There's something awful in the news. It seems “The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.” That's dreadful – how can the followers of a saviour who was tortured to death be so hypocritical? Is it really true that the more devout an individual is, the less likely they are to respect the humanity of another?

That seemed so unlikely, I had to dig a little further. First, let's look at the survey results that CNN has published. According to CNN,

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

So that “more often” in the lede is actually rather dodgy. While it implies that, for any given American, the frequency with which they go to church will be an indicator of their willingness to torture, it's actually dealing with some different sort of statistic. The picture becomes clearer when two further details are observed. First, the baseline for American society is apparently 40%:

People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

Then it seems that non-evangelical protestants are less likely than the non-religious to support torture:

The religious group most likely to say torture is never justified was Protestant denominations -- such as Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians -- categorized as "mainline" Protestants, in contrast to evangelicals. Just over three in 10 of them said torture is never justified.

Ah. So that lede isn't correct, then. The indicator is not really “how often the person attends church” - it's “what denominational affiliation the person has”. Truly devout members of mainline denominations are less likely to support torture than the average American.