The Evangelical Left made much
of U.S. “torture” policies under the Bush Administration. Like the
obliteration of the Death Star in “Star Wars,” that
administration’s conclusion presumably would have mollified
Evangelical Left activists. But the campaign earnestly continues.
Does President Obama now stand accused as a torturer
too? Duke University’s seminary is hosting an
anti-torture conference
(“Toward a Moral Consensus Against Torture: A Gathering of
Students, Clergy, People of Conscience, and People of Faith”) later
this month, prompting one seminarian recently
to blog: “To the extent that American
Christians continue allowing their government to torture —
motivated by ever-growing fears and the demands of feeling secure
— they must also recognize they no longer stand with Jesus in the
world.”
So in the eyes of some, “torture” evidently did not end
with Bush. One of the torture conference sponsors is the National
Religious Campaign Against Torture, which explains
that President Obama “only halted torture — he does not have
the authority to end it completely.” Apparently for the torture
concerns to subside, there must be a “thorough investigation” of
U.S. torture polices, Obama’s executive order against torture must
be legislatively ratified, Guantanamo as a “symbol of our country’s
use of torture” must close, renditions must be further restricted,
and the U.S. Army Field Manuel must ban “pro-longed isolation,
sleep deprivation, and sensory deprivation.” Finally, Americans
must repent of their purported pro-torture views, which illustrate
“how corrupting the use of torture has been to the soul of our
nation and the souls of our people.” Until Americans repent, “we
will always be at risk of electing more politicians who support the
use of torture.” The campaign against U.S. torture must
continue.
Anti-torture campaigners cite a Pew survey showing
actively church going evangelicals favoring the Bush
Administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” more than
non-churchgoers. The Duke seminarian blogger lamented that American
pro-“torture” Christians are not basing their beliefs on Jesus but
on “tragic necessities,” arguing “because we are more moral, we
have the duty to be immoral.” This purported ethic declares: “Do
unto others as you fear they might do unto you and your
loved ones.” This Duke blogger argued that Jesus was tortured to
death by His enemies yet still loved them, so His followers should
do likewise. It’s a common theological confusion among evangelical
pacifists that civil governments must have the same behavioral
vocation as Jesus the Savior. The seminarian lamented that “in the
meantime, as the U.S. torture program rolls on with no mass protest
from American Christians, we must come to terms with our
rationalizations for torture sort of making sense,
hundreds of victims of detainee abuse sort of
getting
justice, the American nation sort of
being a democracy, and the churches sort of being faithful
to Jesus.”
Evangelical Left activists focused on purported U.S.
torture typically do not define torture. Much ink and chatter is
still applied to waterboarding, though evidently only three al
Qaeda terrorists, all of whom seem to remain alive and healthy,
were waterboarded, ending in 2003. This would be as though
likeminded activists, in 1953, were still campaigning against the
incarceration techniques applied to the Nazi war criminals at
Nuremburg in 1945. Goering, Hess, Speer and the rest were kept
under 24-hour surveillance, with the lights on, with no privacy,
among other indignities, for many days, partly out of fear for
their potential suicide, but presumably also partly owing to
contempt for their crimes.
The Evangelical Left’s fixation on the no doubt extreme
discomfort suffered by Khalid
Shaikh Mohammed, Abu
Zubayda and Abd
al-Rahim al-Nashiri in the days after their
capture in 2002 and 2003 seems odd, amid far greater horrors
afflicting more innocent people globally over the last 8 years.
This preoccupation doubtless rests at least partly on the
Evangelical Left’s belief that the U.S. as the primary global
hegemon whose misdeeds merit special condemnation. It is also true
that most of the Evangelical Left, especially centered at Duke
seminary, is pacifist. Any armed resistance to terror or
aggression, in their eyes, is as wicked as the provoking
depredations. This neo-Anabaptist position, for which Duke’s famed
Stanley Hauerwas is best known, is increasingly influential among
academics, clergy and activists. It is also a small minority
position within Christianity, all of whose major traditions affirm
the biblical understanding that God ordained the state to wield the
sword in defense of order and justice. Does wielding the sword
include the right to conduct “prolonged isolation, sleep
deprivation, and sensory deprivation” in limited cases? Reasonable
people may disagree. But St. Paul, in his affirmation of lethal
force by rulers, was surely aware that magistrates of his day
relied on far more excruciating techniques.
Helping to organize the upcoming Duke torture event is
distinguished ethicist and pacifist Amy Laura Hall, whom I am glad
to count as a friend, though my arguments remain unpersuasive to
her. She explained in a recent interview
with Sojourners that the conference was prompted by
Christians who are avoiding the “tragic details of our two wars —
the use of torture, the military suicide rate,
the number of civilians killed.” As a
Methodist at a Methodist school, she expressed special alarm that
it was a Methodist President who said “damn right” to
waterboarding. George W. Bush, like other Christians,
“tacitly
accepted torture” to “keep us safe,” she
regretted. Noting that the Duke event will include Muslim speakers,
she recalled having “confessed to a Muslim friend recently that I
am having trouble keeping up and staying sane reading about all
that is being done to Muslims around the world in the name of our
‘war on terror.’”
Hall noted that the Duke event will feature former
National Association of Evangelicals official Richard Cizik,
ethicist David Gushee of Mercer University and Evangelicals for
Human Rights, and ethicist George Hunsinger of Princeton Seminary
and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. She lamented
these men had been accused of “being ‘soft’ or ‘irresponsible’ due
to their stance on torture,” and were even “punished by other men
around them for not sticking to the standard line being sold to us
for years on this issue — that ‘real men’ say ‘damn right’ when it
comes to torturing brown people, ostensibly to protect white
women and our white children.” This racial point is strange.
Hundreds of 9-11’s victims were non-whites. Hundreds of U.S.
military personnel killed in the War on Terror were non-white.
Globally, most victims of Islamist terror are themselves Muslim,
not Westerners. Arguably, the most brutalized victims of Jihadist
Islam are black sub-Saharan Africans, especially in southern Sudan
but also in Sudan’s Darfur and in Nigeria, as elsewhere.
A consistent pacifist ethic, as advocated by some
organizers of the Duke torture event, requires surrender to
Jihadist Islam and to all other marauding aggressions. This form of
pacifism applied to terror prohibits not only all military force
and “torture,” including “pro-longed isolation, sleep deprivation,
and sensory deprivation.” It also must preclude even any police
action or incarceration of terrorists, since all prisons are
governed by armed guards. This pacifist ethic argues simply for
yielding to terror, no matter how many innocents are slain, as a
witness to faith. Dr. Hauerwas honestly and accurately
admitted
recently that faithful pacifism may lead to a “more
violent world.” But the faithful must “know how to
endure.”)
This argument for standing aside as innocents are
brutalized and slaughtered is not mainstream Christianity and it
was not the teaching of Jesus, the Apostles, or the Hebrew prophets
before them. Such absolute pacifism, unlike traditional
Christianity, is not applicable for regular people living in the
real world. It is instead a hobby theme for insulated academics
talking mostly to each other. The upcoming Duke conference may
focus on “torture.” But its underlying premises seem devoted to
divesting Christianity of all ethical practicality in favor of the
ethereal.
