Last night my friend Andrea and I went to see the movie Paranormal Activity. It was the scariest movie I ever saw. I watched the final scenes while peering through my fingers as I held my hands over my face. It's like I was fending off a looming physical threat, protecting my psyche with my hands.

I thought Paranormal Activity was going to be a ghost movie. It's actually about a demon. You can think of the movie as a cross between Blair Witch and The Exorcist. It's like Blair Witch in that it is a low budget independent film that uses a first person style. That is, the filming is done by the people in the movie. We, as viewers, watch the recovered film left behind. Paranormal Activity is like The Exorcist in that the film is rooted in one location, a house, with most of the action occurring in a bedroom. And, like The Exorcist, the issue is a girl and a demonic possession (or haunting).

It was a very effective film. Andrea and I were both pretty freaked out. On the way home she asked me, "Why do people like going to scary movies?" I didn't have a great answer. The two I floated were:

1. Physiological: We like physiological arousal. So we ski, ride rollercoasters, drive fast, take risks gambling and go to suspenseful or scary movies.
2. Psychodynamic: We like to confront death or the uncanny. We like to confront and process our fears.

I don't know if those answers are right. So I thought I'd float the question: Why do we like going to scary movies?

In the fourth post of this series we talked about empathy and torture, showing that if you increase empathy you reduce pro-torture sentiment. My second team of students--Whitney, Alison and Courtney--approached this same topic from a different angle.

Specifically, they noted that these torture questions tend to be very abstract. There is usually just a generic reference to a captured "terrorist." Very little humanizing information is given. More, the word "terrorist" acts like a cipher, allowing us to project stereotypes into the blank. We usually think the terrorist is a male and Muslim. Beyond that, we add few personalizing details, details that might show similarities between ourselves and the terrorist.

Given all this, this team did a simple manipulation. What if we added personalizing information to one of these torture questions like the one the Pew Research Center used? Their choice focused on manipulating information about having a family and children.

One group of participants read the following description before rating torture endorsement. No family information was included:

No Family Context Prime:
A suspected terrorist has been captured by the US military and brought in for questioning. This suspect is believed to have crucial information that could save the lives of many people. However, getting this information may require using torture and other enhanced interrogation tactics. Do you think it is acceptable to use torture in this situation?

A second group of participants read a similar description, but this time family information about the terrorist was included (I've highlighted the change):

Family Context Prime:
A suspected terrorist has been captured by the US military and brought in for questioning. This suspect is a 30 year old male who is married and has two children (boy age 3, girl age 8). He is believed to have crucial information that could save the lives of many people. However, getting this information may require using torture and other enhanced interrogation tactics. Do you think it is acceptable to use torture in this situation?

The students found that adding humanizing detail--in this case information about age, family, and children--significantly reduced torture endorsement.

This outcome isn't surprising, but I find it highly significant. Violence requires dehumanization. Consequently, I worry, as we discussed in the first post, that many Christians, more so than non-Christians, favor torture. It's worrisome in that Christians are allowing their hearts to be affected by the forces of dehumanization. As a result our empathy is being compromised.

To Create an Enemy by Sam Keen
To create an enemy
Start with an empty canvas.
Sketch in broad outline the forms of
men, women, and children.
Obscure the sweet individuality of each face.
Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes,
fears that play through the kaleidoscope of
every finite heart.
Twist the smile until it forms the downward
arc of cruelty.
Exaggerate each feature until man is
metamorphasized into beast, vermin, insect.
Fill in the background with malignant
figures from ancient nightmares—devils,
demons, minions of evil.
When your icon of the enemy is complete
you will be able to kill without guilt,
slaughter without shame.

Awhile back I wrote about being a new dog owner and how surprisingly and unexpectedly happy that experience has been. Over at The Daily Dish they pointed to a website that is collecting YouTube clips of dogs greeting their owners after they return home from a tour in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here's the clip they featured:



If you are a dog owner, you've been greeted by your dog like this many, many times. The joy and excitement they feel is infectious. After a long day at work I love being greeted by Bandit.

In light of the conversation going on (please weigh in if you'd like) concerning my last post, I'd just like to offer up the following mathematical argument to prove that, in fact, I'm a pacifist.

As the comments in my last post show, the conversations about pacifism tend to contemplate extreme scenarios that, for all practical purposes, never occur. Or, if they could occur, we can contemplate an infinity of responses to the situation.

Which means that 99.99999...% of the time I and the 100% pacifist will act identically 99.99999...% of the time. In short, we agree way more than we disagree.

In fact, I can prove, mathematically, that I--the 99.99999...% pacifist--and the 100% pacifist are the same. It has to do with showing that .9999... is equal to 1. The proof:

1. Have x = .9999...
2. Multiply x by 10: 10x = 9.9999...
3. Subtract x from both sides: 10x - x = 9.9999... - .9999...
   
4. This leaves you with: 9x = 9
5. Solving for x gives you: x = 1
   
6. QED: .9999... = 1
   

Which means that I--the 99.9999...% pacifist--am equal to the 100% pacifist!

And there was much rejoicing and merriment...

I think of my grandpa a lot on Veteran's Day, and on Memorial Day and on the 4th of July. He fought in World War 2 and was wounded in France. He was lying down, facing the enemy lines, when a bullet entered his hip, ran the length of his leg, and exited near the foot. He survived, convalesced in France, and came home with a Purple Heart.

When I think about my grandpa I often ask myself questions about pacifism. I do think John Howard Yoder is right. The grain of the universe goes with the pacifists. Theologically, I get that. I know that non-violence is the Christ-like ideal.

But psychologically, I tend to identify with Reinhold Niebuhr. In my heart I'm a realist. I think, like grandpa and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that if I had a chance to kill Hitler I would have tried to kill the son of a bitch. If I saw a man raping a child and I had a baseball bat in my hand I know I'd hit him with it. And if I had to hit him in the head to get him to stop I'd hit him in the head. And if I had to kill him to get him to stop then I would kill him. I know myself, despite my intellectual sentiments and pontifications I know how I'd act in that situation.

Mainly, if you care to know, it has to do with how I feel about bullies. I cannot abide a bully. And when I see someone hurting someone weak and vulnerable a rage takes over. Psychologically, I'm not a pacifist. I hate, I despise, bullies.

But this makes me very sad. Because I know that in trying to kill Hitler or hitting the rapist with a bat that I'm sinning. It's wrong. And I'm guilty. Again, I know Yoder is right. Violence isn't going with the grain of the universe.

In short, and I think Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer would agree with me on this point, the issue of pacifism isn't an ethical issue, as it is often framed. For me, it's a theodicy issue. The world is evil. And I'm stuck in it. And to fend off these evil people, to protect the "least of these", I also commit evil. It's a shitty situation.

But to be clear, I believe in turning the other cheek. My rage isn't self-interested or self-protective. It's other-directed, protecting the weak and small. Hit me all you want. Just don't hit other people, particularly those who can't defend themselves.

But I strongly believe there should be pacifists. As I've argued before, I think communities of pacifism must and should exist. They are like monastic communities in this regard. The pacifist is an eschatological person. Pacifists show us the Day. They show us the grain of the universe. As such, pacifists don't fit in or function well in this Present Age. They will look irrational, paradoxical, inconsistent, immoral and irresponsible. Why? Because pacifists don't belong here. This is not their time. They come from Heaven. They are forerunners of the eschaton.

In short, I think there are Christians who will fight bullies. There are not a whole lot of other options in this broken world. Evil to fight evil. The best you can do is fight mightily within yourself so as not to become a monster in the process. But on this side of heaven we are all monsters. Struggling to hold on to our humanity.

And at the same time I think there are Christians called to pacifism. They walk with the Lamb Who Was Slain, carrying crosses with the grain of the universe. They show us a time to come.

Is this position paradoxical? Yes it is. But it's the only way I can reconcile the tensions in my own heart. I think both Yoder and Niebuhr were right. I embrace them both.

I hope there is never another Hitler. But if there was I think I'd join up. I can't abide a bully. And yet, I'd love and agree with my pacifist brother or sister who called me a sinner. They would be, of course, exactly right about that.



Thinking of you grandpa.

The second study conducted by Page, Bonnie, Dan and Kelsey involved the effects of priming upon torture attitudes. Specifically, the students were struck by the way media outlets invoked different images when talking about the torture debates. Those images activated very different moral impulses.

Our innate moral psychology is a mixed bag. One the one had we have a great capacity for empathy, sympathy and compassion. For example, Adam Smith built his theory of human morality in The Theory of Moral Sentiments around these emotions. On the other hand we have a great capacity for that is called moralistic aggression, the impulse for revenge to "even the score." Moralistic aggression sits behind the notion of lex talionis, the ancient rule of "an eye for an eye."

Both aspects of human moral psychology were (and still are) in play during the torture debates. On the one hand, media pundits and politicians would invoke 9/11. This would prime moralistic aggression, the impulse to repay the terrorists for killing Americans. Moralistic aggression prompts a pro-torture sentiment.

On the other hand, the events of Abu Ghraib were still fresh in our minds. These horrific images prompted empathy and sympathy. Pundits and politicians pushing for investigations of Bush/Cheney tended to prime viewers and listeners with images of Abu Ghraib rather than 9/11.

The students suspected that the media and the politicians were messing around with our moral sentiments, pitting empathy against moralistic aggression depending upon how the torture debate was framed. The students wondered if these various ways of framing the debate were, indeed, effective.

In the study the students had two groups of participants rate the Pew Research question on torture (i.e., Could torture often, sometimes, rarely or never be justified?). But before the two groups rated the question they were exposed to one of two different "frames." The template for each frame was as follows:

Due to current events, there has been increased attention put on the use of torture and enhanced interrogation techniques and its place in US life and policy. Obviously, torture is a controversial subject and evokes strong emotions on both sides of the argument. For instance, we all remember the events of ___ which affect how Americans view the debate. The haunting images from ___ are still fresh in our minds:

This frame was then followed by two pictures. In the 9/11 group the blanks in the frame above was filled in with "9/11." Then these two pictures followed:




These images were selected by the students to prompt moralistic aggression, a desire to get even with the terrorists.

The second group read "Abu Ghraib" in the blanks for the frame. This group then saw these two images:




These images were selected to prompt empathy.

The research question was simple: Would attitudes about torture be affected by how one morally framed the debate? Would an empathy-frame reduce torture endorsement? Would a moralistic aggression-frame promote torture endorsement?

The results confirmed these expectations. Participants with the empathy-frame (Abu Ghraib images) had significantly lower pro-torture ratings relative to the moralistic aggression-frame (9/11 images).

These results are interesting on three counts:

First, how one frames the torture debate affects attitudes and opinions. Beware of how the media is manipulating you! And it's also not surprising that Dick Cheney keeps talking about 9/11 when the issue of torture comes up.

Second, both responses--empathy versus moralistic aggression--seem moral and right to us. Which is scary given that these impulses go in opposite directions. No wonder the debate is full of both conflict and righteous indignation.

Finally, what would Jesus do? Frame the debate with empathy or moralistic aggression?

Given my interests in the psychology of profanity, my friend David at ACU sent me a link to this article in the Boston Globe.

The article discusses a recent study published in NeuroReport by Richard Stephens, John Atkins and Andrew Kingston. Their paper is entitled Swearing as a response to pain. Here's the abstract from the study:

Although a common pain response, whether swearing alters individuals' experience of pain has not been investigated. This study investigated whether swearing affects cold-pressor pain tolerance (the ability to withstand immersing the hand in icy water), pain perception and heart rate. In a repeated measures design, pain outcomes were assessed in participants asked to repeat a swear word versus a neutral word. In addition, sex differences and the roles of pain catastrophising, fear of pain and trait anxiety were explored. Swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing. However, swearing did not increase pain tolerance in males with a tendency to catastrophise. The observed pain-lessening (hypoalgesic) effect may occur because swearing induces a fight-or-flight response and nullifies the link between fear of pain and pain perception.

Neuroimaging research suggests that we store the denotations and connotations of words in different parts of the brain. For example, "sexual intercourse," "making love," and "f**king" all have the same denotation (i.e., they all point to the same activity). This denotation appears to be stored in the cerebral cortex (temporal and frontal lobes). However, the connotation (emotional coloring) of each word is very different. These emotional overtones appear to be stored in the limbic system of the brain. This is why, when we hit our thumbs with a hammer, we involuntarily curse. The word spits out from the limbic system without the forethought and control of the frontal cortex (which inhibits the impulses of the limbic system).

Given this close association between pain, emotion and profanity this new research is not surprising, but it does suggest that profanity might have a coping function, a means to activate the fight or flight response in the face of injury.

Here's a thought balloon about all this. Given the association between emotion and swearing what happens when pleasure and joy are activated? That is, in the NeuroReport research we see swearing in response to negative emotion. But what about positive emotion? Might this be the explanation for why people, even irreligious people, exclaim "Oh my God!" when happy or surprised? Seriously, watch a reality TV show where someone is incredibly and joyously surprised. People just say, "Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!" over and over again. How might that flip our notions of "taking the Lord's name in vain"? People involuntarily saying "God" when joyous?

Maybe saying "Oh my God" isn't a sin a all...

Interesting article (H/T to George) about science overreaching a bit when it comes to the business of prediction.

From Stuart Blackman's piece:

At its most enthusiastic, science has always been prone to promise rather more, and sooner, than it has managed to deliver. It can sometimes feel as if cures for diseases are forever 10 years off, while nuclear fusion seems to have been 50 years away from practical reality for about half a century now. It might be easy to look back and laugh at claims that eugenics would spell the end for not only heritable diseases, but also of social problems such as vagrancy and crime, but a 1989 Science editorial’s claim during the run-up to the human genome project that the new genetics could help reduce homelessness by tackling mental illness is perhaps fresh enough to make biologists’ toes curl with embarrassment.

I love science. Perhaps too much for some of my religious friends. However, I do think think science carries some messianic hopes, that what is broken amongst us and within us has a technological fix. The cure. A green economy. The pill that stops the aging process.

Not that I'm complaining. I'm a lover of the Enlightenment and my air conditioning. It's just that there is no drug, surgery or stem cell therapy that can fix what is broken in me.

When I heard about the Fort Hood shootings my first thought was for the victims and their families. Later, when I found out that the shootings were carried out by a Muslim member of the US military, my second thought was, "How awful for Muslim Americans. I can't imagine how they must feel, as a religious minority in this country, going to work the next day."

This interview with a victim's family gave me hope:


Watch CBS News Videos Online

May we all follow the example of Michael Cahill's family.

Last week a student asked me, "Dr. Beck, what makes for a good marriage?"

I responded, "Care about very little."

Puzzled, the student inquired, "What do you mean?"

"Well," I continued, "say you care about how the toothpaste should be squeezed. Some people care a lot that it be squeezed properly. Or you might care about if the toilet roll hang a certain way. Seriously, some people like the roll to hang over the top and some from the bottom. Or you might care about when you should open Christmas presents. Your husband or wife might like to do it on Christmas Eve when you think that's an abomination before the Lord. Presents on Christmas morning for you.

You might care about what kind of car to buy. Or what color it should be. You might care about the square footage necessary for your house. You might care about what color to paint the walls of your bedroom. Or the color of your bath towels. You might care about the quality and diversity of your family meals. Or if your vacations are exotic enough.

You might, in short, care about a great many things.

And for every single thing you care about you have the potential for argument, stress and frustration. So my advice is this: Don't care about any of this. Don't care about cars, home decor, paint, toothpaste, family rituals, food, or toilet paper. Just don't care. Free yourself up to care about and invest in what really matters. You'll be happier and fight much less."

In theology there is a term called "adiaphora." It is a term used to refer to things which, theologically speaking, we are indifferent to. We, in a sense, don't care about these issues. We won't let differences on these points be a source of conflict or division. My marriage advice to the student was about adiaphora: Become indifferent to trivial things. Don't fight about inconsequential stuff.

My advice for the church is the same: Expand the space of adiaphora. Stop caring about inconsequential stuff. Focus on the matters of importance. People are starving to death today. Someone at work is lonely. An innocent man is sitting in jail.

Let's not fight over how we squeeze the toothpaste.

Surprisingly, my post on the bait and switch of contemporary Christianity continues to rattle around the internet and generate conversation. In one conversation someone posted the following comic strip.

Enjoy (click to enlarge):

The first study I want to review was done by Dan, Page, Bonnie and Kelsey. This team of students was inspired to investigate how conformity and authority affect attitudes regarding torture.

The team's research question was simple: What if college students were told that most of the faculty at the University endorsed the use of torture? Would this put pressure on the students to fall in line with the majority opinion of these authority figures? Also, given the When God Sanctions Killing research, what if the faculty endorsing torture were the Bible faculty? Would the opinions of the Bible faculty, people who should know a bit about God's will and Christian ethics, intensify a conformity or authority effect?

The students were inspired by two famous studies in the area of conformity and obedience to authority. Regarding conformity, the students talked a great deal about the the famous Solomon Asch studies concerning group conformity conducted in 1953. That research is replicated in this YouTube clip:



Concerning obedience to authority the students were inspired by Stanley Milgram and his obedience experiments. Milgram's paper, "Behavioral study of obedience," is probably the most significant and controversial paper ever published in psychology. The question of the study was simply this: How many normal people would administer painful and potentially dangerous electric shocks over the protest of a victim simply because an authority figure asked them to? The result was shocking: 65%. You can watch a modern-day replication of the Milgram study here on YouTube.

Inspired by these studies my students devised a simple manipulation to see if conformity and authority effects might influence how college students at a Christian university endorsed the use of torture. The team asked fellow college students to respond to the same question used by the Pew Research Center (i.e., Can torture often, sometimes, rarely or never be justified?). Prior to asking that question the team added an introductory statement to explain the nature of the survey and why we were interested in student responses on this issue. The template for the introduction was this:

Recent polling done by the Office of Research at ACU found that ___ of ACU Faculty supported the use of torture against suspected terrorists. In light of these results, the ACU Psychology Department is following up with a survey to gather more information about student opinions regarding the use of torture.

The blank was filled in with one of two numbers, 20% or 80%. The research question was, would the students informed that 80% of the faculty endorsed torture also be more likely to endorse torture, conforming to the majority opinion of the authority figures? By contrast, would those reading that only 20% endorsed torture move in the opposite direction, following the majority of the faculty in the rejection of torture?

A final manipulation involved inserting the word "Bible" between "ACU" and "Faculty." That is, some participants read "80% of the ACU Faculty" and others read "80% of the ACU Bible Faculty." The goal here was to determine if an explicit religious endorsement of torture would have a more potent conformity and authority effect. (Note to my faculty friends. Participants were debriefed at the completion of the study.)

The overall results were what you might expect. Torture endorsement was highest among college students who read that 80% of their faculty endorsed the use of torture. That is, student opinion tended to conform to the opinions of the authority figures. Further, this conformity intensified when the students were told that torture was endorsed by the Bible faculty. This is the effect we expected given the research regarding God sanctioning killing. Violence is more likely to be approved of when it is given religious warrant and justification.

With over three million YouTube views you've probably seen this. But we just discovered this today.

Hat Tip to CF:

After reading the Pew report (where Christians were found to be more in favor of torture than non-Christians) I asked the students to ponder the link between religion and violence. There is, obviously, an association. Islamic terrorists flew planes into buildings on 9/11 and Christian terrorists shoot abortion doctors or lynch gay people. In both cases the violence is motivated by the conviction that God sanctions the killing.

To stir the pot on this topic I had the students read a study in Psychological Science by Bushman, Ridge, Das, Key, and Busath. The study was entitled When God Sanctions Killing: Effect of Scriptural Violence on Aggression.

In the study the researchers had the subjects read a relatively obscure account of violence from the Old Testament, Judges 19-21. Prior to reading the story the first experimental manipulation occurred. Half the participants were told, accurately, that the story was from the bible. The other half of the participants were told that the story was taken from a scroll "discovered in ancient ruins near Wadi Al-Murabba‘ah during a 1984 archaeological expedition headed by Professor William Deyer." That is, half the subjects believed (correctly) that the account came the bible while the rest were lead to believe that the story was extra-biblical.

The account in Judges 19-21 begins with a Levite who takes a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah and brings her back to his home in Ephraim. Apparently unhappy in the arrangement, the woman flees back to Judah. The Levite goes to Judah to recover her. He does so and starts the journey back home. The group stops one night in the town of Gibeah in Benjamin and plans to spend the night in the city square. Eventually, however, they are taken in by a kindly old man. They go to the old man's house, are fed and refreshed, and then the following events transpire:

While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, "Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him."

The owner of the house went outside and said to them, "No, my friends, don't be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don't do this disgraceful thing. Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But to this man, don't do such a disgraceful thing."

But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight.

When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, "Get up; let's go." But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.

When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel. Everyone who saw it said, "Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Think about it! Consider it! Tell us what to do!"

Then all the Israelites from Dan to Beersheba and from the land of Gilead came out as one man and assembled before the LORD in Mizpah. The leaders of all the people of the tribes of Israel took their places in the assembly of the people of God, four hundred thousand soldiers armed with swords. (The Benjamites heard that the Israelites had gone up to Mizpah.) Then the Israelites said, "Tell us how this awful thing happened."

So the Levite, the husband of the murdered woman, said, "I and my concubine came to Gibeah in Benjamin to spend the night. During the night the men of Gibeah came after me and surrounded the house, intending to kill me. They raped my concubine, and she died. I took my concubine, cut her into pieces and sent one piece to each region of Israel's inheritance, because they committed this lewd and disgraceful act in Israel. Now, all you Israelites, speak up and give your verdict."

At this point in the text the researchers added a second experimental manipulation. For half of the participants the following lines were inserted into the story:

The assembly fasted and prayed before the LORD and asked
‘‘What shall be done about the sins of our brothers in Benjamin?’’;
and the LORD answered them, saying that no such abomination
could stand among his people. The LORD commanded Israel to
take arms against their brothers and chasten them before the LORD.

The story then continues with the Isrealites taking up arms against the Benjamites. In the ensuing battle ten of thousands are killed on both sides. Given the experimental manipulation, half of the participants read that this retaliatory violence was commanded by God.

Summarizing, the study had two manipulations which created four groups. The first division was between those who were told that the story was biblical versus those who were told it was extra-biblical. These two groups were then divided again with half of each group reading the non-modified text versus those who read the inserted text of God commanding the retaliatory violence.

After these groups read their respective texts they engaged in a laboratory task intended to measure aggression. Subjects were placed in a competitive task where they had to push a button faster than their "opponent." The loser would receive a blast of noise through headphones he/she was wearing. Further, the participants could select the decibel level of the blast they could deliver to the defeated opponent. Specifically, the subjects had control of a dial that ranged from Level 0 (no noise) to Level 10 (105 db, the volume of a smoke alarm). The measure of aggression was how often the subject selected Levels 9 and 10 to inflict upon their opponent.

The outcome of the study was intriguing. Specifically, subjects who where told that the story above came from the bible were more aggressive than those told the story came from an extra-biblical scroll. Apparently, if violence is in the bible this seems to sanction the use of violence. This trend was confirmed in that those who read that God sanctioned the violence in the story (i.e., read the inserted text) were more aggressive than those who did not read about God commanding the retaliatory violence.

In the second study of the Bushman et al. paper these effects were examined for both Christians and non-Christians. Overall, God sanctioned violence (being in the bible and commanded by God) increased aggression for both Christians and non-Christians. However, this effect was strongest for the Christians (i.e., they were more aggressive than non-Christians when God was seen to sanction violence).

To conclude, I wanted the students to digest this study as it might illuminate the trends found in the Pew report. Specifically, and this is no real surprise, religious believers become more violent when they feel that God sanctions the violence. The implication is that if Christians believe that the use of torture in the war on terror has a religious component, is sanctioned by God, then their approval of torture increases. In fact, this is what I think is going on. During the Bush administration there was a strong conflation between God and Country. Insofar as these are identified with each other (God and Country) the actions of the government are seen as sanctioned by God. This judgment is heightened by the fact that the war on terror is felt to be a holy war, a war between Islam and Christianity. To probe this tension I asked my students to consider the following. Imagine we caught a radical evangelical preacher who was at the center of a plot to blow up a government building in protest of the Obama administration. The bomb is ticking and we have to get him to confess or the bomb will detonate and kill hundreds of people. Will we, in this case, torture an American citizen and a Chrisitan to find the bomb?

And what if the bomb was not in a government building but in a mosque? Or an abortion clinic?

What then?