Last week I posted on the Pew Forum’s recent survey suggesting that a shockingly high proportion of Christians hold that torture is acceptable. In my post – I stated that this figure suggests that our preachers, teachers, and community organisers are not doing enough to convey the central Christian tenet – that suffering, to cause the suffering of others, is unacceptable.

This morning – while making my rounds – I stumbled across Sarah Sentilles essay: “Are Christians Theologically Prepared to Accept Torture?” over at Religion Dispatches. Sentilles makes the case that Americans have been prepared to approve the use of torture through their theological reference points; namely, the theology of the atonement, and the regular reference to Christ’s own torture. In this way there is a culture of acceptance that this act of torture (and death) is salvific – it saves others.

The doctrine of the atonement is a very Pauline idea (see Hebrews), and  is just one reference point answering the question “why the incarnation” (for another see Athanasius On the Incarnation, or Proklos of Constantinople Homily 4), but it is not one that was particularly popular in the Patristic period, nor is it one that I find I have a great deal of sympathy with (indeed I have real problems with it). My own theological conditioning then – my point of reference – would not have prepared me, indeed it did not prepare me, to assent to, or accept the viability of torture as a tactic to be practiced by Christian military officials, or a government claiming to be grounded in a Judeo-Christian ethic. An interesting idea to be sure – but this leaves us with the question of how the theory of the atonement, as a theological reference point, does condition it’s followers to accept torture. Moreover – how does this conditioning create a filter for other areas of suffering? Sentilles explores possible answers to the former in her essay. I sat and wondered about the latter for this post.

If we believe that Jesus came to end our suffering, and that it is our religious duty to strive to end (or prevent) the suffering of others – how then can we square this belief with an acceptance of torture? Curiously, now that I’m sitting here thinking about this, I am faced with the perplexing, anc commonly held “christian” belief that personal suffering is “good” for the soul; it has been over the centuries promoted as our own individual, mini-atonement. But is this really what Christ had in mind when he taught us to visit the sick, the lonely, and the imprisoned? If personal suffering is as good as we’ve been lead to believe, should we not then let the hungry go hungry, the lonely sit in their empty rooms alone, and the imprisioned be forgotten – so that they can “atone” for themselves, and for others through their “good suffering”?
My questions may not be as refined as Sentilles’ who extends her consideration of “conditioning” to ask a series of questions about the interrelationship of having the doctrine of the atonement as a theological starting point, and torture: “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?”

Is the theory of the atonement as strong a reference point in our OC/IC communities as it is in say the Roman Catholic, or Evangelical community? If so – how does it affect our (normally) progressive theologies of social justice and healing? Have we unconsciously moved to a different theory – one that it might be useful to articulate because it would inspire further positive praxis on our part?