Is torture always wrong, or are there situations that may make it necessary? And how might followers of Jesus best deal with this question?
For the past few years many Americans have been concerned about the use of techniques commonly understood to be torture, which the U. S. administration has defended as necessary to gain information from detainees. About sixty people came together at Columbia Theological Seminary, in Decatur, Ga., February 3-5, to seek ways of helping Presbyterians deal with this challenge.
The conference was sponsored by the Presbyterian-based group No2Torture, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, and the denomination’s Presbyterian Peace Program. Three seminaries also joined in sponsoring the event: Columbia, along with Princeton Theological Seminary, and Fuller Theological Seminary. All three were represented by faculty members and/or students, and there were students from at least a half dozen other seminaries and as many colleges.
The meeting had one stated purpose: “Let’s join together and share our best thinking about how to equip ourselves and others to be faithful in these times.”
Speakers provided material for thought and discussion. The first two spoke out of their own deep, painful experience.
Lucy Mashua told her story first as a survivor of torture, a woman born in Kenya, who at the age of nine was subjected to the process of female genital mutilation. She endured an arranged marriage, abuse, forced abortions, threats of murder. By the time she was 21, she was helping young girls escape from mutilation and forced marriage. Because of her work she was arrested 25 times. In detainment she was often raped and tortured. She still relives those times: “I see it all as in a movie, going through it all again.”
She finally came to the U.S. as a refugee seeking asylum. She continues her campaign here, working to help women in Kenya gain decent treatment. She still feels threatened, but she bears witness constantly to the faith that has enabled her to survive for some 30 years through so much pain and loss.
Eric Fair, who is currently a student at Princeton Theological Seminary, spoke as one who has been on the other side of the problem. From 1994 to 2000 he served in the U.S. Army, studied Arabic, and worked in military intelligence until receiving an honorable discharge.
In response to 9/11, he returned to Iraq in 2003, working for a private contractor as an interrogator. In Fallujah he was ordered to help in the interrogation of a prisoner. “I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift,” he explained, “by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner, and stripping him of his clothes.” He resigned from his job soon after that incident.
Scott Horton, a New York attorney known for his work in human rights law, spoke about the history of torture, starting with the ancient Roman Empire (which threatened Paul of Tarsus with torture, according to Acts 22), through Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, China, Iran under the Shah … and on to the United States today.
George Hunsinger offered theological reflections about torture. He is professor of systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, and was the founder of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT).
Cat Bucher spoke out of her broad experience as a founding member of the Dallas Center for Survivors of Torture, and as an “accompanier” with Christians in Colombia who are under threat because of their advocacy for human rights.
Edward Leroy Long Jr., professor emeritus of Christian Ethics and Theology of Culture at Drew University, helped with thoughts on different ways Christians can work to get their opinions heard in the public arena.
Mark Douglas, associate professor of Christian ethics at Columbia Seminary, explored some of the deeper issues of faith that underlie the U.S. use of torture.
In between these presentations, Carol Wickersham of No2Torture and Rick Ufford-Chase of the Peace Fellowship moderated discussion and strategizing sessions to define what needs to be done, and begin developing ideas for action. One of the most creative ideas came from a group of students, who proposed holding a YouTube contest for the creation of a video dealing with the issue of torture.
Responses differed on the question of what makes torture offensive?
Eric Fair sided with those who claim that torture “works” in getting information. But Scott Horton argued, like many others, that the use of torture undermines our security by providing false information, and by isolating us from the rest of the nations of the world.
Horton noted, too, “torture is by its nature both contagious and corrosive, and history knows of many efforts by states to contain it, but none of them have been effective.” He added that “if permitted at all, it will undermine the integrity and worth of humanity in any society in which it is let loose. It is the ultimate social agent of corrosion.”
In the midst of keeping a detainee awake by inflicting physical and emotional pain, Fair found that his moral conviction meant he was doing something to another human being that he simply could not do. “After three or four hours,” he said, “I had to stop.” He returned to the U.S., but still dreams about that man. So for him, “enhanced interrogation methods” may be effective, but they were so offensive to his own sense of himself that he could not continue to participate in them.
(Eric Fair wrote about his experience in Iraq, and about the use of “enhanced interrogation methods,” in the Washington Post, Feb. 9, 2007.)
The group also considered major theological concerns about the use of torture.
Hunsinger put it in stark terms: “Today the ideology of nationalism and a new and cryptic form of racism are threatening the integrity of the Church.” The question for us today, he said, is the same as that faced by German Christians in 1938: Do we really put our loyalty to Christ above all else? The Barmen Declaration, which is a part of our own Book of Confessions, reflects the struggle of the “Confessing Church” in Germany to say a firm “No” to the demand that Christ be subordinated to the Nazi ideology, with its racism and its readiness to abuse human beings.
Long described two ways of dealing with social issues in the church. One approach is to continue the traditional pattern of shaping policies and statements within the institutional church, while the other is to focus on direct action for change in society through what Long called “movement-oriented undertakings.”
Both approaches are needed today, he affirmed. While the more focused social movements have the virtue of clear and immediate goals, we also need the social witness tradition to confront our deeper cultural assumption that “violence is the best response to violence.”
Mark Douglas concluded by saying that the U.S. may be using torture not really to gain information, but to gain control — control of the victim’s body, and control of the social body as well. We find ourselves in a world where we’re not sure of our control, so we seek this reassurance that we’re in charge. We do it, then, “to preserve the fallacy of our own invulnerability.” Our people will only be able to turn against torture, he said, when we gain the faith and patience that allow us to give up our need for control. And that is not only a matter of knowledge, but of conversion.
For more on the conference, including links to many other sources, please go to https://www.witherspoonsociety .org/2008/torture%20conference.htm.
Douglas King is a retired Presbyterian minister who served as chaplain and professor at Hanover College, and taught as a mission co-worker at Satya Wacana Christian University in Indonesia. He now edits the newsletter and Website of the Witherspoon Society.
