Torture: A Moral Issue

We live in a time and culture in which genuine moral discourse is rapidly disappearing --swallowed up by partisanship, spin, politics and self-interest.

By "moral discourse" I mean conversation between persons of good will about the rightness or wrongness of an action or policy, independent of all other considerations. By extension, Christian moral discourse would be conversation between Christian persons of good will about the rightness or wrongness of an action, independent of all considerations other than those deriving from our shared commitment to Jesus Christ.

That applies to torture.

For two years, I have led an evangelical human-rights organization that primarily exists to foster moral discourse about the rightness or wrongness of the United States' treatment of detainees held in our nation's military and security efforts since 9/11. Those of us involved in this effort became persuaded two years ago that numerous aspects of U.S. detainee policy were morally wrong. The most important thing that was wrong with that policy was that officials within the United States government had decided to authorize the cruel and abusive treatment of at least "high-value" detainees. This determination was rooted in the questionable belief that this was the best way to get important information out of them during interrogations.

Published accounts of the particular kinds of harm inflicted on detainees have now emerged from a variety of credible sources -- including government investigations, the Red Cross, previously secret government records and interviews with those who witnessed what happened. In a number of cases, detainees were treated so cruelly and abusively that -- by any recognizable historic definition -- they were tortured. These judgments were made at the time by dissenters within the government with firsthand knowledge of what was occurring.

Our shared identity as Christians and shared commitment to following Christ is what drove Evangelicals for Human Rights toward taking a stand on this issue. As evangelical Christians, committed to Jesus Christ and seeking to live out our faith in him, we could not remain silent. We could not square living for the tortured and crucified Savior with supporting the torture of human beings. Nor could we accept that we should remain silent, because silence signals acquiescence.

For us, torture became a moral issue, and remains a moral issue. It is a moral issue if it happens in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Syria, Cuba, Zimbabwe or in any other of the 190 or so countries on the planet. It is a moral issue if it is being inflicted by our citizens or upon our citizens, by our fellow-believers or upon our fellow-believers. We dream of a world -- and therefore work for a world -- in which no one ever tortures anyone for any reason ever again.