“What we
say about the intentional cruelty of U.S. soldiers, spies, and shadowy ‘contractors’
is what we have said about the same cruelty by others: it degrades us all, and must be renounced and
repented of before the Living God, whose eye sees into every hidden cell and
secret budget allocation. Our basis for
speaking: Jesus Christ, the head of the
Church, was tortured to death, first by being flogged, and then by a slow form
of capital punishment. Thus we join
countless patriots in saying; ‘This is not America.’ But deeper down we know, too: ‘This is not Christian.’”
That is a
quote from the Resolution on Human Rights in a Time of Terrorism and Torture,
which was produced by the 217th General Assembly of PC(USA) in 2006. Perhaps the Bush administration enshrined
torture as policy, but the Obama administration has done little to actually
confront the culture of torture. In some
regards, the consolidation of power and lack of transparency needed for such a
culture to exist have been strengthened.
The
International Day against Torture is tomorrow. May issues of substance like that be brought
to the forefront in the election campaigns.
As the resolution
states: “‘This is not America.’ But deeper down we know, too: ‘This is not Christian.’”
No comments:
Post a Comment