'torture is wrong'

Here's an elegantly simple idea from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture: Banners Across America.

We are asking congregations of all sizes, from every state, and all faiths, to join in a public witness against torture by displaying a banner outside their place of worship during Torture Awareness Month (June 2008).

Our goal is to have banners displayed by NRCAT member congregations in all 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico.

Each banner will have the NRCAT logo and you may choose from one of two messages -- "torture is wrong" or "Torture is a Moral Issue."

They also have customized banners, so a congregation can hang a sign reading, "First Baptist Church says ..." or "Nativity BVM says ..." or "Congregation Beth Shalom says 'torture is wrong.'" Any one of those signs would be wonderful to see. Seeing all of them hanging along the same Main Street would be a powerful witness.

The word "witness" there is important. Bearing witness does not entail telling others what to think or what to do. It entails, to use another good religious term, testifying: "This is what we have seen and what we attest to be true."

The testimony of the local Lutheran church might not be, on its own, compelling to those of us who aren't Lutheran. So too the testimony of the local Catholic parish might not command much attention from those of us who aren't Catholic. Yet when local Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish and Quaker congregations all bear witness to the same thing, that testimony requires serious consideration even from those of us who do not belong to any of those traditions.

That's part of why I support cooperative efforts like the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. I'd love to see their banners hung not just in all 50 states, but on every church, mosque, synagogue and meeting house in town.

But why stop there? "Torture is wrong" is a statement every religious congregation can agree to bear witness to, but it is not exclusively a religious testimony. Next to the banners on every church on Main Street I'd like to see other banners: "Little Anthony's Pizza says 'torture is wrong,'" "Prime Cuts Salon says 'torture is wrong,'" "John's Tavern says 'torture is wrong.'"

Can I get a witness?

Comments

[wintermute]

wintermute says 'torture is wrong'.

[balt]

torture is wrong.

[Naked Bunny with a Whip]

Torture is wrong, which is why I'm not watching the coverage of tonight's primaries.

[Hawker Hurricane]

This Veteran Just Says "No" to Torture

[victoria]

Amen, brother (said the cradle Catholic in a display of ecumenism).

[Lizzy L]

Amen, brothers and sisters! (says this Catholic convert.) There's a meeting of my parish Pastoral Council tonight. I'm on it. I'll raise the issue. I suspect it will be rejected but who knows, the folks in my parish have surprised me before...

[Eric B.]

My ministry rents it's space, so I can't put up a banner. I wish I could. I gotta think of something creative.

[syfr]

Torture is so very wrong.

[Karen]

This is my church. I am an elder there, and we voted last year to hang this banner in front of our building for six months. I count that vote -- unanimous I must add -- as one of the very few brave things I've ever done. The fact that I have to consider saying "torture is wrong" in the USA in 2008 a brave thing to do breaks my heart. I will, nevertheless, keep repeating it until someone listens. Torture is wrong.

[Lila]

Preach it, brother Fred!

Torture is wrong. It's wrong no matter who does it. It's wrong no matter why they say they're doing it.

[JPL]

The people who think "torture is right" have enough money to make that unlikely, I'm afraid.

[libraripagan]

Torture is wrong.

[katre]

Torture is wrong.

Be glad you feel free enough to say that. If I even mentioned this idea to people at the local mosque, they would stare at me as if I were crazy. And I would be. A mosque, making a statement like that? We're probably harboring a terrorist cell or two ourselves. Why else would we say anything?

[JessicaR]

Torture is Wrong

[Reynard]

The Rationalist/Humanist in me says "Torture is wrong!", but the Cynic in me can't help noticing that Homeland Security-type down the block slouched down in his car taking pictures and whispering into his shirt cuff...

[Evan]

Can I push it up a notch and say, instead, "torture is evil"?

"Wrong" just feels a little wishy-washy to me in this context. I mean, if you said Teddy Roosevelt was elected in 1896, that would be "wrong". Torture is evil.

[Conscience]

Where do you live, Katre?

[Nenya]

Torture is wrong.

If katre isn't in a safe situation to be able to say that, then we who can should. I'm going to mention this to my priest...oddly, what I'm most nervous about is talking about something real to her, and wondering if she'll want to be involved (even though I know she's liberal and probably would agree).

torture causes truth decay

[Caroline]

Torture is inhuman and counterproductive.

And it is wrong.

[Caravelle]

Torture is wrong.
Not sure I can help with the awareness-raising though, as we aren't torturing anyone (that I know of, *shudder*) in France at the moment so people would probably consider that obvious and a non-sequitur.
Do they sell t-shirts ?

Can I push it up a notch and say, instead, "torture is evil"?

I don't know, "wrong" can certainly mean "incorrect, mistaken" but it's also the simplest and most economical way to say something isn't right. "Torture is evil" might be accurate, but it doesn't pack as much of a punch for me.
Besides, nobody thinks they're doing something evil, so somebody who's on the fence might dismiss "torture is evil" as hyperbole in the way they wouldn't dismiss "torture is wrong".

[Chris]

Torture is wrong.

Put up the banners! Put them up until no-one can ignore them! Torture is wrong.

[Amaryllis]

Torture is wrong.

And I'm really surprised, shocked, saddened, that I've lived long enough that it even needs saying. I remember when it was the default attitude.

[Praline, using her real name because this issue needs open commitment]

Kit Whitfield says torture is wrong.

[Knighthawk]

Torture is wrong.....

...duh?

I think we can all agree that we're all shocked that we live in a time when that's even in question. We've beat it all to death, so I won't say much more, other than at times, like the 4th of July say, I'm both proud and ashamed to be an American. Proud of our ideals....but ashamed of our continued inability to come even close to living up to them.

Love. Peace. Metallica.

[Leigh]

Torture is WRONG. Amen.

[Rivka]

Our church will be displaying one.

[Sharaloth]

Torture is wrong.

[cjmr]

Of course torture is wrong! It's incredibly scary that it requires bravery to come out and say that in America today!

/rant

*wonders if it is too late to try to acquire/make "Torture is Wrong" shirts to wear to the Memorial Day Parade on Saturday*

[katre]

I live in New York City. Brooklyn, to be specific. I'm "lucky" in that although I'm Muslim, I'm also white, and so I don't need to worried about being hassled by the cops. But most of the people at my local mosque are immigrants, and I'm sure not all of them are legal. But even the ones with citizenship or greencards or a good visa, know not to rock the boat too much. Why make trouble?

[Axiomatic]

Well, those people who say that torture is wrong are certainly entitled to their opinion, but we're losing sight of the bigger issue here - is O'Bama secretly Irish?

[Belisarius]

Torture is wrong.

[JayDeeJaye]

I'm both proud and ashamed to be an American

Me too. In awe of the freedom, wealth, and opportunities to do good, yet embarassed by the lack of responsibility with it.

And, torture is wrong.

[Jim]

Torture is wrong, and so's my wife.

[Jim]

There's a meeting of my parish Pastoral Council tonight. I'm on it. I'll raise the issue. I suspect it will be rejected but who knows, the folks in my parish have surprised me before...

Certainly the Church has come farther than that since the Middle Ages...

[Rev Dave]

Can't say it enough: Torture is Wrong!

My congregation (in suburban Chicago) did really well keeping up a "Give Peace a Chance" banner during the first 3 years of this stupid Iraq war, I''m confident we'll come through with this banner too.

Definitely will preach about it this Memorial Day Sunday too.

[Rev Dave]

BTW, according to last week's episode of Reaper, even the DEVIL knows torture is ineffective, counterproductive!

(Yes, it's a silly show but fun and that particular scene was terrific.)

Anyway, again: torture is wrong

[Pepper]

I still have to make a 2D animation for my senior portfolio. I was going to adapt something I'd already done, but I think I'll do something with this instead.

[Praline]

Incidentally, if you click on my name below, you'll find an extract I copy-typed from Friedrich von Spee's Cautio Criminalis, or 'Precautions for Prosecutors', published in 1631, in which the admirable priest has a passionate and prolonged go at prosecutors who argue that torture doesn't really hurt the victims. In the light of all those 'waterboarding isn't torture' arguments we're hearing nowadays, it's perhaps depressing how little changes. Perhaps anyone reading this who does support waterboarding, you might consider whether, a hundred years from now, you really want to sound like the seventeenth-century guys. Because people have been saying 'torture doesn't hurt' for centuries, and it's no truer now than it was then.

[Anjum]

I can understand katre's reaction. I am Muslim too, and my first reaction to this was "awesome! what a great interfaith project, with such minimal effort. I wanna get the masjid to display it!" but then I had the same recoil as he did - ie what implication will the authorities take from it? *sigh* i don't know if it'll work, but I did email my masjid about it. I'm not very actively involved, so I don't know how courageous they'll feel like being about it. But perhaps being in central NJ suburbs we'll be in a better situation to display it, than a masjid in Brooklyn. :-/

[Indiana Joe]

Torture is wrong. And I've punted this up the chain of command, so maybe there will be a corporate statement.

[straight]

I sorta wish it said:

Torture is always wrong.

Because I can just hear the wingnuts. "Of course it's wrong, but what about ... [ridiculous scenario from TV that has never happened in real life and never will] ?!?"

As for the "Torture is stupid because it doesn't work at all" argument, Ken MacLeod, one of the best science fiction writers alive has a recent book "The Execution Channel" which is excellent in many ways, but the most powerful part for me was a scene that makes it painfully obvious that torture doesn't make someone tell the truth, it makes them say whatever they think is most likely to make the pain stop the soonest, and why those are very likely two different things. Also this passage:

Out of the water Bass Rock loomed, and far beyond it a skyline row of cliffs. Volcanic plug, sedimentary rock: somewhere farther along the ragged curve of this coast was Siccar Point, in whose folded strata James Hutton had discovered the depth of time, the first unconformity between science and the Bible. The same Bible had been the solid ground, the rock, for the Covenanter preachers condemned to that basalt pyramid — Scotland’s Alcatraz, its Robben Island — the Book whose savory verses they had screamed while James the Second and Seventh had supervised, with an interest perhaps more than forensic, the crushing of their thumbs and the splitting of their shins.

Tears sprang to her eyes, as they always did when the thought struck her that that particular prerogative was back: the right of the sovereign to condemn, to put to the question, without due process and for reasons of state; that on that sore point all the Revolutions in Britain and America had been for nothing. That America had been for nothing.

[Tim Lehnerer]

Torture is wrong. Even if you aren't calling it torture.

[Jeff]

Eric B: My ministry rents it's space, so I can't put up a banner.

Ask your "landlord". They might agree, especially if you have your Head of Church ask.

[Eric b]

our space in in a bank's building. They don't want such a "political" message displayed.

[Caravelle]

our space in in a bank's building. They don't want such a "political" message displayed.

That's... sad. I was going to say "would they also forbid 'Protect fluffy kittens' ?" but that would probably be seen as a political statement on puppy mills. And anything with "rainbows" or "sunshine" would be seen as a statement on global warming.
Is there anything you can put on there ? :p

I mean, what can you do other than ask "so do you think torture is right ? Or are you afraid that a great number of people seeing this banner won't agree with it ? Don't you think this is a problem ? That you could address, I don't know, with a banner or something ?"

[general celes]

torture is wrong...

[Ian]

Torture is not wrong. Jaywalking is wrong. Torture is evil.

[Patrick Hannahan]

I never understood the objection to jaywalking. It seemed like an absurd extremity of car culture. "Not only are cars so important that we'll turn a blind eye to the terrible standards of driver education, we'll take it out on pedestrians too". I was even more astonished when I realised that many places in the US actually treat this as a serious "problem" which they need to "do something about". Heaven forfend anyone should walk anywhere...

[Hellsau]

Torture is wrong.