Land heads the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.  He  says waterboarding is torture because it inflicts personal physical harm and “contravenes an individual’s personhood and their humanity.”

The conservative Christian onenewsnow.com reported on Dr. Lands views, while demonstrating extreme discomfort with his terminology. Their headline used the term “unethical” rather than the dreaded ‘T’ word. After this show of moral courage, they announced the results of their own poll, apparently of Southern Baptists or at least of people concerned with what Land would say.

With 24,450 responses, under 9% agreed torture was wrong.  But over 85% of these ‘good Christians’ disagreed.  They were just fine with torture.

Are these latter Christians or Servants of Sauron?  I report, you decide. Christian writer Lawrence M. Vance calls them “Imperial Christians”  in servile service to the state.  Same difference by my book.

Pagans are far too few and scattered to have been polled on this issue, but I’d bet anything I own that a large majority of us would be decisively on the other side.

I am grateful to Jim Wilson for tipping me off to Vance’s excellent piece “Christians for Torture.”