The circles I run in include a fair number of recovering fundies -- people who were raised on the notion that morality comes from Jesus. In fact, the former Calvinists among us were taught that anyone who is not "washed in the blood" is utterly depraved. For real. A Seattle Calvinist mega-minister, Mark Driscoll, had this to say to his flock: "If the resurrection didn't literally happen, there's no reason for us to be here. If the resurrection didn't literally happen, there are parties to be had, there are women to be had, there are guns to shoot, there are people to shoot." (Have you heard that Calvinism is all the rage?)
Children are hard-wired to be credulous, to accept what they are told -- which means that this shit gets inside people at a gut level -- which means it takes a lot of work to get it back out. Recovering fundies spend a fair bit of time reminding each other that just because something got wired into your brain before your critical faculties developed doesn't mean it's true. So of course last week's Pew report about churchgoing and torture approval made the rounds.
In case you missed it, Pew released survey data showing that the more frequently someone went to church, the more likely they were to approve of torture. (So much for total depravity on the outside.) Church attendance in this case may be a proxy for conservative religious belief. Of the groups surveyed, Evangelical Christians were most likely to think that torture is often or sometimes ok (62%), followed by Catholics (51%), followed by mainline Protestants (46%). Nonbelievers were least likely to agree (40%).
What's the deal? Over at the Washington Post religion blog, On Faith, modernist theologian Susan Brooks Thistlewaite, suggested that maybe the problem is rooted in theology, what is called the "penal theory of atonement." Jesus gets torture and death because the rest of us deserve it. So through the twists and turns of theo-logic, Jesus getting tortured to death turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to the human race. It's the way believers escape the fate that awaits the rest of us -- and is a part of God's perfect, loving plan.
"For Christian conservatives," Thistlewaite says, "severe pain and suffering are central to their theology." In evidence, she points to Evangelical enthusiasm for Mel Gibson's movie, a theologically justified orgy of Hollywood torture. She has a point. Convinced of the film's salvific merit, my mother's church bussed in teens and made special arrangement for wheelchair-bound elderly. Wouldn't want them to miss that half-hour beating scene.
Does penal atonement theology lead to torture approval? Could be. A host of other hypotheses were suggested in response to Thistlewaite's article, most of them none too flattering in their assessment of those Evangelical churchgoers:
But one comment actually made me think. It was from a nonbeliever who expressed her dismay, not that so many Christians were willing to condone torture, but that so many nonbelievers did too. Christian fundamentalism may increase tolerance of torture, but if so, it is part of a broader problem.
Scholar Riane Eisler (The Chalice and the Blade,The Real Wealth of Nations) offers a framework that may lend some relevant insights. Eisler proposes that all institutions, ideologies, and relationships can be thought of on a continuum from domination orientation to partnership orientation. In a domination orientation, people are caught up in the business of competing for control. You either eat or are eaten, and given the option, most people would rather be at the top of the food chain. Underlings use what power they do have: manipulation, deceit, passive resistance, even suicide. Those in power do harm, often because they perceive that the alternative is "being done to." Being the torturer is better than having your hands tied behind your back and a hood over your head.
Evangelical Christianity has a strong dominance orientation. The metaphor of "spiritual warfare" is ubiquitous. Onward Christian Soldiers. Dominionists seek to take control of the reins of power to rule the rest of us according to Biblical principles. In the church I grew up in, women were taught to submit, even to abuse. My pastor gave a full sermon on breaking the will of his two year old. Spare the rod . . .
But the rest of us are not immune from this mentality of domination either, which ultimately is a mentality of fear, the fear of exploitation or insufficiency. It's so ... primate. Unless the weaker monkey can sneak, the dominant monkey will eat all the grapes. Unless the weaker chimp can sneak, the dominant chimp will get to mate with all the best females. But even our primate cousins would have impossibly wretched lives without the rudiments of compassion and cooperation. Chimpanzees both seek help from one another and give it. Rhesus monkeys have been willing to starve for a week rather than shocking another monkey to get fed (Hauser, pp. 354-355). Their behavior reflects a complex blend of domination and partnership strategies dictated largely by instinct. But, our intelligence allows us more behavioral flexibility than any other species. We who call ourselves homo sapiens sapiens -- wise, wise -- have the power to understand fear and domination deeply and to orient our personal relationships and social institutions toward the other end of the continuum.
Even as old an institution as Christianity has the power to learn. That may be one of the most important take-aways from the Pew study. Yes, as many people pointed out, the Church has a history of embracing torture, sanctifying it theologically and using it to defend purity of belief. And yes, those Christians who are still stuck defending the "fundamental" belief agreements made in the Fourth Century may be stuck defending torture as well. But Christians like Thistlewaite who have been willing to re-evaluate the old regula fidei or rules of faith have moved both theologically and morally. Many mainliners center their theology not in "penal atonement" but in radical hospitality. Call it love. Like partnership-oriented Humanists, Buddhists and others, modernist Christians teach their children how to think rather than what to think and don't feel a need to "break" them to control their spiritual quest. If that doesn't help us to outgrow torture, I don't know what will.
Follow Valerie Tarico on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ValerieTarico
God is love.
That broader problem being that 71 out of 100 Americans, according to the Pew poll, believe that torture is justified at least "rarely." Given that the poll was given in a yes/no in format, only "never" equals no. Across the population, only 25 percent said no. (Four percent had no idea.)
For Pew to release the findings in terms of church attendance is deceptive. I think Pew knew full well that most people would receive their data breadown as meaning that believers, as a group, are inclined to condone torture. Huff-Po, in one piece, falsely announced "Church Going Americans More Likely to Condone Torture." More likely than whom? And what kinds of churches?
Vital points, those.
"Never" and "rarely" aren't the same answer in a yes/no format. Nor does a comparison between a type of religious demographic give us any idea what it means against the whole population.
Religious people are a large majority in the U.S. What's true about religious people, ergo, is probably true about the body politic. That's why Pew had to break things down very specifically to find their anti-faith figure. Pew knows that few people are going to think about the numbers they hawk, especially if those numbers confirm what we already think. Pie chart: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/30/religion.torture/#cnnSTCOther1
Do you remember there recently was some research done that showed the different reasons why conservatives and liberals believed in god? Verbatim, it read: "Political conservatives operate out of a fear of chaos and absence of order while political liberals operate out of a fear of emptiness". My theory is that the type of general behaviors that conservatives demonstrate more often than liberals (for example xenophobia) probably contribute to their overall support of such practices as torture. It is common knowledge that liberals reach out to outside of their own group more than conservatives. This sort of ties in with a discussion we had a few days ago, about how beliefs influence group behavior. I think you wrote about how in biological terms it is actually group-specific altruism to go to great lengths to protect the group.
Regarding competition in primates, I wish we humans had evolved in conditions of food abundance, like the Bonobos did. We would have adopted less violent ways of conflict resolution :)
It's ironic that the supposedly christian folks have become advocates of torture.
Guess they forgot that "golden rule" thing that Jesus kept talking about....sad.
It never ceases to amaze me how easily the flock can be led astray by unscrupulous and control hungry religious leaders and how pervasive and intractable this phenomenon is.
Clearly there is no substitute for learning how to think for yourself. Civilization depends on it.
Why? Because critical thinking is at an all-time low as an activity in our society. And because people are inclined to believe whatever confirms their prejudices.
The poll is devastating indictment of something, but it isn't religion.
God tells them what to do in their everyday lives, they do it.
George W. Bush, who was somewhat the political messiah for these people, tells them torture is a good thing and they think it as well. It doesn't matter if torture and Christianity contradict, they are edicts from figures they trust and believe and therefor good.