The new additions are 3-foot by 9-foot black vinyl banners that declare in white letters that “Torture is wrong.”
The Arizona and New York congregations are among at least 30 Presbyterian churches from all corners of America, along with one presbytery, that will display banners this month condemning torture as part of the “Banners Across America” initiative.
The effort is the brainchild of the Presbyterian-founded, church-backed National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), which is calling June “Torture Awareness Month.”
So far nearly 300 congregations from across the faith spectrum in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., have joined the cause by hoisting the black-and-white banners proclaiming “Torture is wrong” and “Torture is a moral issue.”
NRCAT leaders officially launched the banner campaign during a telephone news conference on June 5.
The grassroots organization, which has a growing membership of more than 190 religious groups, including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is committed to ending U.S.-sponsored torture as well as all cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
“Torture is not a political issue,” NRCAT’s president Linda Gustitus said during a news conference. “Whether you’re for or against torture shouldn’t depend upon whether you’re for or against the president, the war [in Iraq] or a particular party. Torture is a moral issue. It is immoral to use torture, and it is immoral to condone it — affirmatively or silently. Torture destroys the very soul of our nation and it must be stopped.”
NRCAT was founded by the Rev. George Hunsinger, a Presbyterian minister and theology professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, in response to allegations of human rights abuses at United States detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The group was launched during a conference convened by Hunsinger at Princeton seminary in January 2006.
Sterling Vinson, a Southside church member heading the congregation’s participation in Torture Awareness Month, said, “Torture is important for a number of reasons. It is clear, very clear from documents that have become part of the public record that the Bush administration has authorized and encouraged torture from the highest levels very, very carefully and deliberately.”
Vinson said President George W. Bush has refused to place restrictions on how the Central Intelligence Agency treats prisoners. He added that there’s nothing preventing the military from turning over its detainees to the clandestine agency, which he said is free to use controversial interrogation techniques or practice extraordinary rendition, sending detainees to countries believed to use torture.
“This is an issue that affects not only any prisoners that the United States might take in Iraq or Afghanistan or elsewhere, but it affects our constitution, our law, our citizens,” Vinson said. “It is a vastly important issue legally and morally, and Southside [church] responds very, very readily and very strongly to issues like this.”
Religious organizations that have joined NRCAT since its formation include representatives from the Roman Catholic, evangelical Christian, mainline Protestant, Unitarian, Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Quaker, and Sikh communities.
“One of the things that has excited me about NRCAT and (its) work in particular is the way that this is a moral issue across the political and theological spectrum,” said the Rev. Laura Cunningham, pastor of Nauraushaun Church. “It’s something that all kinds of Christians can say, ‘This is a moral issue. This is wrong.’”
Cunningham said when she discusses voicing opposition to torture with her 115-member congregation outside New York City she tells them that “we’re not doing this just because we’re liberals or conservative or progressive, we’re doing this because of our faith and what our faith calls us to do, who we’re called to be.”
The St. Louis-based Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy has joined the Southside and Nauraushaun churches in displaying anti-torture banners.
