Evangelical Right: Who Would Jesus Send To A Secret Prison In Syria For Waterboarding?

The fabulous Randall Balmer, go read his book now, sounds off on our morally bankrupt rendition program and the war in Iraq: [From the Philadelphia Inquirer]

Where is the "moral majority" when we need it? [...] On the defining moral issues of our day, the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's use of torture against those it has designated as "enemy combatants," these "voices of morality" are strangely silent. [...] Christian theologians through the centuries have developed criteria for determining whether or not armed conflict is justified. For instance, is it a defensive war? Have all alternatives been exhausted? Is the use of military force roughly proportional to the provocation? Does military intervention stand a reasonable chance of success? Have measures been taken to protect civilians? I've yet to be convinced that the invasion of Iraq meets any of these criteria.

Similarly, the religious right has been silent on the matter of torture, conducted either by American personnel in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay or by proxy in places like Egypt and Syria under a cynical policy known as "extraordinary rendition."

Several months ago, I canvassed eight prominent religious right organizations, including the Moral Majority Coalition, Falwell's group, for their views on torture. My query was straightforward: Please send me, I asked, a copy of your organization's position on the use of torture. These are groups that have detailed position papers on everything, including stem-cell research and same-sex unions, yet only two answered my query. Both of them defended the Bush administration's policies on torture. No organization associated with the religious right has yet, to my knowledge, summoned the will to issue a statement of unequivocal opposition to the use of torture.

These are people who claim to be "pro-life" and who profess to hear a "fetal scream." Yet they turn a deaf ear to the very real screams of fully formed human beings who are tortured in our name.

The religious right's indifference toward the ethical issues surrounding war and torture is hardly befitting those who designate themselves the moral arbiters of our society. If my fellow evangelicals aspire to be the conscience of America, they had better liberate themselves from their captivity to the Republican Party and to the morally bankrupt policies of the Bush administration.