a new class

Yesterday I started a new class entitled Worship and Ethics: Political Ethics which will have the overarching question of wondering what about the relationship between citizenship in Christ and citizenship in a nation state. Already I can tell it is going to be good, but the content is going to be powerful that I think I will feel the need to blog about it occasionally. Bear with me.

In our first class we watched a 2005 PBS documentary entitled The Question of Torture. Whoa! Talk about a powerful, disturbing, make your stomach sick and your heart hurt film. The film gave many interviews of people who were in charge of rewriting law that gave the President unprecedented power in times of war as well as exposing Rumsfeld's insistence to get information from 'terrorists' by any means necessary and Alberto Gonzales saying terrorism is an illegitimate act and terrorists shouldn't be guaranteed the rights from the Geneva Conventions Act.

As a person of faith, this is beyond troubling. It even goes beyond disturbing. Yet, how do we convince people that such heinous activities are simply not permissible and certainly not tolerable?

In a 2006 Christianity Today article, David Gushee gives five reasons why torture is always wrong.

1. "Torture violates the dignity of the human being"- Here he cites that all are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:28), and that bodily integrity has been an agreed upon right of all humans.
2. "Torture mistreats the vulnerable and violates the demands of justice"- injustice comes when we dominate the powerless (i.e. prisoners/detainees)
3. "Authorizing torture trusts government too much"-
4. "Torture dehumanizes the torturer"- I find this a highly provocative - in high stress situations does everyone finally have a breaking point?
5. "Torture erodes the character of the nation that tortures"- Here he says that nations have certain things which they can claim as their identity. Some things come and go (certain causes or threats) but one lasting impression is what can be said about the moral identity of a nation. What can be said about the U.S. which has allowed such actions to take place?

So there you have it. A few thoughts. If you want to read the articles that I read this week, here are the sites- neither one of them is very long.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=38136

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/12/13/AR2007121301303.html