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Waterboarding was torture–until Bush and Cheney said it wasn’t

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I don’t often blog about things that might seem political, because there are many others who do. Occasionally, however, items come to my attention that demand a theological response. This is one of them. The US’s resort to torture in the wake of 9/11 is outrageous. Of course, the Bush Administration claimed that waterboarding wasn’t torture, and in the wake of that claim the Mainstream Media quit using the word torture. Now a Harvard study backs up what had been anecdotal evidence. The salient quote (from Andrew Sullivan):

Examining the four newspapers with the highest daily circulation in the country, we found a significant and sudden shift in how newspapers characterized waterboarding. From the early 1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27).

By contrast, from 2002‐2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture. The New York Times called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture.

A spokesperson for the  New York Times responded with the following statement:

“As the debate over interrogation of terror suspects grew post-9/11, defenders of the practice (including senior officials of the Bush administration) insisted that it did not constitute torture. When using a word amounts to taking sides in a political dispute, our general practice is to supply the readers with the information to decide for themselves. Thus we describe the practice vividly, and we point out that it is denounced by international covenants and in American tradition as a form of torture.”

The Times spokesman added that outside of the news pages, editorials and columnists “regard waterboarding as torture and believe that it fits all of the moral and legal definitions of torture.” He continued: “So that’s what we call it, which is appropriate for the opinion pages.”

White is white, except when it’s black.

And torture should matter to every Christian for two reasons. First, because our faith is dependent on the act of torture; crucifixion is nothing more than execution by torture, and as I’ve said before, one of the first things Constantine did after legalizing Christianity was to outlaw crucifixion as means of capital punishment. The second reason is because of all of the torture done over the centuries against Christians and in the name of Christianity. It took a very long time, nearly two millennia, for Christians to learn that faith could not be coerced, and that confessions gained under torture were of no use. One of the most chilling moments I ever had as a teacher was in my last semester at Furman. As we were discussing court records of witchcraft interrogations and the outlandish confessions extracted by means of torture, one of the students asked, “Why would anyone use torture?” Why indeed?

Rebels and Traitors

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I just finished reading Lindsey Davis’s Rebels and Traitors. It’s a historical novel set during the English Civil War of the 1640s and 1650s.

I’m a huge fan of her Marcus Didio Falco mystery series, set in the Roman Empire during Vespasian’s reign. They are wonderful reads, funny, engaging and full of historical detail.

Unfortunately, Rebels and Traitors misses on the first two of those. It is full of historical detail, overly full, reading much of the time as academic history, though without the footnotes. Sometimes it seems as though she felt compelled to provide much more detail than was necessary to propel the plot forward. Or perhaps it was that the civil war and the protectorate was the story she wanted to tell, and could think of doing it in no other way than through historical fiction.

Only rarely does the comedic genius she shows in the Falco novels come to light and the characters are almost all wooden, their dialogue stilted.

Still, there are some interesting bits. She attempts to provide as broad a view of the historical canvas as possible, telling the story through the eyes of participants who fought on both sides, and including characters who were Levellers and Ranters as well as the more likely Cavaliers.

Here’s an example, though, where history may be more interesting than fiction.

“What did Jesus do?” by Adam Gopnik

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Gopnik writes a solid summary of the current scholarly consensus (such that there is one) concerning the gospels and the historical Jesus. It’s well worth a read. It’s also quite dense so it bears close attention.The article is here.

I find his assessment of Bart Ehrman especially amusing:

The American scholar Bart Ehrman has been explaining the scholars’ truths for more than a decade now, in a series of sincere, quiet, and successful books. Ehrman is one of those best-selling authors like Richard Dawkins and Robert Ludlum and Peter Mayle, who write the same book over and over—but the basic template is so good that the new version is always worth reading.

If one thing seems clear from all the scholarship, though, it’s that Paul’s divine Christ came first, and Jesus the wise rabbi came later. This fixed, steady twoness at the heart of the Christian story can’t be wished away by liberal hope any more than it could be resolved by theological hair-splitting. Its intractability is part of the intoxication of belief. It can be amputated, mystically married, revealed as a fraud, or worshipped as the greatest of mysteries. The two go on, and their twoness is what distinguishes the faith and gives it its discursive dynamism.

Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost, 2010

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May 23, 2010

Have you got the spirit? Do you feel the Spirit? What’s your reaction when you hear the verses of Acts read on Pentecost, where Luke describes the coming of the Holy Spirit? When I’m in my most cynical mood—one of my character traits I’ve tried to suppress becoming a priest—I get a perverse pleasure from comparing life in a typical Episcopal congregation with Luke’s description of the early Christian community in Acts. Throughout his history of the first generations of Christianity, Luke stresses the amazing things that were accomplished—the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome, the miracles that leaders performed, the rich prayer life, and the close community. But of all the things Luke mentions about that early community, the biggest difference may lie here, right at the beginning.

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“The Archbishop of Canterbury condemns Henry VIII to hell!”

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Well, not really. He preached a sermon at the Charterhouse, where in 1538, 14 Carthusian monks who refused to submit to Henry’s reforms, most importantly the Act of Supremacy and the dissolution of the monasteries. In 1611, the Charterhouse became the site of an Almshouse, which it remains. In recent years, there has been an annual commemoration of the martyrs’ and an effort to use the event as rapprochement between Catholics and Protestants. Williams’ sermon explores the connection between the suffering of Christ on the cross and the suffering of martyrs. He argues that as long as there is suffering in the world, Christ is in agony as well.

Williams points out that rulers more ruthless than Henry sought to destroy Christianity, but that they have been unsuccessful. The cross stands as a witness to the brutality of evil, but it also is a symbol of God’s ultimate triumph, the triumph of justice.

The money quote:

We treasure with perhaps a particular intensity the martyrdom of the contemplative, because the contemplative who knows how to enter into the silence and stillness of things is, above all, the one who knows how to resist to resist fashion and power, to stand in God while the world turns. In that discovery of stillness lies all our hope of reconciliation, the reconciliation of which John Houghton spoke in this place, this place where we are met to worship, before the community gave its answer to the King’s agents.  A reconciliation of which he spoke (as do so many martyrs) on the scaffold, a reconciliation which is not vanquished, defeated, or rendered meaningless by any level of suffering or death. If Henry VIII is saved (an open question perhaps) it will be at the prayers of John Houghton.  If any persecutor is saved it is at the prayers of their victim. If humanity is saved, it is by the grace of the cross of Jesus Christ and all those martyrs who have followed in his path.

It’s difficult to face the very human and fallible origins of Anglicanism, in the sixteenth century and in the seventeenth. But as hard as that is, we also need to face the same in our present church. The last two sentences of the quotation above remind us of our complicity in persecution, in every age.

The full sermon is here.

The Edgewater

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This post is directed primarily to residents of Madison, but it might have some wider interest. For over a year, there has been enormous controversy in the city over the redevelopment of the Edgewater hotel. Madison’s city council had an all-night session last night, debating the merits of the proposal and tax-payer financing. There’s more info here.

I’ve not been following the debate in much detail; there seems to have been rather more heat than light in the whole process. But I will make several comments. We live downtown, only a few blocks away from the site in question. There are things about downtown life I love–being able to walk to work, to concerts, and to restaurants. But there are also things I dislike intensely. For example, sleepless nights every weekend because of the drunks who whoop it up after closing time. The city seems not to take any interest in the quality of life in this neighborhood. We are surrounded by students who live in substandard housing, and treat their residences and their neighbors accordingly.

Quite apart from the merits of the proposal, and I’m not at all certain that the Edgewater is situated to attract any guests except those interested in enjoying the delights of UW’s fraternity row, what bothers me is the use of taxpayer money, $16 million, to support a small project with limited impact.

At the same time, I think about this. While the city spends $16 million to support this boutique project, Grace Church hosts a homeless shelter that in the winter serves upwards of 150 guests each night. In 2008, according to Porchlight, Inc’s annual report, the city provided $0 toward supporting the shelter. It’s clear where the city’s values are, and where the city council and the mayor stand on quality of life in Madison.

Disappearing Feet: A Homily for the Feast of the Ascension

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May 13, 2010

I’ve been thinking about the Ascension these past few weeks in preparation for tonight’s Evensong. I keep reflecting on the oddness of the doctrine of the ascension. It may the aspect of the church’s teaching about Jesus Christ with which we have most difficulty in the twenty-first century. It’s not that the Incarnation or Jesus’ death and resurrection are easy to accept. Rather, I think it’s because both Christmas and Easter have enough cultural significance and liturgical drama that we are able to lay aside most of our doubts and questions, at least most of the time.

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Rogation Days

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Apparently, Rogation Days are back in vogue. For the uninitiated, Rogation Days, or Rogation Sunday was the traditional time for the Blessing of the crops, fixed on the Sunday before the Ascenscion. Traditionally, Rogation Sunday involved the “Beating of the Bounds” when the priest would lead a procession that followed the geographical limits of the parish, imploring God to provide a bountiful harvest, and also exorcising Satan. This could cause conflict, as Eamon Duffy points out in The Stripping of the Altars, for if Satan were expelled from one parish, where else might he go but the neighboring one. Thus, the choreography of parish processions was carefully orchestrated so as to prevent processions from different parishes encountering each other in the course of their journeys. If they did so, conflict might erupt.

I’m of two minds about Rogation celebrations. On the one hand, I see their utility, particularly in agricultural settings, and as a reminder that the parish is not just a self-selected community of like-minded people, but extends to all those who live within its bounds, however defined. In addition, at my former parish of St. James, we had a parish vegetable garden that was blessed last year on Rogation Sunday.

On the other hand, when I think of prayers for a bountiful harvest, I’m always reminded of something my dad said on the drive home from church one Sunday when I was a boy. The church I grew up stood in the middle of cornfields in Northwestern Ohio, and most of its members were still linked in some way to farming as a way of life. My dad quipped one Sunday that he never needed to know how the crops were doing until he went to church, because he always found out during the prayers. We prayed for rain; we prayed for an end to rain, we prayed for a bountiful harvest, or we gave thanks for a bountiful harvest. The agricultural life always brings religion closest to magic. For supporting evidence read Malinowski on the Trobriand Islanders.

Volunteering at the Food Pantry

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I volunteered at Grace’s Food Pantry for the first time today. It was quite interesting. I’ve not even spent much time in it before, although it has taken up its share of my time. We’ve been awarded three grants this year–from the diocese and the Madison Community Foundation. Most of the money will go to much-needed upgrades and replacement of our food storage capacity (new coolers, freezers, shelving).

I’ve certainly seen pantry guests frequently. They line up outside the pantry before hours; often they linger in our courtyard before and after receiving food, and occasionally seek me out to ask for financial assistance. But for the most part, I’ve not dealt directly with them. I suppose I had the typical assumptions about who makes use of pantries. And certainly there were what might be regarded as stereotypes. What surprised me more were the numbers of young people, single men and women, and some who had jobs. One man told me he was working now for the first time in a while, but he wouldn’t get his first pay check till Wednesday. We gave him things that he could take for lunch. There were others who had come back to the pantry for the first time in four or five years. I was curious about the turns their lives had taken to bring them back to this place.

One of the surprising things was how health-conscious many of our guests were. They wanted to know the salt content of processed foods. They asked for low-fat alternatives. They also were concerned that they not take things that they had in supply. If they had rice, they didn’t ask for more.

There were two ironies I noticed. First was the most obvious, that a few hundred feet away from us was the Dane County Farmer’s Market filled with fresh spring vegetables, meats, cheese and other local food products. We benefited from it this morning. A bakery shared left over scones with us. But that in the midst of all of that agricultural bounty, there are those who go hungry is sobering.

The second irony came from the church itself. We open our doors to the public on Saturday mornings. We invite people in to look at the space, to enjoy the beauty, to sense the sacred. It may be that someone who comes to the pantry might also visit the church. It’s happened once or twice, but usually only because they are new to the pantry and don’t know where to go.

We’ve been trying hard to make a connection between what we do liturgically with our eating and our hospitality. It’s a difficult connection for most people to make even though our central liturgical act, the Eucharist involves eating and drinking. We say we welcome everyone to our table; we talk about the sacred act of eating. We call ourselves a friendly and welcoming parish.

But the pantry reflects those values only very dimly. It is not a welcoming place. There are steps leading up to the door, making it difficult for the disabled and elderly to come in. The entrance itself is dingy, dark, and dirty, and once inside, people line up, as they usually do at social service agencies, taking a number, waiting in line.

Sara Miles in Take This Bread, describes a very different sort of pantry–where there is little distinction between volunteer and guest, with a joyous atmosphere and a marvelous meal for the volunteers, and where the food is distributed, not out of some side room or back door, but from the altar of the church’s sanctuary. That makes clear the connection between liturgy and outreach, the eucharistic feast and the feeding of the hungry.

I’m eager to find ways of making the pantry a more welcoming place, or to make the physical space correspond to the values and attitudes of the church and volunteers. I’m eager also to find ways of making connections between the Farmer’s Market and the pantry. And I hope to broaden the group of those who volunteer–to bring in young people, for example. The pantry should reflect our values as a community of God’s people. It is not a social service agency or branch of the federal government.