Interesting article on "faith"

I rarely get a chance to read the newspaper anymore since I had the twinkies but there was an article that grabbed my eye today. I've long been fascinated, esp. always having considered myself a person "of faith" why so many studies have shown that people who are not affiliated with any organized religion behave better--i.e., less crime, more compassion, etc. Regardless of any studies, I've often found this to be true of people I've met in my own life as well. The parts I bolded and underlined are the sections of the article that really resonated with me:

I'd be interested in getting my readers' honest thoughts on this.

An un-Christian response from Christians
BY LEONARD PITTS JR. • McCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

Between 1933 and 1945, as a series of restrictive laws, brutal pogroms and mass deportations culminated in the slaughter of 6 million Jews, the Christian church, with isolated exceptions, watched in silence.

Between 1955 and 1968, as the forces of oppression used terrorist bombings, police violence and kangaroo courts to deny African Americans their freedom, the Christian church, with isolated exceptions, watched in silence.

Beginning in 1980, as a mysterious and deadly new disease called AIDS began to rage through the homosexual community, the Christian church, with isolated exceptions, watched in silence.
So who can be surprised by a new Pew report? It surveyed Americans' attitudes on the torture of suspected terrorists. Pew found that 49% of the nation believes torture is at least sometimes justifiable.

Slice that number by religious affiliation, though, and it turns out the religiously unaffiliated are the "least" likely (40%) to support torture, but that the more you attend church, the more likely you are to condone it. Among racial/religious groups, white evangelical Protestants were far and away the most likely (62%) to support inflicting pain as a tool of interrogation.

You'd think people who claim connection to a higher morality would be the ones most likely to take the lonely, principled stand. But you need only look at history to see how seldom that has been the case.

In the Bible, it says, "Perfect love casts out fear." What we see so often in people of faith, though, is an imperfect love that embraces fear, that lets us live contentedly in our moral comfort zones, doing spiritual busywork, things that let you feel good but never require you to put anything at risk, take a leap, make that lonely stand.

Again, there are exceptions, but they prove the rule, which is that in our smug belief that God is on our side, we often fail to ask if we are on His.

So it is often left to a few iconoclasts -- Oskar Schindler, the war profiteer who rescued 1,200 Jews in Poland; James Reeb, the Unitarian Universalist minister murdered for African-American voting rights in Alabama -- to do the dangerous and moral thing while the great body of Christendom watches in silence.

Now there is this debate over the morality of torture in which putative people of faith say they can live with a little blood (someone else's) and a little pain (also someone else's) if it helps maintain the illusion of security (theirs), and never mind such niceties as guilt or innocence.

Thus it was left to Jon Stewart, the host of "The Daily Show," to speak last week of the need to be willingly bound by rules of decency and civilization or else be indistinguishable from the terrorists. "I understand the impulse," he said. "I wanted them to clone bin Laden so that we could kill one a year at half-time at the Super Bowl. ... I understand bloodlust, I understand revenge. ... I also understand that this country is better than me."

So there you have it: a statement of principle and higher morality from a late-night comic. That Christians are not lining up to say the same is glaringly ironic in light of what happened to a Middle Eastern man who was arrested by the government, imprisoned and tortured. Eventually he was even executed, though he was innocent of any crime. His name was Jesus.