I Was in Prison, and You Tortured Me

With the news swirling this week over congressional and potentially criminal investigations of those involved in torture, I began this post thinking I'd write a little about the Mormon connections to the Bush administration torture policies and practices. Others have written and blogged about Jay Bybee and the "Mormon Mafia" of Mitchell Jessen and Associates. There are emerging details regarding a Mormon girl who appears to have committed suicide as a result of her experiences torturing Iraqi prisoners. Shoot, an sltrib.com blogger even intimated that Mormon Brigadier General David Irvine requested, without success, that the "brethren" issue a formal statement condemning torture. Shortly thereafter, General Irvine himself wrote up an op-ed roundly condemning torture and implicitly calling on the church to speak out. Surely this is a subject worth writing about.

As interesting as all that is, what strikes me is how lonely David Irvine's voice is in the Mormon community. The best I can come up with formally is a quote from a Salt Lake Tribune article in which a spokesperson for the church says the church condemns all forms of abuse.

So, why the silence?

I mean, I guess it's obvious to me that Mormons, as professed followers of Christ, ought to condemn torture, in the strongest possible terms. I grew up all my life hearing horror stories about the depravity of Pilate and the Roman soldiers who flogged and crucified the one we call Lord. This same Lord Jesus taught us to love our enemies, to pray for those who despitefully use and persecute us, to turn the other cheek, to suffer long and be kind. Even the Vatican, whose unfortunate history includes events that make the Mountain Meadows Massacre look like an Easter Egg Hunt, explicitly condemns torture, noting both its unrealiability and rank immorality.

Yet Mormons, along with with the majority of conservative American Christians, according to some recent polling data (and confirmed forcefully to me by much of my own experience with my Mormon neighbors) don't have a problem with torture.

So, again, what does it all mean?

On the one hand, I've considered that Mormons (and other pro-torture Americans) rely on subconscious semi-disonant reasoning which equates in their religious mind torture with justice. Jesus, after all, saved mankind as a result of the torture he suffered. He paid the price for the sins of Christians, and if the just punishment of a Christian for sin is torture (as also indicated, more explicitly, in the Mormon Doctrine and Covenants: "if they would not repent, they must suffer, even as I"), then how much more appropriate is torture as the punishment of a Muslim for involvement in terrorism?

In an even more convoluted mental path, it seems to me that to some, the act of torture suffered by Jesus, in its sanctifying nature, may indicate that the torture of others is similarly sanctifying, serving both to extract truth (as a press extracts the pure oil of Gethsemane) as well as to sanctify the sufferer and the rest of humanity. No objective observers of the body religious has ever concluded that these people employ rational thought.

I think, though, the more I consider both the condemnation of the Vatican as well as the similarly harsh judgment passed by the Anglican communion against American torture, that the phenomenon of Mormon and American Christian countenance of torture is a result only of negligible religious influence on largely weak and instinctively animalistic minds. After all, for all the hype it's received, the polling data suggesting that approval of torture is linked to religious ferver only suggests, at best, that only an additional 1% of Christians approve torture over the approval rating accorded the practice by the non-religious in this country.

What that says to me, viewed in the light of the European condemnation of torture, including the views, as previously noted, of the Anglicans and Catholics, that the American religious mind has become a deeply political one (or perhaps that the American cultural/political mind is simply wearing a larger religious mask). Petty grievances over the Inquisition aside, I have to agree with the editors of America: The National Catholic Weekly:

"The divisive effects of the new American sectarians have not escaped the notice of the Vatican. Their highly partisan political edge has become a matter of concern. That they never demonstrate the same high dudgeon at the compromises, unfulfilled promises and policy disagreements with Republican politicians as with Democratic ones is plain for all to see. It is time to call this one-sided denunciation by its proper name: political partisanship."

And if there's anything that's dominated my religious tradition and upbringing, it's the confirmation that my church, along with so many other Christian churches in this country, forms itself at least as much in the image of American conservative politics as it does in the image of Jesus. The evidence manifests in Ezra Taft Benson's fanatical rants against Martin Luther King, Jr., the Democratic Party, and the great "Communist Conspiracy"; Gordon Bitner Hinckley's insistence, in the wake of Russell Nelson's plea for peace and diplomacy in the run-up to the war in Iraq, to promote the Mormon position on war as one which simply complies with the law of the land (as administered at the time by George Walker Bush); the programming to be found on church-owned KSL radio featuring a healthy daily dose of conservative extremist Sean Hannity, with no counterbalancing views whatsoever; and finally the fact that not a single member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles or First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is willing to self-identify as a Democrat, or, honestly, anything other than a Republican.

There's a lot I like about the Mormon church. They do good things. But if my church is so political that it refuses to speak out against actions so horrifyingly repugnant to its own who are asked to engage in them that their own, footsoldiers in a war the prophet himself enthusiastically supported, would commit suicide rather than go forward in the execution, I cannot support the church. I cannot give them my tithing. I cannot attend their meetings. I cannot sustain them as spiritual leaders. I cannot view them as anything but cowards purporting to be representatives of God, but lacking all but the smallest shreds of moral authority appertaining to that office.