A new Pew poll suggests a correlation in church attendance and approval of torture. The research findings were based on a survey of 742 American adults, which to be fair isn’t a huge amount but a moderate number of subjects. And of those 742 people. . .
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.
Again, obviously there’s nothing conclusive here but I do get a slight bit of satisfaction over the finding that those least religious were less likely to support torture than those who belong to the cult of death known as Christianity.
It’s difficult to draw any sweeping conclusions from these sorts of surverys. While I would personally find some satisfaction in a conclusion of, “See the religious are hypocrites and monsters,” I think it is a stretch. Because we don’t know what the questions are, how they were asked, what the people who were polled actually heard… The question can be, “Do you think torture is appropriate in some situations” and people hear, “Do you think you and your fellow religious people are ignorant, uneducated, backwoods hicks?” People answer questions in ways that have nothing to do with the poll all the time.