Southern Baptists say waterboarding is torture
Jim Galloway over at Political Insider reports a reassuring decision from the Southern Baptist Convention: Torture is wrong, waterboarding is torture, and we should never ever do it.
To which I say: Amen, brothers and sisters. Amen.
“NASHVILLE, Tenn.—There is no room for torture as part of the United States’ intelligence-gathering process, Richard Land said today. He also said he believes the practice known as “waterboarding” is torture and, as such, is unethical.
Land, president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said there is no circumstance in which torture should be permissible in interrogations by U.S. officials, even if the authorities believe a prisoner has information that might involve national security.
“I don’t agree with the belief that we should use any means necessary to extract information,” said Land. “I believe there are absolutes. There are things we must never do under any circumstances.
“For me the ultimate test is: Could I, in good conscience, do whatever I am authorizing or condoning others to do? If not, then I must oppose the action. If I could not waterboard someone—and I couldn’t—then I must oppose its practice….”
“It violates everything we believe in as a country,” Land said, reflecting on the words in the Declaration of Independence: that “all men are created equal” and that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
“There are some things you should never do to another human being, no matter how horrific the things they have done. If you do so, you demean yourself to their level,” he said.
I’m sincerely glad they’ve said that. I might wish they had said it a few years earlier, but late is better than not at all.
I’ve been in a heated debate with a Christian conservative friend of mine on the issue, and when I ask how he can square his support for waterboarding with his faith in Christ, the subject suddenly changes.
That’s because, as Land acknowledges, they cannot be squared.
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121 comments Add your comment
Bosch
May 7th, 2009
12:07 pm
Southern Baptists like to see people tortured. Believe me, I was raised one, and was tortured every Sunday.
DB, Gwinnettian
May 7th, 2009
12:08 pm
Not often I say this, but good for the SBC.
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
12:09 pm
Duh!. No kidding.
Bosch
May 7th, 2009
12:10 pm
And when the sudden change – didn’t I just read not too long ago about a Pew poll where most Christian conservatives agreed with it?
Bosch
May 7th, 2009
12:12 pm
Such a fun topic – it’s right up Bosch’s alley, but I gotta run out.
Later.
DB, Gwinnettian
May 7th, 2009
12:13 pm
I just read not too long ago about a Pew poll where most Christian conservatives agreed with it?
well, the question was such that it could be an option under certain circumstances. To be honest, you would expect a pretty decent chunk of folks to think “ticking time bomb” and say “yes.”
Not excusing it, but let’s do keep this in the here and now.
I Report :-) / You Whine :-(
May 7th, 2009
12:15 pm
Yawn.
eewwwww, a caterpiller!
~~~~~~
If anyone in Atlanta still believes the Urinal isn’t biased for democrats and for Obozo in particular, please explain this-
Obama to propose budget reductions
After a line-by-line scrub of the federal budget, President Barack Obama has signed off on a roster of 121 budget cuts to save taxpayers $17 billion, a senior White House official said.-Urinal
Wow, a big fat 17 billion dollar cut, in defense spending no less, gee, that really puts a dent in the 500 Billion Dollar increase over 2009.
Toadies.
TW
May 7th, 2009
12:25 pm
Does the SBC deny that ‘w’ successfully wiped his backside with them, therefore rendering their voice null?
Who freaking cares what morons ‘think.’
I Report :-) / You Whine :-(
May 7th, 2009
12:26 pm
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obozo proposed on Thursday nearly doubling funds to enforce U.S. tax laws next year, with an aim of more than quadrupling funding for tax compliance to $2.1 billion within five years.
Geez, how many democrats hearts just fluttered.
He’s comin to git you!
TnGelding
May 7th, 2009
12:27 pm
Bosch
May 7th, 2009
12:07 pm
Not to mention the guilt and shame.
TnGelding
May 7th, 2009
12:28 pm
I Report
/ You Whine 
May 7th, 2009
12:15 pm
I agree with you on this one, and let the WH know it.
TnGelding
May 7th, 2009
12:29 pm
I Report
/ You Whine 
May 7th, 2009
12:26 pm
And there’s a good chance you, as well. See you in court!
Mrs. Godzilla
May 7th, 2009
12:30 pm
That’s great news.
Has anybody seen anywhere if Pope “Red Shoes” Benedict has had the same
message?
getalife
May 7th, 2009
12:30 pm
Time: Joe The Plumber Quitting The GOP
Aw man, first the wingnuts against torture and now this.
DB, Gwinnettian
May 7th, 2009
12:34 pm
I agree with you on this one,
Why? I’ve no problem with going after tax cheats.
Given the Gooper mass hysteria over Geithner’s $42K total tax liability+fines over five years, witnessing their various fainting spells and pearl-clutching episodes over these perceived infractions, you’d think they’d welcome more enforcement.
Or, gosh, you think Andy’s just trying to distract from a topic that makes him uncomfortable? nah, couldn’t be.
Mrs. Godzilla
May 7th, 2009
12:34 pm
Off Topic
I see where Charlie Crist may have a tough day tomorrow……
DB, Gwinnettian
May 7th, 2009
12:35 pm
Has anybody seen anywhere if Pope “Red Shoes” Benedict has had the same
message?
Ratzi’s been pretty reliably (if by-the-numbers) anti-war, I’d be shocked if his RCC weren’t opposed to torture too.
Redneck Convert
May 7th, 2009
12:36 pm
Well, I didn’t hear the Rev. Land say it so I don’t beleive it. Besides, we got to know alot more before we take the quote serious. Like, was his fingers crossed behind his back when he said it?
Anyhow, I was saying just the other day we need a Change in Leadership to the Southren Baptist Convention. The people in charge there have got out of step with us Southren rednecks. If we say waterboarding ain’t torture the SBC ought to back us up. Instead of hinting what we beleive is Sin.
They won’t never stop till I’m standing guard in front of my trailer with my anti-tank weapon and my two machine guns. Which I use for hunting and self-defense. It will all end real bad. Sooner or later somebody named Abdul will show up out of nowhere here in Simpsons Trailer Park. These Gitmo prisoners need to get the Death Penalty quick to save us all from the Terrists or else the libruls will turn them loose to live amongst us. You’ll find out one day when you wake up with your head on the floor in a corner and the rest of you still on the bed.
Have a good p.m. everybody.
ty webb
May 7th, 2009
12:38 pm
So now their opinion matters? I thought they were backward, christofascist, bigotted, talibaptist, hate filled, theocrats. I guess the left really is tolerant of different views. Maybe Jay could buy Mr.Land a beer. Just don’t do it on Sunday.
getalife
May 7th, 2009
12:41 pm
Perhaps they do not want to spend eternity with the enemy and the whiner †
Brad Steel
May 7th, 2009
12:42 pm
WOW, that’s radical for the SBC.
Where do they stand on dancing now days?
Pokey
May 7th, 2009
12:46 pm
JB,
You support abortion…could you commit an abortion?
I Report/ You Whine
May 7th, 2009
12:47 pm
TN- The first hurdle we have to clear would be me, cheating on my taxes.
That is not even an optional scenario.
I can think of far more better things to do with my time then warding off a mindless, benevolent and idiotic bureaucracy that I have unleashed upon myself.
And for what?
Not gonna happen, I leave a cushion for the “auditors” every year, just in case.
By the way, I do know a few off shore accounters, and they all lean democrat, hahahaha.
Have fun with Obozo, y’all.
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
12:50 pm
It took 30 years for Republicans to raise those defense budgets so high. Its going to take more than 3 and a half months to bring them down again.
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
12:55 pm
Plus you have thirty years of Republican opposition to requiring the same budgetary scrutiny to defense budgets that are applied to other parts of the budget. The Pentagon is still riddled with waste and is basically a black hole into which money is shoveled, with no rhyme or reason over how its being spend. The Pentagon spends money so poorly that the government cannot even keep track of what it is purchasing and billions of dollars of items purchased by the Defense Department cannot even be located, or are often sold off as surplus on the Defense Departments surplus website before they are even used by the various arms of the military they were purchased at. For example in 2003, before the invasion of Iraq, the government purchased special suits to protect the troops against chemical weapons for 200 dollars a pop, and they were being sold by the Pentagon as surplus for 3 dollars each even before the invasion started.
TnGelding
May 7th, 2009
12:58 pm
I Report/ You Whine
May 7th, 2009
12:47 pm
Well, if you’ve never fudged, just a little, then you’re a better person than I am. You can rationalize irrationally when you owe them money you don’t have. And you can also justify it because it is unfair. The changes to the code in 1986 threw me for a loop.
TnGelding
May 7th, 2009
1:00 pm
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
12:55 pm
As long as the money is spent (wasted?) here, I don’t have as much of a problem with it. It’s putting food on someone’s table.
Copyleft
May 7th, 2009
1:03 pm
How odd (and refreshing) to see the Southern Baptists acting like Christians!
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
1:07 pm
RCC has been consistantly opposed to torture for years. You can even blame the New Deal on a Roman Catholic Monseignor, John. Roosevelt simply took an ideas from a Roman Catholic official for social welfare and modified it slightly:
Ryan’s influential response was the development of a Catholic critique of the American capitalist system that emphasized the existence of absolute natural human rights. While Ryan identified primarily as a moral theologian, he also made important contributions to American political life and economic thought. He supported a number of social reforms that were eventually incorporated into the New Deal, and have become elemental to the modern welfare state. Ryan’s most well-known contribution to American economic thought was his argument for a minimum wage presented in his doctoral dissertation, A Living Wage. Ryan recognized the importance of a “synergistic relation among scholarship, moral teaching, and political activism,” which led to his vigorous application of moral thinking to the political arena.
With regard to torture, its the same papal document that opposes abortion that also opposed torture and promotes social welfare programs.
jewcowboy
May 7th, 2009
1:09 pm
Here is news flash as well, most Evangilical and born again Christians believe in climate change as well. Just another way the Republican leaders are not representative of even their base.
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
1:10 pm
Or during the most recent Lent season, Benedict XVI reiterated the Catholic position on torture:
During Lent — and of course in the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary — our minds and hearts are turned to meditating on the sufferings of Our Lord: his agony in the garden before his arrest, his painful scourging, the mocking crowning with thorns, his carrying the cross and his crucifixion. We do well to recall how this was visited upon Jesus with state sanction if only to understand why the Church in her teachings condemns torture. Pope Benedict XVI, in a Sept. 6, 2007, address, said, “I reiterate that the prohibition against torture ‘cannot be contravened under any circumstances.’” Torture undermines and debases the human dignity of both victims and perpetrators.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/column.php?n=156
Simply put, under Catholic Doctrine, there is nothing that ever justifies torture.
Taxpayer
May 7th, 2009
1:12 pm
Well, dang, Jay. There’s all the proof we need that there are not any right wingers of the Southern Baptist mindset on this here blog.
jewcowboy
May 7th, 2009
1:12 pm
Copyleft,
Don’t worry there are plenty of other topics that the Southern Baptists can be hypocrites on.
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
1:13 pm
However, the Defense waste of putting food on someone elses table is a rather inefficient way of doing it. For every dollar spent, it puts 3 cents worth of food on a table. Other methods put a dollar, or more on the table, and create jobs, more jobs and more profit for businesses as well.
Pokey
May 7th, 2009
1:19 pm
NJ,
The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is always wrong and nothing can justify it. Do you oppose abortion? Is abortion always wrong?? Or are you one of those “personally opposed” folks??
I wonder if someone can be “perosnally opposed” to torture but not feel compelled to impose those beliefs on someone else??
Hmmm…
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
1:21 pm
All the whining about the bailout of GM neglects a key point. Who makes American military vehicles. GM makes 71 percent of them ford makes 14 percent. Military vehicles however, dont generate enough money to keep those industries running. Toyota makes some, but because of security concerns, they dont make many, nor the ones that have the most advanced technology in them.
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
1:22 pm
A rather disturbing turn of events was when the U.S. started farming out its Jeep production to Egypt.
Susan Myers
May 7th, 2009
1:28 pm
What is the Southern Baptist stand now on women in the pulpit?
TnGelding
May 7th, 2009
1:29 pm
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
1:13 pm
Yeah, it would be better to “invest” in something else. But like I said, as long as it’s spent here, I don’t have as much of a problem with it.
Speaking of jobs. Would you believe it?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090506/pl_nm/us_arms_pentagon_5
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
1:29 pm
I cant say, since I have never been pregnant, and am 100 percent unlikely to ever be, I cant look into another person’s conscience. like most American Catholics, I dont hold the same position that the Church does on abortion all the time. If a doctor is treating a woman who will die if she does not have an abortion, and judges that the child has zero chance of making it to term because of that condition (which is virtually always the case in conditions like pre-eclampsia and eclampsia, which occur in 12 percent of pregnancies, I would leave it to the conscience of both the doctor and the woman who, according to Catholic Doctrine, has an equal right to protect her own life. The right of a human to protect their own life is another absolute in Catholic Doctrine, so is the right to personal concience, which is the single thing that superceded Papal authority in Catholic Doctrine. If you are well informed in Catholic Doctrine, your conscience is the final arbiter of your actions). Do I like abortion. No not really. But its not my place to decide what another person chooses to do and another extremely important concept in Catholicism is that you cannot “legislate” morality.
Susan Myers
May 7th, 2009
1:30 pm
And oh yeah, has Sheyawn Insanity Hannity been waterboarded yet?
Mrs. Godzilla
May 7th, 2009
1:30 pm
Yes, Boys and Girls, I know the RCC isn’t pro-tortue.
What I’m looking for from Pope Red Shoes is some international leadership on this. (My favorite John 23, Cardinal Roncalli, would have been hollering about this from that balcony of his)
Hillbilly Deluxe
May 7th, 2009
1:30 pm
Speaking as an independent Baptist, the Southern Baptist Convention doesn’t speak for me on this or any other issue. The Baptist churches that I grew up in, you were taught to read the Bible for yourself and form your own opinion. In my view that’s kind of why we are Protestants. We don’t answer to a Pope, a preacher, or anyone but Jesus on matters of Faith.
I think Cal Thomas was right when he said that it was a mistake for churches to inject themselves into politics back in the 80’s.
Wyld Byll Hyltnyr
May 7th, 2009
1:33 pm
Jay, am I being censored once more or is my most recent post hung in le filter? Thanks.
ByteMe
May 7th, 2009
1:33 pm
NJ: if the production of military vehicles were profitable, then let some other defense contractor swoop in and buy it up from the bondholders. If it’s not, well… I’ll be SHOCKED(!) since you rarely hear about a defense contractor filing for bankruptcy because they didn’t make enough on their contract.
SuperDave
May 7th, 2009
1:36 pm
A while back I proposed a question to Corporal on this topic. He danced around it several times, but never really answered the question until I got the infamous, “Agree to Disagree, thanks for the input.”
But here goes again for those of you with a Christian persuasion:
If Jesus were here today, what do you think he would say to us about the use of torture to extract information from prisoners?
Qualifiers:
Define torture any way you want, but it has to meet your definition of it.
Assume any situation you want – family member in danger, ticking time bomb scenario, one persons life in danger or a million lives in danger – doesn’t matter.
Assume any individual you choose as the prisoner – uniformed soldier or not, terrorist or not, murderer, any religion – doesn’t matter.
You must be a Christian and/or believe that Jesus is the Son of God, is infallible and without sin. If you don’t believe that, I’d ask that you make that assumption.
What do you think Jesus would say?
After much thought and prayer over this question, I have my answer, but I would be interested to see what some others here may think.
Thanks
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
1:39 pm
Then I am a better person than you, myself. I have never fudged on my taxes. Never even had the opportunity to. I have been told I paid too much and got it back well after the original return, but thats another thing.
Before the tax code was changed in the 1980’s it was a lot harder to cheat at all. You could do it, but it was a lot more difficult, simply because there were far fewer deductions etc. The Tax Simplifaction Act increased the Number of pages in the IRS code from 17,000 pages to 43,000 pages. Talk about an Orwellian title.
The more deductions that are possible, the more possibilities of fudging, cheating, or even just making a mistake there are. The worse thing is that there are rather broad degrees of interpretation allowed for each deduction, and the majority of the deductions are business deductions, and in these cases, the fudging and cheating is more often then not the result of very loose interpretation by the accountants. On the other hand there is far less leeway in the sort of deductions taken by the average person whose primary source of income is a salary and maybe the interest on their bank accounts, and perhaps, the mortgage deduction.75 percent of all filers use the simple forms, the 1040 A or 1040 EZ which should tell you something. Not much to play with there. Three out of four filers dont itemize at all.
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
1:41 pm
Many of those who have mortgages dont even qualify for the mortgage deduction at all, because their annual mortgage interest doesnt exceed the standard deduction. It either balances to even or comes in under.
N.J,
May 7th, 2009
1:52 pm
The one problem with being a protestant and interpreting the bible for yourself is problematic at best, because that results in many different interpretations. In the case of abortion for example, or gay marriage, for example, you run very wide gamut of possible positions depending on which church you are looking at. The Baptists for example would never, at this time at least, appoint an openly homosexual person to their highest leadership or clerical positions. The Episcopaleans would.
While the Protestant Churches theoretically interpret scripture for themselves, in the end they still came up with authority figures and bodies who set a sort of “orthodoxy” of opinion and theological ideas, in their ministers and national councils like the Southern Baptist Convention. its the SBC that acts in the place of the Pope and his advisors. The Pope may be considered infalable on issues of faith, but he is also required to have a very large group of advisors to advise him on many issues. The Current Pope was prior to his election to the office, the chief advisor to the Pope on issues of Church Law and Catechesis. And in his office, he had his own advisors. Nothing really occurs on the spur of the moment and a lot of talk goes on before any decision is made by a Pope. The same is so in the SBC, except they do not have the same sort of hierarchy. But they do have a head of the conference.
One of the most typical things about humans is that we are organizing animals. Sooner or later the establishment of a hierarchy of authority is created to determing what is orthodoxy, what is heterodoxy, and what is heretical. There is a good Sufi Muslim joke about that.
God and Satan were walking down a road one day, and all of a sudden god stopped, stooped and picked something up that was lying in the road. God says “Ah, a bit of the truth” Satan responds, “Here let me have that. I will organize it for you”
RB from Gwinnett
May 7th, 2009
1:54 pm
Gee Jay, do you have a report on their position on gay marriage you’d like to share too? Didn’t think so, Jay. You don’t have the intellectual honesty for that.
Interesting the AJC’s poll asking if waterboarding is torture is not looking good for the whiny libs.
And to someone’s question about what Jesus would do. First, he already knows what you’re thinking so he doesn’t need to extract it from you. Second, he wouldn’t condone abortion or gay marriage and I don’t believe he would vote for a socialist who represents the party of Godless people to the highest office in the land. Unless you really want to know what Jesus would do in all circumstances, you’re better off leaving that line of questioning in the stable.