Churches Against Torture? | Sojourners

Churches Against Torture?

Letter to the Editors

Thank you for your article “Destroying Our Rights to Save Them” (by Dianna Ortiz, April 2012) about indefinite incarceration. Struggling with all these disturbing developments in the political arena, as our civil liberties are systematically dismantled and the Constitution thrown in the trash, we of faith must look to our spiritual core to find courage and guidance.

Christ didn’t fight the Roman Empire; he usurped it by ignoring it and transcending it. But he did give the religious leaders of the time a hard word—“Woe to the Pharisees!” Maybe the Christian leaders of our time—those from the right and the left—could get together and have a culturally relevant discussion about politically topical matters. What is the church’s view on torture, indefinite incarceration of American citizens, and the general destruction of the Constitution? Men and women on both sides are outraged at this domestic threat. Let us not stay silent, like Thomas Mann in Nazi Germany, or wait too late, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Dimitri Kadiev
Albuquerque, New Mexico

This appears in the July 2012 issue of Sojourners
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