Associated Baptist Press
March 3, 2009 · (09-30)
David Wilkinson, Executive Director
Robert Marus, Managing Editor/Washington Bureau Chief
Bob Allen, Senior Writer
In this issue
Christians, other torture opponents call for comission to investigate (428 words)
Mercer conference calls Christians to 'creation care' (746 words)
Study: Churchgoers like porn, but don't buy it on the Sabbath (589 words)
Correction
Christians, other torture opponents call for commission to investigate
By Robert Marus (428 words)
WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A coalition of religious leaders who oppose the United States' use of torture in the fight against terrorism called March 3 for a "truth commission" to investigate government policy and allegations of inhumane actions against terrorism detainees under the previous administration.
The National Religious Campaign Against Torture released the statement, signed by 23 prominent religious leaders from a wide variety of faith traditions, on the eve of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings scheduled to delve into the subject.
"We call for an impartial, nonpartisan, and independent Commission of Inquiry," the statement said. "Its purpose should be to gather all the facts and make recommendations. It should ascertain the extent to which our interrogation practices have constituted torture and 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.' Understanding the causes, nature and scope of U.S.-sponsored torture is essential for preventing it in the future and eliminating it from our system without loopholes. U.S. law will determine the extent of any criminal culpability."
It continued: "As people of faith, we know that brokenness can be healed -- both in individual lives and in the life of the nation. All religions believe that redemption is possible. Learning the truth can set us on a path toward national healing and renewal."
Baptist signers of the statement were Stan Hastey, minister for mission and ecumenism at the Alliance of Baptists; and David Gushee, president of Evangelicals for Human Rights and professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta. Gushee also writes a weekly column for Associated Baptist Press.
The call came a day after Justice Department officials released nine previously classified memoranda, produced by lawyers for President Bush, outlining sweeping presidential powers to circumvent legal constraints established by Congress on interrogation techniques and other aspects of detainee treatment.
Bush's White House claimed the authority described in the memos in response to the post-9/11 terrorism threat. Some torture opponents and civil libertarians have said the powers claimed by the memos went even further than they thought Bush's administration had.
Several similar memos are believed also to exist, but remain classified.
The Judiciary Committee hearings, scheduled to begin March 4, will explore creation of a formal commission to investigate government policy on interrogation techniques under the Bush administration. The panel's chairman, Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, has called for such a body. So has his House counterpart, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).
While President Obama followed through on a campaign promise to revoke controversial Bush policies on interrogation and treatment of terrorism detainees, the White House has rebuffed calls by many torture opponents to investigate Bush officials.
Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.
Mercer conference calls Christians to 'creation care'
By Mark Vanderhoek (746 words)
ATLANTA (ABP) -- Faith leaders at a Feb. 27-28 Mercer University conference challenged participants to re-engage themselves, their faiths and their communities to address the moral and ethical implications of climate change.
Titled "Caring for Creation: Ethical Responses to Climate Change," the conference was held on Mercer's Atlanta campus as part of a campus-wide ethics program and was presented in conjunction with Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment.
At the opening session on Feb. 27, Cheryl Bridges Johns of the Church of God Theological Seminary noted that humans are becoming disconnected from their roots in the natural world through urbanization, the increasing reliance on science to explain the world or the increase in technology's role in their daily lives.
Confronting global climate change requires getting through to people who are suffering "enchantment-deficit disorder," she said. Humankind's divorce from nature and from God's creation -- and the wonderment and enchantment from that creation -- is part of the struggle for religious and moral leaders in confronting climate change, Johns said.
"I believe that we can re-enchant the world," she said. "As a person of faith, I believe I can live an enchanted life of faith, a spirited life, where I see, sometimes as the ancient Celts, that the veil between this world and the world that is to come getting very, very thin in certain places. And sometimes I see that in nature and it's a glorious expression of that which is to come.
"So creation care and caring for creation, to me, means that we become enchanted, we become re-enchanted," Johns continued. "We can be great scientists and wonder. We can be astute physicians and wonder. We can be wonderful people, who are teachers and lawyers and pastors, and wonder, can't we?"
The event included more than 200 students, faculty and staff from the Atlanta campus, as well as a contingent from Mercer's main campus in Macon, Ga.
David Gushee, a Christian ethics professor at Mercer and one of the event's organizers, said the conference stemmed, in part, from his work with a group of scientists and evangelical leaders examining whether the two groups could "come to a common mind on issues of climate change." The Mercer event was the first full-scale event on a college campus highlighting those issues as a part of the scientist-evangelical effort, which began in 2006.
On Feb. 28, the conference broke into sessions focusing on ways to address climate change including public health, greening the campus, individual lifestyle changes and public-policy efforts.
In a session on the ethical implications of climate change, Gushee (who also writes a regular column for Associated Baptist Press) said Christians need to focus their energies on creation care because it is part of their overall calling. It goes hand-in-hand with their care of all life, human and animal -- and particularly in light of their role as stewards who were given power over the Earth by God.
"Climate change is an example of a moral issue, where even paying attention to the well-being of humanity requires some address of this problem," he said. "I think we are in a time where we need to re-read sacred Scriptures to see the connections, for example, between human beings and other creatures, to see the web of life that was already set up as revealed in the early chapters of Genesis. We need to reinterpret rule as stewardship and care. We need to see the way in which the Bible teaches us the covenant relationship between God and the other creatures and between us and the other creatures."
Johns also highlighted the stewardship called for by faith and, even with interpretations of the Bible's apocalyptic passages that seem to indicate that global warming may hasten the return of Christ. Christians, she said, should focus on making the world like it will be on the day he does return, rather than on hastening his return through indifference to climate destruction.
"Let us not live with our eschatology out there.... Let us live with the eschatology of the day here, and that's a very different theme, because if we live with that day here, that day will judge this day," Johns said. "That day will judge how I live, so if that day is going to be a day of beauty and creation, it's judging this day in which I live. So eschatology to me doesn't hinder creation care, as much as it facilitates creation care."
Mark Vanderhoek is director of media relations at Mercer University.
Study: Churchgoers like porn, but don't buy it on the Sabbath
By Bob Allen (589 words)
BOSTON (ABP) -- According to a new study, people who live in states with high church-attendance rates buy as much Internet pornography as their more secularized counterparts -- but they are less likely to subscribe to an adult website on Sundays.
Researcher Benjamin Edelman said subscriptions to a top-10 seller of online adult entertainment he studied are not statistically different in pious states from subscription rates elsewhere, but significantly fewer subscriptions in religious states are purchased on the Christian Sabbath.
"This analysis suggests that, on the whole, those who attend religious services shift their consumption of adult entertainment to other days of the week, despite on average consuming the same amount of adult entertainment as others," Edelman, an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, wrote in the study.
Studies of Americans' beliefs generally reveal some of the highest levels of religiosity in the developed world. For example, 68 percent of Americans say the Bible is the word of God and is to be taken literally. At the same time, social critics have argued the rise of Internet pornography is contributing to a coarsening of American culture.
Edelman, an expert in electronic commerce, set out to learn if consumption patterns of adult entertainment would reveal two separate Americas, or if porn consumption is widespread regardless of factors such as moral conservatism and religious conviction.
Edelman analyzed anonymous credit-card purchases of online porn by ZIP codes and factored in the availability of broadband Internet access in the surveyed areas. Broadband connections allow faster downloading of images and video, and broadband users outnumber narrowband customers on adult sites 18 to 1.
Edelman found Democratic- and Republican-leaning states "remarkably similar" to each other in patterns of consumption of online porn. In fact, he found adult-site subscriptions slightly more prevalent in states that have enacted conservative laws on social issues, such as "defense of marriage" amendments.
He also found online porn more prevalent in states whose residents tended to express more conservative religious views in studies, such as agreeing with the statements, "I never doubt the existence of God" and "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior."
The biggest per-capita consumer of online porn is Utah, home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That state averaged 5.47 adult-content subscriptions per 1,000 home-broadband users. Widely known for its family-friendly image, the Mormon church received backlash last year for working hard to pass Proposition 8, which eliminated the right of marriage for same-sex couples in California.
Six of the top-10 states for porn-subscription rates are familiar territory for Baptists. Mississippi, the state with the highest concentration of Southern Baptist churches, ranked third with 4.30 subscribing homes per 1,000, between Alaska (5.03) and Hawaii (3.61).
Oklahoma ranked fifth (3.21), followed by Arkansas (3.12) North Dakota (3.05), Louisiana (3.01), Florida (3.01) and West Virginia (2.94).
Montana bought the least on-line porn, 1.92 subscriptions per 1,000 broadband connections. Also ranking near the bottom were Idaho (1.98 per 1,000) and Tennessee (2.13).
The study said Americans spend $2.8 billion a year for online porn. More than a third of Internet users visit at least one adult website a month, and the average user visits adult websites between seven and eight times a month.
Edelman noted the irony in the most conservative religious states also being some of the most porn-hungry.
"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," Edelman said in an article in New Scientist magazine.
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Correction
In the March 2 ABP story, "Senate scandal divides state
Democrats over race," please replace the third paragraph with the
following:
"White Democrats -- including Burris' Senate colleague Dick Durbin and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn -- want the senator to step down and allow voters to decide his replacement. African-American politicians and clergy leaders claim Burris is being held to a higher standard than the other 99 senators."
The original story erroneously reported that Attorney General Lisa Madigan is among Democrats calling for U.S. Sen. Roland Burris to resign. A Madigan spokesperson said the attorney general issued a legal opinion that a special election could be held to remove Burris from office, but has not called for him to step down.
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