Balkenende en de Evangelical Church of Torture

[Henk Elegeert]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

"
Evangelical Church of Torture and Jack Bauer

By Jonathan L. Walton
May 6, 2009

[A recent poll showed that white evangelicals are the religious group
most likely to support torture. How can that be?]

Last week the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life
released poll data revealing the relationships between religious
commitment and support for the use of torture against terror suspects.
Those who rarely attend religious services are the least likely to
support torture. The more one attends religious service, the greater
the level of support. And white evangelical Protestants offered the
greatest amount of support for torture with a majority (62%) of
respondents believing that torture can at least sometimes be
justified.

I am sickened but not terribly shocked.

This glib view of the brutality and inhumanity of torture is bound up
in a particular strand of American Christian theology that’s been a
growing force for over a century.

Muscular Christianity in America has minimized the vice of torture and
extolled the virtue of the Heroic One who endures for a greater cause.
The crucified body of Jesus is held up as a paragon of strength,
virtue and virility.

This is true not because Jesus offered an alternative conception of
society where the first shall be last or the last shall be first. Not
because Jesus found virtue rather than vice in the “least of these”
among us. And not because Jesus inverted assumptions about authority
by his willingness to humbly wash the feet of those who would
otherwise worship him.

Rather, Jesus is a moral exemplar because “he was wounded for our
transgressions, by his wounds we are healed, and by his blood we are
made whole.” Jesus is worshiped as the ultimate “strong man” who could
overcome the pain and sting of death for the sake of righteousness.
The horror of inflicted suffering is theologically interpreted as an
efficient cause toward bringing forth the greater good and thus
torture becomes divinely utilitarian.

Is it a wonder why, then, on Sunday morning it is often hard to tell
the difference between Jesus and Jack Bauer on Fox’s megahit “24?”
Like a long list of American messianic masculine archetypes (John
Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Mel Gibson), Jesus is situated in this
tradition of bulletproof heroes who mock the machinations of torture.

What is more, like Jack Bauer, anyone who is willing to endure torture
for others is that much more justified in dishing it out. And,
unfortunately, since muscular evangelicals so identify with the
mutilated body of Jesus who “suffered for the sins of the world,” it
is only right that they, too, would condone the suffering of others in
order to purge our world of “evil.”
"

Er moest ergens een link liggen ...

Henk Elegeert

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********