"No exceptions"

Here's the cover to the latest issue of Christianity Today.

Good for CT.

The full title of that lead article is "Five Reasons Torture Is Always Wrong: And why there should be no exceptions."

It's by Southern Baptist ethicist David P. Gushee, who was also an endorser of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. That campaign's initial statement reads, in part:

Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions hold dear. It degrades everyone involved --policy-makers, perpetrators and victims. It contradicts our nation's most cherished ideals. Any policies that permit torture and inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable.

And goes on to call for specific action, including:

We urge Congress and the President to remove all ambiguities by prohibiting:

* Exemptions from the human rights standards of international law for any arm of our government.

* The practice of extraordinary rendition, whereby suspects are apprehended and flown to countries that use torture as a means of interrogation.

* Any disconnection of "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" from the ban against "torture" so as to permit inhumane interrogation.

* The existence of secret U.S. prisons around the world.

* Any denial of Red Cross access to detainees held by our government overseas.

We also call for an independent investigation of the severe human rights abuses at U.S. installations like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

Nothing less is at stake in the torture abuse crisis than the soul of our nation. What does it signify if torture is condemned in word but allowed in deed? Let America abolish torture now --without exceptions.

Clear enough?

(More on the campaign here.)

Update: Original version of this post said the CT article wasn't yet available online. Thanks to Manalive in comments, I see that it is.

Comments

[Manalive]

Is it the same as this article?

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/002/23.32.html

[AH]

I don't know Christianity Today, could anyone fill in some details on what branch of the church reads it, and in what numbers? IE will this have any impact on Bush's conservative Christian voters, or is it just a house publication of the evangelical left?

[Scott]

IE will this have any impact on Bush's conservative Christian voters,

It's a conservative evangelical publication, and this article will elicit some "torture is bad" lip service from your local conservative evangelicals, who will continue to support Bush because of the 'threat' of gay marriage.

[Lucia]

Nothing will have any impact on hard-core conservative Christians (voting or otherwise), unfortunately. They are impervious to reason and reality. If yesterday's NYT article detailing what the White House knew about Katrina and when they knew it (to say nothing of the daily drumbeat for many months now of stories about corruption, indifference to human suffering, mismanagement, callousness, and corruption) has no effect, nothing will. Granted, they think the NYT is lies from front to back, but even if Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Pat Robertson, and Bill O'Reilly appeared on national TV and read that statement in unison, the moonbats would figure they were having a bad day, or just mentally add "unless of course Bush thinks the torturees are Very Bad People."

That didn't start out to be a rant. It is my honest and thoroughly fed-up opinion, however.

[Tim]

If Evangelicals are so outraged by torture then why don’t they demand that God stop sending atheists to Hell?

[Theo]

It's a little depressing that this thing needs to be stated in so many words, but seeing as it does, I'm glad to see it stated.

[forestwalker]

Manalive!

Is your username a reference to the Chesterton novel? That book changed my life!

[forestwalker]

Next months "Letters to the Editor" section of CT should be interesting. There are already some messages on the Christianity Today message board that go decidedly against "Christianity" but very much reflect "Today".

[Oliver Cox]

They missed the most important reason : torture doesn't work.

[Kim]

What works or doesn't work isn't their area of expertise.

[Axiomatic]

It may not WORK, but it does produce RESULTS. And results look nice on the kind of report that doesn't concern itself too much with...oh, having anything to do with reality:D

[cjmr's husband]

But if all you care about is the REPORT, which has nothing to do with reality, why bother with the torture?

Don't answer that. "Because it's fun" should never drive foreign policy.

[cjmr]

Nor should "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

It doesn't work for seven-year-olds, and certainly shouldn't for the Federal Government.

[Nancy Lebovitz]

Also, torture consists of inverting the Golden Rule--it's figuring out how you don't want to be treated, and then doing that to someone else.

[a.]

"Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions hold dear. It degrades everyone involved --policy-makers, perpetrators and victims. It contradicts our nation's most cherished ideals. Any policies that permit torture and inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable."

While I completely agree with this statement, I find it deeply ironic that most people who also endorse it will sit down at the dinner table tonight and eat the flesh of a helpless animal who was brutally hacked to death in a slaughter house.