Exchanging Chains for Liberty: We Must Abandon the Old Standards and Create New Lines Between Good and Evil

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Where should we draw the line between good and evil? Between legal and illegal? These are difficult questions which occupy every society and no final answers are ever really developed. Nevertheless, the nature of the debate and the means by which different lines are drawn can be as informative about the morals of a society as the answers themselves. In America today there is an intense debate over where to draw the lines around torture: is it moral or immoral to torture and abuse detainees in order to obtain information about possible terrorist plans?

One might expect Christians to stand up and forcefully oppose any efforts to legalize or authorize the use of torture, even as a “necessary evil” in the pursuit of some vital goal. Some are in fact doing exactly this, but not all. The most conservative Christians in America are instead lending their full support to the Bush administration’s agenda of creating new methods of extracting information from an unknown number of current and future detainees. The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the True Values Coalition, for example, has openly stated that the “lines must be redrawn” and that we must “redefine” how America deals with terrorism detainees.

If we’re going to be fully honest, though, he and other Christian Nationalists aren’t so much seeking “new” lines as the resurrection of very old lines. The ability of the state to arbitrarily arrest, detain, and torture citizens isn’t very far back in history in the West — and it still exists in other parts of the world. America and Europe had finally moved beyond such barbarism, but conservative evangelical Christians are on the forefront of efforts to drag us all kicking and screaming back into the 12th century.

Christianity has a long history with torture, and on both sides of the red-hot poker. The earliest Christians were often victims of torture at the hands of hostile authorities. Christian tradition has it that not only Jesus but many of his apostles were killed in the process of horrible torture. Once Christianity became the joined with the state, Christians themselves were administering the torture — often against other Christians who failed to adhere to orthodoxy, but also against Jews, Muslims, and others. Thus the “new” lines and standards are really just old ones being introduced again long after we thought we had gotten rid of them.

Naturally these new “lines” benefit those who already have power and are detrimental to those who are generally lacking in power. This isn’t a coincidence — the purpose of redrawing the lines in the first place is to enable those with power to more effectively control those without power. Protecting people from greater dangers may be a side benefit or it may simply be a convenient excuse. This is how politics has proceeded in widely divergent cultures and societies all around the world. Whenever religion is joined with political power, it typically provides moral cover even if its own moral principles condemns what’s happening.

Conservative evangelical Christians typically condemn liberals for their “relativistic” morality and how their moral standards keep shifting to accommodate new situations. Here, though, we find those same Christians advocating new and shifting moral standards rather than upholding traditional or absolute moral injunctions against torture and abuse. This contradiction should be a surprise, but it isn’t. Why? I believe that there is a common underlying factor which unites all of their positions: fear.

Fear of moral chaos drives their insistence on a single, absolute, objective moral standard derived from the Bible. Fear of losing their social, political, and cultural power drives every facet of their “Culture Wars” — decency in media, Christmas conflicts, prayer in school, and so forth. Fear of terrorism and terrorist acts drives their belief that traditional standards of justice and moral decency must be dispensed with as part of an effort to do everything possible to prevent terrorist acts. It may difficult to comprehend how people could be that afraid, given the circumstances, but you must remember that their entire religious and political agenda is already ruled by fear.

When fear becomes the basis for everything else a person does, it’s easy to give in to new fears promoted by religious and political leaders. Fear becomes a way of life and the filter through which everything else is interpreted. Fear rules the Right in America today and it’s quickly becoming a hysterical sort of fear that drowns out all reason. This is not a debate which can be won through reasoned discussion.

We must counter their fears with messages of optimism and confidence. We must encourage people to stand tall and take charge despite the dangers rather than duck and hide, letting the power-hungry authoritarians take control with false promises of protection and safety. Americans won’t be free unless they are worthy of freedom. This means not purchasing liberty through putting chains on others, victory through the torture of suspects, or safety through authoritarian measures.

This poster is, obviously, an amalgam of several source images. Jesus tied to the column comes from one of the panels of the 1524 painting The Passion of Christ by Hans Holbein the Younger. Uncle Sam’s head is from a World War I poster promoting the alliance between America and Britannia. The body is from a World War I poster created by Belgian artist Louis Raemaekers and originally depicted a German. Both the cleaver and the crown of thorns were added in by me.

Last week I promised more variety in the sorts of things I would post. Except for the mid-day bonus sermon, it doesn't look like I managed to deliver. I apologize for that — I really did intend to post entirely different sorts of things today and even had them ready, but political events overtook my intentions and I didn't feel comfortable with not commenting on things I was reading. I'll do better in the future, really. Until then, don't forget my gallery of Christian Right Propaganda Posters. I add a couple of new ones every week (not always on the last page of the gallery — if I like them enough, I move them to the first gallery page so more people will see them).