Remember the dark days of international travel, back when Bush/Cheney were kicking tail and taking names? When sneered at by an effeminate French waiter, we would claim “Canadian” and recite Curling statistics. We practiced using northern intonations and ending sentences with “eh?” Looking back, it was pretty ugly.

But today? Not so bad. The Pew Global Attitudes Project just released data on the perception of America by other nations. Since President Obama’s inauguration, things have been looking up. The survey of people in fifty-five nations showed better attitudes toward the United States in places as disparate as Western Europe, Africa and Latin America, even in Muslim nations.

And get this: For the first time since Pew began making the comparison, people in Turkey, Egypt, and Indonesia (each with mostly Muslim populations) expressed greater confidence in the American President than they did in Osama bin Laden. I would have loved to be a locust on the wall of his cave when bin Laden got that news! 

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Last week I wrote a blog about Christians supporting torture. If you peeled back my very thick skull, here’s what you would have seen inside my brain: Mark reading about the Bush Administration debating their torture program . . . Mark thinking about 78% of Evangelical Christians voting for Bush . . . Mark believing that they must feel so sorry now . . . Mark reading a new survey showing Evangelicals support torture . . . Mark writing my blog and intending to title it “Evangelicals Should Feel Free to Torture Bush”. . . Mark using his brain, thinking twice, and changing the title.

(DISCLAIMER: I am not a theologian, nor have I ever played one on TV. I am a curious person who would like to discuss the issue. I am not trying to offend you and I do not want to tarnish your sterling worldview.)

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Christians want to torture people. Well, maybe they don’t want to ACTUALLY torture people, they just want other people to torture people. More than any other group in a recent survey.

 

This all started when I was reading about the remarkable series of events that transpired in the Bush White House, as the President and his leaders debated how to continue a programmatic approach for torture. Reading through the articles, it occurred to me that one of the primary groups to support Bush’s second term were evangelical Christians. I looked it up, just to be sure, and found a Pew poll that confirmed my assumption. After Bush’s second election, Pew reported that “Bush received 78% of the vote among white evangelicals, up 10% from 2000.”

 

So I’m thinking, “I bet those people sure feel bad today!” Bet they quietly slipped into their two car garages, leaned over the back of their SUV, and shaved off the blue and white Bush/Cheney bumper stickers, carefully placing all the sticky evidence into a black bag. No Christian would ever support torture. No way.

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