In spring of 2006, the release of shocking Abu Ghraib photographs thrust the United States military into the international media spotlight. Allegations of prisoner abuses in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay followed. A junior in college at the time, I was recruited by a professor to compile research about torture for a cover article in Christianity Today. My research was incorporated into his “5 Reasons Why Torture is Always Wrong: and Why There Should be No Exceptions,” an article later expanded and reprinted in both theological journals, and in George Hunsinger’s groundbreaking book, Torture is a Moral Issue.
But the torture issue in Christian circles somehow then became the torture debate. To my shock, religious conservatives emerged as the most outspoken supporters of torture policy in my country. A poll conducted by Public Religion Research for Faith in Public Life and Mercer University to determine public attitudes toward torture suggested that self-identifying white southern evangelical Christians were more likely to support torture than any other demographic.
This alarming discovery prompted David Gushee—then-president of Evangelicals for Human Rights—to partner with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Mercer University and twelve other co-sponsoring organizations in late 2008 to hold a national summit called “Religious Faith, Torture, and Our National Soul.” Having coordinated part of the event, I ultimately co-edited a book by the same title, published by Mercer University Press. The conference was planned largely from the presupposition that torture is always wrong. It was not designed to convince. But, for some of us in attendance, it inspired us as future leaders in the church to change our parishioners’ attitudes toward torture.
At first glance, it might seem that support for torture in the U.S. context splits largely along political party lines. The mainline Protestant Christians who largely identify as Democrats have historically been strongly opposed to torture, while among evangelical Protestants who largely self-identify as Republicans, many are supporters of torture. Then of course there is the argument that states that Republicans, perceived as strong on national defense, have therefore adopted torture policies as a matter of ensuring national defense during tumultuous times. But such easy classifications of support fail to address an important concern for me: the morality of torture.
To address the torture issue theologically, I defer to my mentors Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. In their lives and work, these prominent posthumous figures in Christian ethics and human rights activism convey a model that might change public support for torture, and affirm human dignity in a way that reflects the Kingdom of God on earth.
Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister during Hitler and the Nazi Socialists’ rise to power in Germany during the 1930s. Bonhoeffer struggled because he felt like the Church had passively allowed for the Nazis to take control during the post-World War I power and optimism vacuum. Bonhoeffer believed that the church was supposed to exist as perfect community. This community was not full of perfect people, but instead was perfect because it served the purpose for which God intended. In Life Together, Bonhoeffer lays out his early understanding of Christian Community. He defines true “Christian community” as Christians sharing their lives together. He does not want this community to be confused with a romantic secular sense of community. Bonhoeffer’s community is instead a place where people confess their sins to one another. It is also a place of love and forgiveness. Life together happens in Christ for the sake of the world.
Bonhoeffer’s own christology began to take definitive shape in his Act and Being. One great influence on Bonhoeffer was Karl Barth. Barth argued that revelation is a product of God’s infinite freedom and thus a purely contingent act. It creates its own response, is not bound to anything, and God is free to suspend it at any time. Revelation as act means that God is always beyond human knowledge, escaping every human attempt to have God at its disposal.
Barth felt that only by affirming revelation as act could one preserve the freedom and majesty of God against human attempts to domesticate the divine. For Bonhoeffer, Jesus Christ was not an event in God’s freedom; he was God placing Godself freely before and for humanity: “God is not free of man but for man. Christ is the Word of his freedom. God is there, which is to say: not in eternal non-objectivity but ‘haveable’, graspable in his Word within the Church.”'1' Bonhoeffer maintained that God is always pro nobis, the God for us who gives Godself fully in the incarnation. '2' Basically, the two conflicting ideas are that God fully gave Godself to humanity (Bonhoeffer), or that God partly withheld Godself even in the Incarnation (Barth).
Bonhoeffer further developed his christology in his 1933 lectures and his book Christ the Center. During these years, Bonhoeffer argued that christology is not about the unanswerable question of “how” the eternal God related to finite humanity, but about the question of “who” is this person that addresses us as both God and humanity. For Bonhoeffer, the “who” question looks for its answer solely in the incarnate Christ of the New Testament. Bonhoeffer, looking only at Scripture, believes that “Christ is Christ not as Christ in himself, but in relation to me. His being Christ is his being for me. This being for me is in turn not meant to be understood … as an accident; it is meant to be understood as the essence, as the being of the person himself…Christ can never be thought of in his being in himself, but only in his relationship to me.”'3'
I think Bonhoeffer is essentially saying that Christ exists only in the community. The very essence, then, of Bonhoeffer’s christology is Christ is being for humanity. In his later prison writings, Bonhoeffer maintains his vision of Christ as man, but slightly changes his language: Christ’s being is “being there for others.” This language lays the foundation for Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity.
Bonhoeffer continued to develop his understanding of the neighbor, ultimately to the point at which the enemy is included in the same moral framework as one’s own:
Bonhoeffer’s idea of Christian community goes beyond the idea of the church to a broader whole-world context. Bonhoeffer operates within a Barthian framework, which places Jesus Christ at the center of the cosmos. Encircling Christ is the Bible, encircling the Bible is the church, and, finally, encircling the church is the world. Within this framework, everything has at its center Jesus. Because of this idea, there is an intricate relationship between all of creation, in which all is interrelated. This system is a strong basis for Christian theologians looking to build an argument for human rights. For Bonhoeffer, later for King and now for me, all of humanity exists in a state of interconnectedness that sees its ultimate manifestation in Jesus, the incarnate God.
The idea that the United States is the “greatest purveyor of violence today” is arguably difficult to prove, at best. The idea that the United States may very well be one of the greatest purveyors of violence today is probably a pretty stable position. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out against the war in Vietnam because of his theological commitment to human rights for all people.
King had several reasons for his decision to speak out against the Vietnam war; mainly, the catastrophic number of civilian casualties and the grossly disproportionate number of young African American males being sent to war and killed. But King was also thinking and operating within a theological framework grounded in imago Dei which shaped his idea of the interconnectedness of all humanity. It was this theology that empowered King to make such statements as, “injustice to one anywhere is a threat to justice for all everywhere.”
In several of Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison, the idea of a religionless Christianity is put forth. Interestingly, I think it is very similar to popular vampire fiction author Anne Rice’s recent announcement that she is no longer a Christian. She said that, while she is a follower of Christ and that he is central to her life and being, she sees Christianity as having nothing to do with Christ anymore. I think Rice’s sentiment comes straight out of Bonhoeffer’s letters sixty-six years ago. Bonhoeffer believed that religion had become a garment of Christianity. In the same way, today Christianity may have become a garment of following Christ.
Some of the conclusions that Bonhoeffer made are that religion is often otherworldly while Christ is worldly, in that he existed in the world, and for the world. Religion is self-centered, and concerned with self-preservation, while Christ was concerned with delivering the oppressed at the expense of his self. Bonhoeffer’s portrayal of Christ as the “real” human being raises the level of humanity such that one must act to protect the dignity of all people, because in failing to do so community and Christ are destroyed.
It isn’t enough anymore to have a right liturgy. This isn’t even that important to Bonhoeffer by the time of his prison letters. What is important is Christ, the incarnate God, and the life together that grows out of a religionless Christianity’s concern for the other is the Christ in you.
Before I leave the discussion of Bonhoeffer’s view of humanity, I will address what is for me, as a student of Christianity, an “elephant in the room.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler. There have been many over the years that have tried to use Bonhoeffer as a proof text for political assassinations, as well as for the justification of killing abortion doctors. Some have argued that, since Bonhoeffer was justified in attempting to kill Hitler, who was murdering millions, then one would also be justified to kill abortion doctors who are also (according to one religious belief about fetal development and when life begins) murdering countless human lives.
There are a couple of huge problems with this application of Bonhoeffer’s life. First, Bonhoeffer didn’t act alone and in secret. Bonhoeffer operated within a community of resistors, including several pastors, government workers and a coalition of multinational individuals. Some who have killed abortion doctors acted alone, separated from community. Secondly, and probably more importantly, is that Bonhoeffer did not think he was justified in killing Hitler. Bonhoeffer believed he would be guilty of murder and would hope and pray for mercy from God.
This is a very different disposition than those who see themselves on a crusade to save the unborn thorough the use of murder. Finally, another main problem with these applications is that in Bonhoeffer’s context there was no public system or appeal process toward Hitler or his policies. Bonhoeffer existed under a military dictatorship that did not accept criticism. In the United States there are several organizations which specialize in lobbying the government and making changes in national policy. Bonhoeffer operated in a different context, one with no avenues for public debate, and yet he still believed himself to be unjustified in his actions. That alone should give us pause to think before we make Bonhoeffer the conspirator our model for political action.
For centuries, Christians have argued about what it means to be created in the image of God. For equally as many centuries, they have argued about what happened to that image of God after the fall. The Reformer, Martin Luther, believed that after the fall, the image of God was erased from humanity because humankind had become totally and utterly depraved and was now enslaved to sin. Jean Calvin believed that even though humankind was tainted by the fall, the image of God was still present, just tainted. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood the image of God to be an indelible mark upon creation that no one act or event could remove.
King was critical however, of both liberal and orthodox theologies. In the theologies of Luther, Calvin and Augustine, King believed there was too much room for dehumanization. In critiquing the liberal theology, King felt the idea of grace and a final judgment was dismissed for a hopeful march toward human progress that was inevitable. King’s views grew out of the abolitionist tradition. In the nineteenth century, slavery wasn’t necessarily viewed as a sin, but more like an unfortunate consequence of the way the world worked. The most important part of the idea of imago Dei for King was that it means human beings have dignity.
The idea of human dignity being a natural unalienable part of humanity found its way into the founding documents of the United States. King drew upon these resources as he articulated his ideas about human dignity. Because of these secular documents and their affirmation of the idea of human dignity, King cautiously celebrates human possibility.
The notion of all people being created in the image of God, and therefore carrying something of the divine within each being, compelled King to move beyond the fight for equal rights for African Americans to speak out against the Vietnam war. It was the human rights violations on both sides of the conflict that troubled King. As he was speaking out against the war, he was in the middle of his Poor Peoples campaign. Again, here King’s activism was driven by the idea of every human person baring the image of the creator—lifting up human life, and dignifying it. It is the very idea of the image of God that connects all humanity. For King, anything that impacted a single person directly indirectly affects all of humanity.
President Barack Obama signed executive orders overturning the previous administration’s decisions to allow the use of torture and rendition in dealing with detainees in the “war on terror” within days of taking office. Unfortunately, almost half of the American people still support the use of torture on our enemies. Also, many of the detainees captured as a part of the so-called “war on terror” are still being tortured and still await formal charges and trails. It seems that the government still is operating under the old principles by the previous administration.
The theological directions of both King and Bonhoeffer affirm the dignity of every person. Because of this unalienable dignity, it is impossible to justify the use of torture against anyone. Even our enemies are created with the indelible image of the creator.
Bonhoeffer and King’s peace ethic is committed to non-violence as the means to resolve conflict. If all of humanity is interconnected in some supernatural way, then everyone has something to gain from peace. King argued that violence only multiplies violence, but a commitment to peace affirms the dignity of every human person and ensures a safer world for all. It is my hope that the United States will end its use of torture tactics, but not for any other reason than because, as a country, we have chosen to affirm the innate dignity of every human being—no matter what.
But the torture issue in Christian circles somehow then became the torture debate. To my shock, religious conservatives emerged as the most outspoken supporters of torture policy in my country. A poll conducted by Public Religion Research for Faith in Public Life and Mercer University to determine public attitudes toward torture suggested that self-identifying white southern evangelical Christians were more likely to support torture than any other demographic.
This alarming discovery prompted David Gushee—then-president of Evangelicals for Human Rights—to partner with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Mercer University and twelve other co-sponsoring organizations in late 2008 to hold a national summit called “Religious Faith, Torture, and Our National Soul.” Having coordinated part of the event, I ultimately co-edited a book by the same title, published by Mercer University Press. The conference was planned largely from the presupposition that torture is always wrong. It was not designed to convince. But, for some of us in attendance, it inspired us as future leaders in the church to change our parishioners’ attitudes toward torture.
At first glance, it might seem that support for torture in the U.S. context splits largely along political party lines. The mainline Protestant Christians who largely identify as Democrats have historically been strongly opposed to torture, while among evangelical Protestants who largely self-identify as Republicans, many are supporters of torture. Then of course there is the argument that states that Republicans, perceived as strong on national defense, have therefore adopted torture policies as a matter of ensuring national defense during tumultuous times. But such easy classifications of support fail to address an important concern for me: the morality of torture.
To address the torture issue theologically, I defer to my mentors Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. In their lives and work, these prominent posthumous figures in Christian ethics and human rights activism convey a model that might change public support for torture, and affirm human dignity in a way that reflects the Kingdom of God on earth.
II
Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister during Hitler and the Nazi Socialists’ rise to power in Germany during the 1930s. Bonhoeffer struggled because he felt like the Church had passively allowed for the Nazis to take control during the post-World War I power and optimism vacuum. Bonhoeffer believed that the church was supposed to exist as perfect community. This community was not full of perfect people, but instead was perfect because it served the purpose for which God intended. In Life Together, Bonhoeffer lays out his early understanding of Christian Community. He defines true “Christian community” as Christians sharing their lives together. He does not want this community to be confused with a romantic secular sense of community. Bonhoeffer’s community is instead a place where people confess their sins to one another. It is also a place of love and forgiveness. Life together happens in Christ for the sake of the world.
Bonhoeffer’s own christology began to take definitive shape in his Act and Being. One great influence on Bonhoeffer was Karl Barth. Barth argued that revelation is a product of God’s infinite freedom and thus a purely contingent act. It creates its own response, is not bound to anything, and God is free to suspend it at any time. Revelation as act means that God is always beyond human knowledge, escaping every human attempt to have God at its disposal.
Barth felt that only by affirming revelation as act could one preserve the freedom and majesty of God against human attempts to domesticate the divine. For Bonhoeffer, Jesus Christ was not an event in God’s freedom; he was God placing Godself freely before and for humanity: “God is not free of man but for man. Christ is the Word of his freedom. God is there, which is to say: not in eternal non-objectivity but ‘haveable’, graspable in his Word within the Church.”'1' Bonhoeffer maintained that God is always pro nobis, the God for us who gives Godself fully in the incarnation. '2' Basically, the two conflicting ideas are that God fully gave Godself to humanity (Bonhoeffer), or that God partly withheld Godself even in the Incarnation (Barth).
Bonhoeffer further developed his christology in his 1933 lectures and his book Christ the Center. During these years, Bonhoeffer argued that christology is not about the unanswerable question of “how” the eternal God related to finite humanity, but about the question of “who” is this person that addresses us as both God and humanity. For Bonhoeffer, the “who” question looks for its answer solely in the incarnate Christ of the New Testament. Bonhoeffer, looking only at Scripture, believes that “Christ is Christ not as Christ in himself, but in relation to me. His being Christ is his being for me. This being for me is in turn not meant to be understood … as an accident; it is meant to be understood as the essence, as the being of the person himself…Christ can never be thought of in his being in himself, but only in his relationship to me.”'3'
I think Bonhoeffer is essentially saying that Christ exists only in the community. The very essence, then, of Bonhoeffer’s christology is Christ is being for humanity. In his later prison writings, Bonhoeffer maintains his vision of Christ as man, but slightly changes his language: Christ’s being is “being there for others.” This language lays the foundation for Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity.
III
Bonhoeffer continued to develop his understanding of the neighbor, ultimately to the point at which the enemy is included in the same moral framework as one’s own:
Everything depends on whether each individual is an indispensable link in a chain. The chain is unbreakable only when the smallest link holds tightly with the others. . . . Every Christian community must know that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak.The elimination of the weak is the death of the community.'4'
Bonhoeffer’s idea of Christian community goes beyond the idea of the church to a broader whole-world context. Bonhoeffer operates within a Barthian framework, which places Jesus Christ at the center of the cosmos. Encircling Christ is the Bible, encircling the Bible is the church, and, finally, encircling the church is the world. Within this framework, everything has at its center Jesus. Because of this idea, there is an intricate relationship between all of creation, in which all is interrelated. This system is a strong basis for Christian theologians looking to build an argument for human rights. For Bonhoeffer, later for King and now for me, all of humanity exists in a state of interconnectedness that sees its ultimate manifestation in Jesus, the incarnate God.
The idea that the United States is the “greatest purveyor of violence today” is arguably difficult to prove, at best. The idea that the United States may very well be one of the greatest purveyors of violence today is probably a pretty stable position. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out against the war in Vietnam because of his theological commitment to human rights for all people.
King had several reasons for his decision to speak out against the Vietnam war; mainly, the catastrophic number of civilian casualties and the grossly disproportionate number of young African American males being sent to war and killed. But King was also thinking and operating within a theological framework grounded in imago Dei which shaped his idea of the interconnectedness of all humanity. It was this theology that empowered King to make such statements as, “injustice to one anywhere is a threat to justice for all everywhere.”
In several of Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison, the idea of a religionless Christianity is put forth. Interestingly, I think it is very similar to popular vampire fiction author Anne Rice’s recent announcement that she is no longer a Christian. She said that, while she is a follower of Christ and that he is central to her life and being, she sees Christianity as having nothing to do with Christ anymore. I think Rice’s sentiment comes straight out of Bonhoeffer’s letters sixty-six years ago. Bonhoeffer believed that religion had become a garment of Christianity. In the same way, today Christianity may have become a garment of following Christ.
Some of the conclusions that Bonhoeffer made are that religion is often otherworldly while Christ is worldly, in that he existed in the world, and for the world. Religion is self-centered, and concerned with self-preservation, while Christ was concerned with delivering the oppressed at the expense of his self. Bonhoeffer’s portrayal of Christ as the “real” human being raises the level of humanity such that one must act to protect the dignity of all people, because in failing to do so community and Christ are destroyed.
It isn’t enough anymore to have a right liturgy. This isn’t even that important to Bonhoeffer by the time of his prison letters. What is important is Christ, the incarnate God, and the life together that grows out of a religionless Christianity’s concern for the other is the Christ in you.
Before I leave the discussion of Bonhoeffer’s view of humanity, I will address what is for me, as a student of Christianity, an “elephant in the room.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler. There have been many over the years that have tried to use Bonhoeffer as a proof text for political assassinations, as well as for the justification of killing abortion doctors. Some have argued that, since Bonhoeffer was justified in attempting to kill Hitler, who was murdering millions, then one would also be justified to kill abortion doctors who are also (according to one religious belief about fetal development and when life begins) murdering countless human lives.
There are a couple of huge problems with this application of Bonhoeffer’s life. First, Bonhoeffer didn’t act alone and in secret. Bonhoeffer operated within a community of resistors, including several pastors, government workers and a coalition of multinational individuals. Some who have killed abortion doctors acted alone, separated from community. Secondly, and probably more importantly, is that Bonhoeffer did not think he was justified in killing Hitler. Bonhoeffer believed he would be guilty of murder and would hope and pray for mercy from God.
This is a very different disposition than those who see themselves on a crusade to save the unborn thorough the use of murder. Finally, another main problem with these applications is that in Bonhoeffer’s context there was no public system or appeal process toward Hitler or his policies. Bonhoeffer existed under a military dictatorship that did not accept criticism. In the United States there are several organizations which specialize in lobbying the government and making changes in national policy. Bonhoeffer operated in a different context, one with no avenues for public debate, and yet he still believed himself to be unjustified in his actions. That alone should give us pause to think before we make Bonhoeffer the conspirator our model for political action.
IV
For centuries, Christians have argued about what it means to be created in the image of God. For equally as many centuries, they have argued about what happened to that image of God after the fall. The Reformer, Martin Luther, believed that after the fall, the image of God was erased from humanity because humankind had become totally and utterly depraved and was now enslaved to sin. Jean Calvin believed that even though humankind was tainted by the fall, the image of God was still present, just tainted. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood the image of God to be an indelible mark upon creation that no one act or event could remove.
King was critical however, of both liberal and orthodox theologies. In the theologies of Luther, Calvin and Augustine, King believed there was too much room for dehumanization. In critiquing the liberal theology, King felt the idea of grace and a final judgment was dismissed for a hopeful march toward human progress that was inevitable. King’s views grew out of the abolitionist tradition. In the nineteenth century, slavery wasn’t necessarily viewed as a sin, but more like an unfortunate consequence of the way the world worked. The most important part of the idea of imago Dei for King was that it means human beings have dignity.
The idea of human dignity being a natural unalienable part of humanity found its way into the founding documents of the United States. King drew upon these resources as he articulated his ideas about human dignity. Because of these secular documents and their affirmation of the idea of human dignity, King cautiously celebrates human possibility.
The notion of all people being created in the image of God, and therefore carrying something of the divine within each being, compelled King to move beyond the fight for equal rights for African Americans to speak out against the Vietnam war. It was the human rights violations on both sides of the conflict that troubled King. As he was speaking out against the war, he was in the middle of his Poor Peoples campaign. Again, here King’s activism was driven by the idea of every human person baring the image of the creator—lifting up human life, and dignifying it. It is the very idea of the image of God that connects all humanity. For King, anything that impacted a single person directly indirectly affects all of humanity.
President Barack Obama signed executive orders overturning the previous administration’s decisions to allow the use of torture and rendition in dealing with detainees in the “war on terror” within days of taking office. Unfortunately, almost half of the American people still support the use of torture on our enemies. Also, many of the detainees captured as a part of the so-called “war on terror” are still being tortured and still await formal charges and trails. It seems that the government still is operating under the old principles by the previous administration.
The theological directions of both King and Bonhoeffer affirm the dignity of every person. Because of this unalienable dignity, it is impossible to justify the use of torture against anyone. Even our enemies are created with the indelible image of the creator.
Bonhoeffer and King’s peace ethic is committed to non-violence as the means to resolve conflict. If all of humanity is interconnected in some supernatural way, then everyone has something to gain from peace. King argued that violence only multiplies violence, but a commitment to peace affirms the dignity of every human person and ensures a safer world for all. It is my hope that the United States will end its use of torture tactics, but not for any other reason than because, as a country, we have chosen to affirm the innate dignity of every human being—no matter what.
'1' Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Act and Being. Trans. Bernard Noble 'from the German Akt und Sein (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1956)'. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. p. 90.
'2' John de Gruchy. “Introduction,” In Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 1991. p. 9