News sites have been buzzing with the results of a Pew survey finding that those who attend church most regularly are also the most likely to say torture of terrorist suspects is “sometimes” or “often” justified. My colleague at Christianity Today, David Neff, has a well written post on the CT blog analyzing the data. Here’s an excerpt:

As more and more details have emerged about U.S. government use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” (which our own government has called “torture” at other times), the debate has been shaped by the questions, “Does it work?” and “Did it work?” In my opinion, the picture emerging from the evidence suggests that not enough attention was paid to what we did know about effective interrogation before we rushed into the use of torture (or “enhanced interrogation techniques”).

But the question “Does it work?” presupposes a utilitarian ethic. Utilitarian ethics tends to weigh the magnitude of a potential good against its costs (the greatest good for the greatest number). But evangelicals have been eager to reject utilitarian ethics when addressing other issues — embryonic stem-cell research and population-control programs, for example. Even if embryonic stem-cell research turned out to be the best way to cure Parkinson’s disease, most evangelicals would oppose it, just as we would oppose abortion even if it were shown to reduce, say, food insecurity. By the same token, even if torture produced reliable information about terrorist activity, we should reject it. We are people of principle. Our principles were historically at the root of human rights action and the development of the Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions, and any number of other moral crusades that put principle above utilitarianism. Our principles should now motivate us to lead the world in rejecting torture of any human being, for any reason.

Read the entire post here.

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