Results of a new poll on Southern Evangelicals’ attitudes toward torture were released today at Mercer University in Atlanta during the opening day of A National Summit on Torture. You can read the poll memo, which details the poll’s findings, here.

A video recording of this morning's press conference about the poll is available here.

Speakers at the press conference included Dr. David P. Gushee, who authored the National Association of Evangelicals-endorsed Evangelical Declaration Against Torture, and is the Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics, at Mercer University and President of Evangelicals for Human Rights and Tyler Wigg Stevenson, Director of the Two Futures Project, a nuclear disarmament initiative centered around young evangelicals. Dr. Robert Jones, President of Public Religion Research presented the poll’s findings. Katie Paris of Faith in Public Life moderated the press conference.

Among the key findings:

• While a majority of white evangelical Christians in the South think that torture is often or sometimes justified, they are significantly more likely to oppose torture if they rely on Christian teachings or beliefs to form their views on the issue.
• A majority of white evangelical Christians in the South agree with the Golden Rule argument against torture—that the U.S. government should not use methods against our enemies that we would not want used on American soldiers.