Traditional Torture Values

Some people have the mistaken impression that Christians are inflexible and unable to change with the times. The debate over the bill to clarify what techniques the CIA and our military can use in interrogating prisoners and what constitutes torture illustrates just how "with it" Christians can be. As the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition shows us, sometimes in order to maintain your traditional values you need to change with the times. Sheldon is extremely upset with John McCain and angrily warned him that his unpatriotic efforts against the President's prisoner treatment reform bill would cost him evangelical support in 2008 because he seems to be wedded to outmoded ideas that just don't wash in the 21st century. "Our rules for interrogation need to catch-up with this awful new form of war that is being fought against all of us and the free world," Sheldon told his affiliated churches. "We must redefine how our lawful society treats those who have nothing but contempt for the law and rely on terrorizing the innocent to accomplish their objectives. The lines must be redrawn and then we must pursue these criminals as quickly and as aggressively as the law permits."

Now it might seem surprising for one of America's leading advocates of "traditional values" to argue that we need to "catch up" to the modern world and that moral "lines" need to be "redrawn." And usually when he talks about "redefining" something it is in opposition to homosexuals redefining marriage. But in this one case the Rev. Sheldon believes that modernizing is actually the only way to get back to the traditional values of the past, sort of like going back to the future or vice versa. "This debate is, at its very core, about preserving the traditional value of prosecuting injustice and protecting the innocent," he explained.

Unfortunately, the terrorists, with their newfangled ways, don't stop being dangerous once we've nabbed them. "As it stands right now, the military and intelligence experts interrogating these terrorists are in much greater danger than the terrorists," said Sheldon. "Civil suits against our military personnel are tying their hands as they try to get vital information which will save the lives of our young military people and the innocent." So the only way to protect our soldiers from dangerous and painful litigation is to give them the freedom to hurt the terrorists first.

Now let me just state at the outset that like President Bush I am opposed to torture except in certain circumstances when it's really, really necessary, which is why I am a member of Blogs Against Torture. I agree with the President that "torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere." But liberals have got us all so confused with their convoluted notions of what torture is so we need to get back to traditional torture values. If we let the liberals and activist judges define torture down, the next thing you know our secret prisons will be like country clubs and the terrorists will take over our country and impose their ideas of morality on us, which, except for the stuff about homosexuality and a few other things, we vehemently disagree with.

The Evangelical Outpost held a symposium of very thoughtful conservative Christian ethicists who responded to an article by Charles Krauthammer that criticized McCain's bill outlawing torture. Most reluctantly agreed that, although they would like to oppose torture in principal, they had to admit it just might be necessary sometimes. Kenneth Magnuson said that "there is a need for continued debate on this matter" and lamented that "the entire discussion is necessitated by the miseries of human life brought about by sin and evil." Albert Mohler regretfully admitted, "In fighting this war it is inevitable that we will look down and find dirty hands, even in doing what we would all agree is a lamentable necessity." John Jefferson Davis cautioned that torture should be permissible "only under extraordinary and exceptional conditions." And Daniel R. Heimbach concluded, "After setting proper boundaries for moral use, we should without apology defend obligation to exercise justified coercion within proper restraints."

But while some of these ivory tower types hemmed and hawed about torture, for most of us on the religious right, the line between what is torture and what is not torture and when it is justified will be very clear just as soon as we have redrawn it back to where it should be. The blog Viewpoint tackles Michael Kinsley's criticism of Charles Krauthammer's main argument in favor of torture, the "ticking time bomb scenario," characterizing it as "embracing the slippery slope argument, disdaining nuance, and reveling in simplistic absolutes." Ray Grieselhuber is tired of the "Sunday school baby talk" of people like McCain and believes "it’s exactly this thought process that undermines our ability to think objectively about conflict." One of the co-sponsors of the forum Joe Carter, in an eloquent "Open Letter to the Religious Right," states very firmly, "I can't make excuses for us on this one anymore: We have to take a firm stand against torture. Yes, there is a debate about what exactly is meant by that term. So let's define it in a way that consistent with our belief in human dignity. And then let's hold every politician in the country to that standard. Our silence is embarrassing." Jeremy at Parableman agrees to a certain extent, but wants to leave just a little wriggle room: "The religious right should be firmly against torture in general, but I don't think we should concede it as an absolute. It's rare in this life that torture is morally ok, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's always immoral. It's worth keeping that in mind in case those rare cases do occur. Of course, Christians shouldn't think torture is in itself immoral anyway, at least if they believe in hell." So if God were totally against torture He wouldn't have provided a place for gays and Muslims to be tortured after they were dead.

Christian blogger Dennis Ingolfsland at Recliner Commentaries is also firmly on the side of "humane treatment of prisoners--in general" although he worries that "The next thing you know, we’ll hear that these poor terrorists have been denied such basic necessities of life as high-definition cable TV, sleep-number beds and La-Z-Boy recliners!" Ingolfsland believes that Christians as individuals should not torture people but he doesn't think Jesus would have any problem with Christians who torture as agents of the government, which all Christians should obey. "As a Christian soldier or guard, I would never take it on myself to take vengeance or personal anger out on the prisoners," he writes in a comment to this post. "In fact, on a personal level, I would probably go out of my way to be kind and compassionate to the prisoners. On a professional level, however, for those acting officially under the legal authority of their government, I do not think it is a violation of Jesus' teachings or Christian principles to use reasonable force or violence, if necessary, to discipline, maintain order or to interrogate criminals or terrorists." In other words, Christians who are just following orders can spiritually wash their hands of responsibility for their actions so they don't have to worry about being sent to God's torture chamber after they die. Pastor Louis Marsh agrees there is a distinction between what the "government" does and what individuals do and in answering the inevitable question of how a Christian can participate in un-Christian things a government might do to fight terrorists, he proposes a very simple moral answer: "I think that in the end what this all comes down to is choosing the lesser of two evils," which would be to do what is necessary to fight the terrorists.

La Shawn Barber, in a post humorously titled, "Torture Is Good" says that she supports torture "only as a last resort" and clearly defines it: "What do I mean by torture? Withholding food, depriving prisoners of sleep, letting them thirst a little bit, irritating them with foul odors and extremely loud sounds, offending their sensibilities, religious or otherwise, that kind of thing. Based on the definition of torture, what I support is not torture." In other words she supports the kind of torture that she says is not really torture. She concludes by turning the tables on liberals, asking, "Why do some Americans hate their country?" Just in case she needed to clear up any ambiguities left by that post, she says in another post that she believes in "Total War" (but "only as a last resort") and that torture is a necessary "tool of war." Since Jesus didn't repudiate the wars of the Old Testament, she thinks He must believe in Total War, too, which means, therefore, Jesus must be in favor of torture. "Either as Christians we buy into the whole "Sword of the Lord" concept, condoning government to practice "total war" -- or we are compelled to practice complete pacifism," she says. "Trying to have it both ways, as politicians and Christian intellectuals are prone to do, cruelly costs everyone more in lives and suffering both in the short and long term." By taking a very clear stance on torture, La Shawn is trying to spare people from unnecessary suffering.

Jan LaRue, the counsel for Concerned Women for America, is very concerned about torture. She is firmly opposed, for example, to torturous Senate hearings, calling the confirmation hearings for Alberto Gonzales for Atorney General "an exercise in torture" and remarking on the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh to the Court of Appeals, "Water-boarding couldn't be this bad." She was also appalled by the goings-on at Abu Ghraib, pointing out, these methods of interrogation betrayed an unhealthy influence of pornography. Like the Motion Picture Association of America ratings board, LaRue believes that pornography is much more dangerous than violence. "We don't need any more 'turn-ons' like Abu Ghraib," she said.

Jan LaRue is on the right track when she likens the kinds of torture she finds particularly distasteful to pornography. Essentially, what the prisoner treatment reform bill does is apply a very old legal standard to torture that has traditionally been applied to pornography. This legal standard was first applied by Justice Potter Stewart in the 1964 obscenity case Jacobellis v. Ohio. In a concurring opinion Justice Stewart wrote that while pornography is difficult to define, "I know it when I see it."

This bill takes away the power of activist judges to define torture and gives that power to President Bush, who certainly "knows it when he sees it." Unlike Senator McCain, President Bush has actually had long experience with making decisions about what does and does not constitute torture. When Bush was president of the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon at Yale, his frat was disciplined for hazing new pledges by branding them. In his first public statement on these issues, the future President Bush pointed out that these weren't "physically and mentally degrading acts," as the disciplinary board claimed but were "insignificant," comparing them to cigarette burns. In addition to this experience with grappling with these questions, I think we can all be assured that his Christian background and the very clear ethical position of the Christian right on torture will enable him to apply traditional torture values in a way that shows why we are a moral beacon for the rest of the world.

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Jon Swift, Christianity, Iraq, War on Terror, Terrorism, Bush, Torture, McCain, Lou Sheldon, Abu Ghraib, La Shawn Barber, Foreign Policy, Politics