If you want some of the ugly history of American Christianity’s collusion with Empire, we can go all the way back to Father Coughlin (sp), the right wing (one might say fascist) shrieker via radio. But in my lifetime I think one need go no farther than Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. That group shaped (and was shaped by) the American Right to such a degree… add to that mix the Southern Baptist Convention with its rabidly anti-woman backtracking. Check out the cross-pollination between the Christian Right and far-out non-christian groups such as the Mormons and even Sun Myung Moon’s group, who funded the so called Christian Right’s crusades. The old anti-Semitic and / or Masonic conspiracy theories were then and are now repackaged by the likes of LaHaye and Glenn Beck. Fear is the name of the game, irrational, unreasoning, claiming Christ’s legacy but exhibiting none of His fruits.

In recent years, the fact that I believe in a God who suffered as we suffer has taken on a far deeper resonance. I have had to revisit unbelief as an option in order to try to explain what has happened to American Christianity. But in revisiting it, I have discovered a deeper realization of Christ. I believe in the Jesus who was rejected by the Church at that time (Israel), was condemned by power (Rome’s Empire), and who was marginalized and finally nailed to a cross. That is resonant with what I see now, in America.

So, you who do not find yourselves able to believe, I can only say (as Kierkegaard wrote, “without authority”) that I hope you keep exposing our hypocrisy, failure, and toadying up to Empire rather than loving the “least of these” (Matthew 25). We have failed you, and failed to such a degree that I wonder what God will say to us when we face Him.

But Christ… He is lovely, good, pure, and worth your love. I believe in His resurrection. If you’re in Chicago some time, I’d love to sit down over coffee and talk about that. But the rest of it is anger and tears.

I remember another President, also very sincerely Christian, named Jimmy Carter. I can’t imagine him every sanctioning torture.

Something happened to American Christianity between the 1970s and 2000. And it wasn’t just Bush. In 2002 the Rev. Charles Stanley of Atlanta First Baptist church declared from the pulpit that God is in favor of war; “there is no question, God favors warfare” he declared in a sermon urging the U.S. to invade Iraq. Conservative Christians were the most gung-ho for the war, as well as for torture. And according to polls, the more often they attended church, the more gung-ho they were.

Why?

How can good Christians (like you) steer American Christianity back on track?

I don’t know. I hope you do.

Why is that? Because normally there are lots of viable alternatives. It is only when time is running out that you are likely to also run low on viable alternatives. Thus the scenarios in which torture might become the least repugnant alternative are also those scenarios in which there is very little time to work with. But torture only generates reliable information when the torturers are sure that their victim has the specific information they need and when they can credibly promise the victim that they will torture him/her again in the future if it turns out they have lied.

Consider the popular scenario in which authorities have captured one of the Islamic suicide-terrorists involved with planting a nuclear bomb in the city. If the terrorist knows where the bomb is and when it will go off, he only has to wait until he’s tortured and then provide false information (he was probably trained to do so). Time is on his side, unfortunately. This is not a promising scenario for torture to be successful (nor perhaps any other technique). And if the terrorist does not in fact know the necessary details, torture will at best draw out false information which will likewise waste authorities’ precious time.

Torture seems to be most promising as a technique when you hold the victim for weeks or months and have plenty of time to torture them in retaliation for false information — with time you can break them down and give them no hope for relief from being tortured. But when there is this much time, there are always many civilized alternatives to torture which will be far less morally repugnant.

So torture should always be illegal. But if a torturer can demonstrate in court that there was so little time that torture was the least morally repugnant alternative available, as a juror I’d consider that exculpatory.

Christians should be ashamed of any form of torture or violence, after all didn’t jesus teach ‘love thy neighbor’ and ‘do unto other as you would have them do to you’?

I fully agree that there is an historical association between communist totalitarian regimes like the Soviet Union and China and mass murder, imprisonment of political opponents, and other unforgivable practices. And those regimes were officially atheist and they suppressed religious liberty. Which mean that atheism has a definite association with those horrible behaviors. All atheists today should resoundingly condemn mass murder, imprisonment of political opponents, and other infringements on human rights. Just as (this is my point) all Christians today should resoundingly condemn torture.

We must never forget that people who believed like us did horrible things. And unfortunately, in the case of the Bush administration, are doing horrible things in our name today.