What’s wrong with waterboarding torture? If you’re an evangelical Christian, you ought to find a great deal that’s wrong with it, just on a strategic level. The support of evangelical Christian organizations for waterboarding and other forms of torture by the American government is threatening to provoke a schism within evangelical Christianity, as many evangelicals search their consciences and realize that they can no longer abide by the idea that acceptance of torture is a Christian position.
Consider the words of Jack Carter, who writes at Evangelical Outpost,
“I blame myself, and implicate my fellow Christians. We have remained silent and treated an issue once considered unthinkable–the acceptability of torture–like a concept worthy of honest debate. But there is no room for debate: torture is immoral and should be clearly and forcefully denounced. We continue to shame ourselves and our Creator by refusing to speak out against such outrages to human dignity… As Christians we must never condone the use of methods that threaten to undermine the inherent dignity of the person created in the image of God… There is something clearly repugnant about our unwillingness to distance ourselves from the fear-driven utilitarians willing to embrace the use of torture.”
Jack Carter is no liberal Christian. He’s a Republican and supports Republican candidates. He’s part of the Religious Right. However, even Jack Carter can see that progressives are not just blowing hot air on the issue of torture. It clearly weighs heavily on his conscience to have supported politicians who now are supporting torture. He’s watching not just his political party, but his religion too, fall into moral depravity with a sadistic emotional attachment to torture.
(Source: Evangelical Outpost, November 6, 2007)
