I am hesitant to write this essay because the first time I explored the relationship between atonement theology and justifications for torture in public, a woman spit in my face.
Two years ago, I presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion about the effects of interpreting the photographs from Abu Ghraib as crucifixion images. I proposed that versions of atonement theology that frame the violence on the cross as “salvific” and “necessary” influence how Christians understand torture. I pointed out that the United States government uses a version of atonement theology to sanction torture and abuse: soldiers and military police are ordered to use “harsh techniques to gain information to save lives”; they “felt pressure to obtain information that could help save the lives of American soldiers.” [1]
Might atonement theologies and images of the crucifixion prepare Christians to see torture as salvific?
After my presentation, a woman from the audience spit in my face.
People at the Pew Research Center might want to keep an eye out for her. I think the results of their survey released last week lend support to my proposal that some forms of Christianity have prepared some Christians in some communities to understand torture as salvific, necessary, and justified. The results of the survey revealed that those who attend weekly church services are more likely than those who rarely or never attend services to say the use of torture on suspected terrorists is justifiable. Going to church increases the likelihood that people will support torture, especially if they are white evangelical Protestants. This is not good news.
But is it a surprise?
Almost immediately after the publication of the photographs from Abu Ghraib in 2004, commentators began to refer to them as crucifixion images, likening the pictured bodies to the “mortified Christ.” Most particularly mentioned the “hooded man’s” similarity; insisting that that “the image is particularly evocative for Christian viewers.” [2]
Commentator after commentator insisted that the “symbol of the Christ figure” was “unmistakable” in the images of prisoners tied to jail bars and handcuffed to beds; of prisoners standing with their arms stretched out, palms facing upward. [3]
Even one of the soldiers engaged in the abuse thought the detainees looked like Jesus. In a letter written home while she was stationed at Abu Ghraib, Private Sabrina Harman wrote, “I cant [sic] get it out of my head. I walk down the stairs after blowing the whistle and beating on the cells with a [baton] to find ‘The taxicab driver’ handcuffed backwards to his window naked with his underwear over his head and face. He looked like Jesus Christ.” [4]
How violence is interpreted shapes how people respond to it. The comparison of the photographs from Abu Ghraib to crucifixion images suggests that the violence in those photographs has been seen through the lens of the crucifixion, and that this theological story has shaped how torture is understood. What does this interpretation reveal about the relationship between theologies of atonement and torture? Are Christians theologically prepared to accept torture? Even to practice it?
I do not presume to know the answers to these questions, but I hope Christian communities will be brave enough to ask them. I hope the results of the Pew survey will challenge Christians to ask difficult, critical, uncomfortable questions about what happens in churches on Sunday mornings. Despite our intentions, how might the words of our liturgies justify torture? How might the images hanging in our churches justify torture? How might our theology justify torture? How might the very symbols that give comfort also cause harm? What needs to change?
When I am teaching about the photographs from Abu Ghraib, I sometimes put an image of the crucifixion on the screen and ask students what phrases come to mind when they see this image. “He died for us,” some say. “By His wounds, we are healed,” others say. Still others call the violence “cleansing” and “necessary,” “payment for our sins,” a “ransom,” a “gift.” If you believe that a man was tortured to save your life, if you believe that the violence on the cross was necessary, if you believe God demanded Jesus’ death on the cross, how do those beliefs affect how you understand violence more generally? At the center of Christianity is a man who was tortured. How this event is understood, interpreted, and believed in will, at least in part, shape how Christians understand torture. What kind of interpretation of the crucifixion might generate an anti-torture response?
In his sworn statement about his experience at Abu Ghraib, Ameen Sa’eed Al-Sheikh details what the guards did to him: they beat his broken leg, threatened to rape him and his wife, threatened to kill him, put a gun to his head, deprived him of blankets and clothing, drew pictures of women on his back, made him stand naked and hold his buttocks, urinated on him, hung him from his bed using handcuffs until he lost consciousness, hung him from the cell door, took photographs of him, forced him to eat pork and to drink liquor. In the middle of his deposition, Al-Sheikh said”
Someone else asked me, “Do you believe in anything?” I said to him, “I believe in Allah.” So he said, “But I believe in torture and I will torture you…” Then they handcuffed me and hung me to my bed. They ordered me to curse Islam and because they hit my broken leg, I cursed my religion. They ordered me to thank Jesus I’m alive. And I did what they ordered me. This is against my belief. [5]
What will it take to make torture against Christians’ belief?
NOTES:
1. The Honorable James R. Schlesinger, et al., “Final Report of the Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations,” in The Abu Ghraib Investigations: The Official Reports of the Independent Panel and the Pentagon on the Shocking Prisoner Abuse in Iraq, ed. Steven Strasser, (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), xvi-xvii, xix, 25.
2. Paul A. Taylor, “The Pornographic Barbarism of the Self-Reflecting Sign,” International Journal of Baudrillard Studies 4, no. 1 (January 2007)
3. Steven C. Caton, “Coetzee, Agamben, and the Passion of Abu Ghraib,” American Anthropologist 108, no. 1 (2006): 120.
4. Joanne Wypijewski, “Judgment Days: Lessons From the Abu Ghraib Courts-Martial,” Harpers, February 2006.
5. Mark Danner, “The Depositions: The Prisoners Speak,” in Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror, (New York: New York Review of Books, 2004), 227.
Tags: american academy of religion, atonement theology, biblical interpretation, evangelical protestants, foreign policy, pew forum, sarah sentilles, symbolism, torture
Very, very intriguing and interesting questions! But don't leave us hanging like that! What are some of your thoughts, some of the answers to the questions you raise? The tone of your article seems to suggest that you answer the question of your title in the affirmative. You speak about atonement generally, but are all forms of atonement (as) conductive to torture? I can see substitutionary theories of atonement as easily fitting into your interpretation, but what about the healing view for example?
I'd love to see a sequel to this article, where you go into more detail about what you think, instead of just asking the questions, as interesting as the questions are! I'm sure many would agree with me. And we promise not to spit in your face! Who does that? At an academic conference of all places!
But I'd give you a C for this paper in a class. It is elementary that even a statistically significant correlation does not constitute an argument for cause and effect. These denominations of Christianity in the US attract a certain demographic (this is fairly obvious I should think, even trivial) with a certain set of political views. There is no evidence here, whatsoever, that a certain version of Christology has any effect at all on these political views. I would be willing to speculate that conservative religious groups without any Christology whatever might be shown to have such political views as well; since I haven't any research I won't say who I have in mind to avoid possible slander if I'm wrong. Secondly, seeing the Abu Graib figures as Christ figures does not by itself indicate that the torturers were influenced by their Christianity to torture; it could, indeed, mean the exact opposite as in the example cited of the young woman who seems tormented by what she did and saw because the victim looked like Christ.
It seems to me that seeing the Abu Ghraib victims as the crucified Jesus might lead to more empathy, not less, and a horrified recognition that the viewer is in the place of the Roman soldiers who tortured Jesus. I think it could go either way - you'd need to conduct interviews with people from conservative churches to find out their reaction to the accounts of torture and the photographs.
Your last quotation is sickening. And this was done in the name of the United States.
I have an unhappy feeling that there is much in what Sarah Sentilles says. There is a horrible ambiguity about people's subtle psychological responses to the Cross that makes many people suspicious and hostile toward this central symbol of traditional Christianity. As a Christian who hates and despises torture, I experience the Cross as a total rejection of torture. The Cross depicts God not as the gloating torturer, but as one who takes the side of the victims and raises them up to new life when the torture has exhausted its evil. God in Christ is the victim of evil but also its conqueror and abolisher. On the other hand, I sympathize with those who suspect there may be something different from these ideas going on in the mind of some Christians.
In my book I discuss “human sacrifice” and why it’s needed in Christianity. To say the least, it’s barbaric. It doesn’t surprise me that Evangelical Christians are willing to sacrifice human rights for human torture if they believe it will protect a people group-but that’s when I begin to question the god who would call for such a thing. So often what we call God’s justice is really only our own whim of what we would do if we were God. What’s disturbing to me is that this group of Christians probably believes they are the most loving and accepting people on earth, but their love goes out the window if they discover that you believe differently than them. Welcome to the Middle Ages.
Comments closed
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.