What the Torture Debate Reveals about American Christianity

Below is a summary of the session:

What the
Torture Debate Reveals about American Christianity

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Speaker:  David Gushee

Panel:  Lawrence Carter, Dean, Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel

            Rabbi
Brian Walt

            Cathleen Kaveny, John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law
and Professor of Theology, University of
Notre Dame

            Mohamed
Elsanousi, Director of Communications and
Community Outreach, Islamic Society
of North America

Gushee:  My own understanding about how individuals
and societies respond to encroachment on their rights has been profoundly
affected by my work on my doctoral dissertation which examined the righteous Gentiles who stood up to Nazi
Germany in WWII.  First, know your
policies.  There will always be a time
lag between implementation of policies and knowledge of them, thus opposition
will always be playing catch up. 
Government's have advantages through their authority, especially among
Christians raised to submit to the authority of government through the lens of
Romans 13.  Government also has the power
of intimidation.  Resisters are also at a
disadvantage because they must first observe the wrong doing and can be
thwarted if government can hide their wrong doing or the wronged.  Even people who believe they have a
responsibility to act must believe they have the efficacy to act.  They must have a plan and the resources
available to carry it out.  I am not
saying that Nazi genocide and the use of torture are morally equivalent, but
there are similarities in the response. 
I will speak most from my own community, the evangelical tradition.

After Abu Ghraib's
unveiling, evangelical Christians remained largely silent, undoubtedly
believing they were the actions of a few bad apples.  The time lag effect is evident in the four
years between the revelation and the organization of a coordinated religious
response in the form of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, which
was followed by the creation of Evangelicals for Human Rights.  We were thrilled with the National
Association of Evangelicals endorsement of our Declaration.  But there are still significant resistances,
in part traceable back to the strong emphasis placed on authority, through
Romans 13 and other Bible passages, in evangelical communities.  White evangelicals proved especially unable
to notice the shift in our policy toward torture.  They were focused on the moral issues of
abortion and homosexuality and blind to other moral issues.  This has created an evangelical weakness in
fighting for justice and human rights. 
Despite the many justice witnesses of other Christians and faiths,
evangelicals have remained at arm's length to these movements and lost touch
with its own traditions.  It is clear
that from the nature of evangelical discourse on Islam and terrorism, many
evangelicals viewed Islam as a dangerous religion and Muslims as ‘the
other'.  Clearly much work must be done
to get evangelicals to see their Muslim neighbors as neighbors, even if they
are in Guantanamo.   Both in the
leadership and grassroots level, evangelicals were slow to notice and respond
to torture.  It did not have an effect on
voting in 2004 and was, and is still, not viewed as a moral values issue.  But it seems to me that the acquiescence and
silence of many evangelical leaders has served to undermine their
authority.  If they cannot see that
torture is always morally wrong then we need new leaders. 

Carter:  Torture is the result of pitbulls in government
. . . with or without lipstick.  We don't
need more pit bulls in government.  The
symbol of our nation in terms of mascot is the eagle.  Idealists are afraid, we are not speaking up
. . . and that is why Obama is a little off kilter . . . because we know what
the spirit is like of those who support torture.  My concern is that my beloved church is not
teaching people how to learn the dignity of difference.  I think most of you are aware you could not
have had this conference if you had not split from the Southern Baptist
Convention.  You've come a long way and
that long way represents what must happen in the church universal.  We are doing to terrorists what the Nazis did
to Jews, what was done to Negroes in the South. 
Torture is the new lynching.  The voice
of Martin King is silent, the Civil Rights leaders are not being heard.    We forget that it was evangelicals who
sanctioned state sponsored terrorism in the Southern United State.  I am very proud that I am an
evangelical.  There are those who want to
class me in the liberal camp, but I am conservative . . . and I'm
moderate.  I'm a modernist and
post-modernist.  And I'm trying to be
part of that new community that calls itself ‘universalist,' because the ethics
that will have to be normative will be universal.  But I will also say that ethics and religion
are not the same.

Elsanousi:  Muhammed, peace be upon him, said we must
help a person whether he is the oppressor or the oppressed.

[. . .]  I would like to take a few moments to talk
about the Islamic affirmation of human dignity. 
To the effect that that dignity becomes threatened by torture, that
humanity becomes questionable.  The human
being is commanded by God to do justice to his Creation.  In the Holy Koran God speaks to how much
human beings are valued and honored over the rest of creation.  Therefore the human being needs to
contemplate deeply on this and carry out its responsibility.  What is entailed is to deal with others with
dignity and humanely in all circumstances. 
We have seen so many people abuse and violate this attribute bestowed by
God himself and as a consequence God's command violated.  If these torturers realized they were
torturing their own brothers and sisters they could never torture.  Islam demands that humans act with justice
even when they are overwhelmed by hate because justice is next to piety.  God Almighty bestows the unqualified and
unconditional gift offered without any restriction to all.

Kaveny: 
My job is to give some brief perspective as to the Roman Catholic
response to torture.  The ultimate
teaching authority in the Church lies with the Pope in Rome.  For our purpose this means there are clear
requirements for how we are to act.  In
the Catholic tradition the negative commands are not optional or
arbitrary.  No human being is designed
with a closed in destiny, every human being has a destiny tied in with
God.  The use of torture is in Catholic
moral theology terms called an intrinsic evil, wrong in and of itself.  Nothing can justify the use of torture; it is
always wrong.  The United States
Conference of Bishops has issued a statement on torture as a moral issue on its
website.  The universality of the
Catholic Church is meant to say, "wait a minute, it's not only about you," but
the response to torture in America has been muted.  To fully address the problem of torture, the
Church has to admit we were deeply mistaken on a matter of grave moral
import.  Another problem is the primacy
of abortion on how to engage American social issues.  Catholic teaching prohibits the killing of
innocent human life in all circumstances.  
But innocent does not mean without sin. 
An innocent person is simply a person not currently in an act of aggression.  Catholics will need to draw more links
between abortion and torture if we are to convince our hierarchy of the moral
importance of torture.  The image of Mary
holding the baby Jesus in her arms, which has become the image in our minds in
our approach to abortion, needs to be supplemented by the image of Mary on Good
Friday.  Every man who suffers torture is
someone's son.  We must pay attention to
the crucifixion we see on the cross everyday and remember that "whatever you do
to the least of my brothers you do to me."

Walt: 
As a Jew I am deeply moved by David Gushee's outrage at the complicity
of so many Christians in the murder of Jews. 
As a Jew born in South Africa seven years after the Holocaust the
question of why people often stand idly by in the blood of our neighbors was
one we wrestled with every day.  But I am
not blind to the Jews in South Africa who stood silently in the face of
apartheid.  And so the question of why
people do not act must not be asked about ‘some', or ‘them', but ‘us' as
well.  We must give voice to the
prophetic voice that exists in each of our traditions in the face of injustice.  While there is general opposition to torture
in our community, we are unconvinced that torture is always wrong, particularly because of the view of the ticking bomb
and concerns with Israel.  I want to
return to the issue of ‘the other' and refer you to the first chapter of
Exodus.  In that chapter we are told
there are two midwives who refused to kill Hebrew babies because they feared
God and it is not clear whether the
midwives were Hebrews or not.  For the
Rabbis this is important because the killing of the newborn was an act that
shocked the conscience out of the fear of God. 
I hope and pray we all have the fear of the midwives that will prevent
us from being complicit in the act of torture.