208 Dialog: A Journal of Theology • Volume 47, Number 3 • Fall 2008

1
Torture and Religious Practice
By William Schweiker
Abstract: This essay explores the connection between religious practices and torture with specific reference
to the debate in the USA about ‘waterboarding’ as part of the so-called War on Terror. After isolating
some defining features of torture, the essay examines the historical background of waterboarding in
the symbolism of Christian baptism and how this symbolism was used during the Inquisition and the
Reformation as part of the torture of heretics and others. Mindful of this sordid use of a Christian rite
meant to celebrate new life, the essay thereby clarifies Christian responsibility in the political order. That
responsibility requires uncovering the religious roots of some forms of torture, resisting their use by the
State, and, further, seeking to render current Christian practice both humane and life giving.

Key Terms: baptism, Inquisition, Reformation, religious practice, responsibility, torture

The Religious and the Demonic demonic, such as witches. The strange and para-
doxical connection between religion and violence is
longstanding and widespread. Why should this fact
be any different in our age of global cultural and
The great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich noted
religious interactions?
that the religious and the demonic are often
In what follows, I am interested to explore ‘tor-
related. While religion can be a source of healing
ture’ as a kind of violence, the legitimacy of which
and hope, the demonic also can break through re-
is in question. And I want to link torture to
ligious forms and spread death and destruction.2 If
religious practice, by which I simply mean some
one turns from theology to the history of religions
ritualized activity in which religious beliefs and con-
and the work of anthropologists, Tillich’s observa-
victions are enacted in ways to form life and to
tion is plainly confirmed. Religious practices are
articulate the faith of a community. Obviously, I
sometimes tied to violence in rituals, but also in
cannot treat the whole question of violence and re-
wars and the quest for empire. There is the idea of
ligious practice. I am more interested in human acts
“sacred violence,” which is to cleanse and redeem a
of evil through unjustified works of torture. More
place or a people from evil done and suffered.3 For
precisely, the topic of this essay is how religious
Christians, Christ’s agony on the cross is believed
practices that are meant to communicate new life
to be the very center of the drama of redemption.
can be encoded and concealed in acts of torture
Israel is formed into the people of God through the
for what are claimed to be good political purposes.
Exodus, and the terrors and wonders God worked
When that happens, nothing short of an irruption
on the Egyptians. Yet it is also the case that reli-
of the demonic occurs within our social life, which
gious people have been subjected to violence and
threatens to demean and destroy the very nature of
torture for their beliefs and practices; the crucifix-
human community. I will have something to say
ion of Christians by Nero, for example, or the rise
about torture and religious practice generally, but
of global religious violence over the last decades.4
I intend in this essay to concentrate on the cur-
Torture also has been inflicted on those deemed
rent debate within the USA about ‘waterboarding.’
to be heretics or viewed to be in league with the

William Schweiker is the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of Chicago. He is also
the Director of the Martin Marty Center. His most recent books include Theological Ethics and Global Dynamics: In the Time of Many Worlds
(Blackwell 2004) and, with David Klemm, Religion and the Human Future: An Essay on Theological Humanism (Blackwell, 2008).
 Torture and Religious Practice • William Schweiker
As we will see, there are Christian roots to this
form of torture that need to be articulated, ex-
plored, and analyzed. Religious ideas and symbols
form a deep background to torture too easily hid-
den behind public discourse. One task of the
scholar, theologian, pastor, or priest is, accord-
ingly, to be a counter-voice in the public arena
and thus to bring to light religious impulses and
meanings hidden from view. We must articulate
religious meanings buried in social and political
discourse so that believers and non-believers alike
can decide how rightly to respond in humane
ways.
Let me begin by clarifying how I want to ap-
proach the topic of torture and what it means for
Christian theological ethics. I then turn to explore
and assess the religious roots of waterboarding.
Torture and Christian Thinking
Questions that swirl around religious practice and
torture readily center on a cluster of concepts:
violence, torture, evil, the demonic—to name just
a few. In fact, I have already used these terms in
the opening paragraph of this essay. Some clarity
about these ideas, or at least those important to
the present reflections, is thereby necessary from
the very outset. What is more, I have already
noted that these matters fall under various forms of
thought: theology, the history of religions, anthro-
pology; and also sociology, law, history, and the like.
It is therefore important to be clear about how one
approaches the topic of torture. Additionally, one
also needs clarity about the perspective from which
an act or event is seen, interpreted, and evaluated.
This too already has been intimated. The Israelites
fleeing the tyranny of Egypt saw in the destruction
of Pharaoh’s men a mighty and saving act of God.
From the perspective of those very same men, as
well as their families and friends, an unjustified evil
was visited upon them. Similarly, the execution of
Jesus was, if we take the biblical narrative seriously,
something the Roman authorities found justified or
at least a tragic necessity; but from the perspective
of his disciples, matters appeared quite differently.
209
The question of perspective is even more com-
plex when we admit that race, sex and class shape
human perception. We can explore the meaning of
torture shortly, but it is wise at this point to note
the form of thought and perspective that informs
my argument.
The Issue of Perspective
Of course it is both popular and accurate to insist
on the ‘situated’ nature of human knowing, and
thus the inevitable relativity of perspective. No
human being sees the world from God’s perspective,
and, because we are fallible creatures, no individual
or community has a complete grasp of any situa-
tion. What is more, how we see the world—that is,
how we understand and orient existence—is shaped,
come what may, by what we care about and value.
Different values and cares give rise to divergent
understandings of an event or social structure. This
essay, for instance, is written from the perspective
of a first world Christian who is deeply concerned
about the moral meaning of his faith and how it
might be lived responsibly and humanely. It is also
the case that I am a university professor and that I
lived in a high-modern, wealthy, and differentiated
society. All of this obviously affects how I under-
stand the world and evaluate moral and political
questions.
However, the facts just noted, as well as my gen-
der, class, etc. do not in and of themselves justify
the conclusions reached below. The truth of an eth-
ical judgment purports to be something other than
simply an expression of a person’s opinion, per-
ception, or identity; or the beliefs and practices of
some community. If that is not the case, then moral
claims are utterly relative and there is no means to
show that one course of action—say, torture—is
worse (morally speaking) than another course of
action—say, care for the poor. Moral judgments
are then reduced to nothing more than preference.
Thankfully, no serious minded individual or com-
munity endorses mindless relativism, even if the
popular media and culture seem to advocate it. The
real task is to grant the fact of “situated knowledge,”
but to avoid the consequence of moral relativism in
210 Dialog: A Journal of Theology • Volume 47, Number 3 • Fall 2008
which it is impossible to make moral judgments.
If an action or policy—say the use of torture
unjustly by a nation state—is judged immoral, then
the judgment claims to hold for every similar case.
Thus, when I argue later that waterboarding is
immoral that means it is wrong anywhere and at
anytime, and that no specific situation or appeal
can justify its practice.
Everyone has made invalid judgments, of course.
Ethics, among other things, aims to help us think
clearly and stubbornly so that we might make valid
judgments about human conduct and character.
Again, this does not imply omniscience, as if one
can escape their skin or reason without error, but it
does establish a standard at which moral reasoning
can and should aim. The only way out of ethical
reasoning is to deny reason itself—a very dangerous
thing to do in human life—or to embrace moral
nihilism, the belief that there is nothing worth call-
ing good or evil, right or wrong, just or unjust. I
assume that Christians are not moral nihilists and
thereby are committed to the labor and joy of moral
reflection. Where Christians differ is in the form
or kind of ethical thinking they undertake: virtue
ethics or divine command ethics and so on. But
in any case, commitment to careful thinking about
how to live rightly and faithfully remains a part of
the Christian life.
These points about the situated character of
knowledge and also the challenge of ethical reason-
ing help to explain the specific stance adopted in
this essay. As just noted, there are different patterns
of moral thinking found among Christians. Some
like to think about the life of faith in terms of
the development of virtue; others, say Lutheran and
Reformed thinkers, speak about God’s governance
of life through the so-called “two kingdoms doc-
trine.” There is also the tradition of Roman
Catholic natural law ethics. The purpose of this
essay is not to explore these different forms of
ethics and how they would assess and respond to
the question of torture. For instance, many in the
history of the Inquisition, as we will see below,
found reasons for torture, but so too did Calvin
in the tragic case of Servitus. There are plenty of
reasons for repentance for the misuse of Christian
convictions.
Responsibility Ethics
In my view, the most adequate form of ethics for
current Christian thought is a kind of responsibil-
ity ethics. This kind of ethics signals the fact that
the Christian life is always a matter of responding
to the living God in and through our responses to
others and the world in which we find ourselves.
Further, responsibility is about the use or suffering
of power. That would seem especially important in
thinking about torture. The emphasis in responsi-
bility ethics falls, then, on the contextual nature
of human life, emphasizing that we must always
respond to others and the surrounding world mind-
ful of the ways that these relations place limits
on human power but also sustain our capacities
for action. Given this emphasis, it might appear
that “responsibility ethics” is nothing more than
what use to be called “situation ethics,” and, there-
fore, is unable to address the pressing moral and
political issues of our time that demand more pre-
cise standards of judgment.5 It is hardly surpris-
ing that, in fact, some theologians criticize respon-
sibility ethics precisely along these lines and have
urged Christians to adopt other moral positions.6 I
think that judgment and its attendant recommen-
dation are incorrect. Difficulties only arise when
‘responsibility’ as such is made the norm of an
ethics so that all one is to do is to respond to each
and every situation without any measure or norm
for one’s responding. But few (if any) thinkers have
actually held that idea.
The various forms of responsibility ethics found
among theologians and philosophers share the
conviction that human existence is situated and
responsive. They differ in how they formulate the
norm for deciding what counts as a proper moral
response. Since I cannot argue the point in this
essay, I will simply stipulate how I formulate the
imperative of responsibility: in all actions and re-
lations respect and enhance the integrity of life.7 Re-
sponsible existence is about responding in ways
that respect and enhance, rather than demean and
destroy, the fragile integrity of forms of life. Ac-
tions that do demean and destroy the integrity
of a life cannot be judged good and responsible.
 Torture and Religious Practice • William Schweiker
I realize that the strong judgments I make in
this essay about the immorality of waterboarding
might surprise some readers, given their assump-
tions about an ethics of responsibility. The fact is,
however, that these judgments are utterly consistent
with the outlook and orientation of existence from
the perspective of responsibility for the integrity of
life.
The Church-State Relationship
One last matter about perspective and moral reason-
ing among Christians with respect to torture needs
to be noted. Throughout the long history of the
church, believers have understood their relation to
the political and civic order and authorities in dif-
ferent ways. Some Eastern Orthodox thinkers talk
about a ‘symphonic relation’ between the church
and the state. In modern democracies, like the
USA, there is the proper insistence on the sepa-
ration of the church and state. Other Christians
believe that the task of the church is to be a kind
of counter-culture to the wider social world, and
therefore not to try to transform the world but to
witness to it.8 Still others, including myself, believe
that the task of the church in its witness to its
faith is to strive to “reform the nation,” as John
Wesley put it. This does not mean the imposition
of a Christian order on the state, but rather, to
work for a society in which justice and care are
increasingly salient features of civil life. Whereas
some Christians would only engage the question
of “torture” in order to show the sin of the world
and the demand for Christians to witness for peace
to the world, from the perspective adopted here
things are more complex. The root conviction, as
the grand legacy of the Roman Catholic and Protes-
tant thought has always insisted, is that Christians
rely on and thus must contribute to the social or-
der. Insofar as Christians rely on the state for the
sake of some measure of civil stability, then there is
a commensurate obligation to work for the peace
and justice of the social order. The kingdom of God
will not be ushered in through human labor, and
Christians must be realistic about the good that can
be accomplished in the civil realm. Nevertheless, the
211
responsibility of Christians is to participate in social
life for the sake of the peace and well-being of the
neighbor.
There is, then, urgent need for a careful anal-
ysis of public discourse among Christians in the
USA with respect to the on-going debate about
torture in the War on Terror. While I have deep
misgivings about the very idea of a War on Ter-
ror, and I certainly judge the current war in Iraq
to be morally unjustified, my concern in this es-
say is more specific. It is to bring to light and to
explore religious meanings in public discourse. This
is especially true when believers, often unaware of
the religious significance of acts of violence, support
policies that violate the best insights of their own
convictions. Not only do I find ‘waterboarding’ cat-
egorically unjustified, but I also want to show why
Christians in particular should seek to end its use.
On the way to that conclusion, let me turn next
to conceptual and historical issues.
Torture: Its Meaning and History
In a standard dictionary or encyclopedia definition,
torture is deliberately inflicted pain by a person on
another person.9 This action can take many forms:
beatings, electric shocks, the rack, the injection of
drugs, isolation, waterboarding, and so on. Yet sev-
eral features are necessary for the infliction of pain
to be an instance of torture. Five features seem ba-
sic: (1) at least two persons are involved, so tor-
ture excludes instances of self-abuse; (2) one per-
son has control (physical and/or mental) over the
other(s), so torture is not a matter of combat in
which control is in dispute, or revolt as the usurpa-
tion of control (justified or not) by the oppressed;
(3) the infliction of pain in an act of torture must
be extreme, purposeful, and systematic, that is, it
is deliberate and harsh, rather than unintended or
accidental; (4) there is the purpose of dehumanizing
the victim for the sake of some end, like gaining
a confession, obtaining information, punishment,
conversion, or intimidation of the victim and his
or her cohorts; (5) the act of torture might be di-
rected immediately at the victim, say, to get him to
212 Dialog: A Journal of Theology • Volume 47, Number 3 • Fall 2008
convert or confess, or the victim might be the
means to get a third party (say a family or some
religious, political, or ethnic group) to convert, con-
fess, release information, etc. We should add that
features (4) and (5) taken together are meant to ex-
clude from the definition of torture acts of sadism
even if, one must admit, sadistic impulses and plea-
sures seem to attend the practice of torture. I leave
aside for the sake of this essay the idea of the
torture of animals. That is, of course, a crucial is-
sue but it is not the focus of these reflections.10
For present purposes, this definition and the five
formal features of torture will suffice.
Of course, all the features noted can be con-
tested (and they are), and there can be debates in
specific cases of whether an act or policy is in fact
an instance of torture. For example, in the use of
torture by the US government as part of its War
on Terror there have been questions about whether
specific acts of inflicting pain reached the thresh-
old needed to count as ‘torture.’ The Bush Ad-
ministration has, by and large, continually tried to
raise the threshold in order to allow increasingly
intense forms of interrogation to be used and yet
to escape the label ‘torture.’ There are also debates
about what constitutes ‘dehumanizing’ actions. Is
the presence of a menstruating soldier during the
interrogation of a Muslim prisoner on suspicion
of plotting terrorist attacks on US citizens dehu-
manizing, since Muslim men are not to have con-
tract with menstruating women? Was the presence
of such female soldiers at interrogations intentional
and deliberate? Other questions have been raised
about the treatment of the Qur’an in interrogation
sites, as well as the rights of prisoners to practice
their religion. These and other specific issues have
been debated regarding US policy, as we all know.
Still, the formal features of torture remain in force
as the means to decide when an act is an instance
of torture. What is debated is whether a specific
policy or act is in fact an instance, and thus qual-
ifies as an actual act of torture.
There is, sadly, a horrendous history of cru-
elty and torture. Certainly torture has been used
for thousands of years. Greek and Roman law, for
instance, specified that only slaves could be tor-
tured. Yet in some instances citizens were tortured
because of treason. During the Inquisition and the
Reformation era, as noted below, torture was used;
and in the American colonies there was the torture
of suspected witches. Despite efforts during the En-
lightenment to stop torture for humanitarian rea-
sons, with the 20th century horrific examples of
torture were practiced in Nazi Germany, the Gu-
lags in the Soviet Union under Stalin, in Cambodia
and elsewhere. The attempt to stop or at least con-
trol torture culminated with the adoption, in 1984
by the United Nations, of the Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment. But, in fact, the conven-
tion has often been ignored, not only by authori-
tarian and police states, but most recently by the
USA itself.
What Justifies Torture?
Before exploring further the history behind water-
boarding, another conceptual issue must be noted.
In the flurry of the 2008 presidential campaign,
various candidates took starkly different stances on
waterboarding. In this form of torture an individ-
ual is tied on his or her back with the head down,
and there is forced inhalation of water into the
lungs in order to induce the sensation of drowning.
Some candidates condemned the practice as out-
right torture (McCain, Clinton, Obama, Edwards);
others refused to condemn waterboarding if, in an
extreme case, it could save millions of American
lives (Giuliani, Romney, Thompson). Within this
political debate the topic was rightly divided into
two separate but related questions: is waterboarding
a form of ‘torture;’ and, given the defining features
of torture, are there situations in which waterboard-
ing is justified?
The argument for the possible justification of
torture turns on features (4) and (5) of torture
noted above, that is, the aim or purpose of inflicting
pain. We will see later that this is especially confus-
ing with respect to waterboarding since it conceals a
religious purpose within a supposedly political one.
However, the current debate about torture focuses
on extracting information for a political purpose,
namely, the security of the USA and its citizens.
 Torture and Religious Practice • William Schweiker
Several assumptions are behind the debate: that we
could infallibly know that someone had vital in-
formation that would in fact save millions of lives
(the so-called ‘ticking bomb’); that torture would
extract this information without distortion; that the
procedure would work infallibly; and, finally, if the
information was secured truthfully and infallibly, it
could be put to good use in good time. None of
these assumptions is warranted. And, interestingly,
already during the Enlightenment there was oppo-
sition to torture not only for humanitarian reasons
but also because it was argued that torture is not
necessary to obtain evidence for conviction or po-
litical purpose. Current expert opinion and empiri-
cal evidence, like the work of Psychologists for Social
Responsibility and also a conference at Georgetown
University held in 2006, concur that torture is an
ineffective means to gain reliable and truthful infor-
mation. The scenario of the lone knower of critical
information whose torture would save millions of
lives is the stuff of cheap spy movies and bad ex-
amination questions in ethics courses. It is a ploy
of political manipulation in order to justify acts
of torture by playing on the fears and hopes of
citizens.
The question of what could justify—that is,
make morally acceptable—an act of torture is com-
plex, because the answer can shift depending on the
larger purpose of the action. For instance, torture
might be believed to be justified as a way to bring a
heretic back to the faith or to gain a confession im-
portant for salvation. From a political perspective,
an action deemed to be torturous might be judged
proper if it could save citizens’ lives or gain useful
information that would foreshorten armed conflict.
The 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche,
in his book On the Genealogy of Morals, thought that
torture and punishment was a social means to cre-
ate memory in people for the purpose of controlling
them.11 The point is that the justification of tor-
ture usually is tied to some larger political, religious,
cultural, or social goal that is believed to provide
the reasons for acknowledging the torturous action
as morally acceptable—that is, as a morally right
means to a good political, religious, or social end.
The irony, of course, is that sometime those ‘ends’
can be used to trump other beliefs about how hu-
213
man beings should be rightly treated, thereby lead-
ing to a kind of moral madness, a reckless and
inhumane use of destructive power.12 That is the
case with extreme forms of torture. We will see in
a moment how a political purpose has co-opted a
religious one in the case of waterboarding.
With some of the features of torture in hand,
and a bit of history as well as the questions it
poses, I want to turn now to waterboarding and
its strange connection to the Christian practice of
baptism.
Waterboarding and Baptism
In terms of the question of definition of water-
boarding as a form of torture, matters are legal
and visceral. International conventions through the
United Nations provide ample guideline; and, as
commentators have noted, if waterboarding is not
torture it is not clear what else to call it, despite the
Bush Administration’s penchant to alter and amend
definitions. Those who condemn the practice of wa-
terboarding are right on three scores, even if some
political leaders continue to disagree with the truth
of the conclusion: those who condemn torture are
right for moral and humane reasons and thus prop-
erly insist that the United States join other civi-
lized nations and condemn torture; they are right
that waterboarding is without doubt a form of
torture; and, they are right to question the poten-
tial of this and other forms of torture actually to
gain useful information in the proposed scenario.
In other words, not only by definition, but also
with respect to political purposes, waterboarding is
immoral and ineffectual. It is ethically and prag-
matically unjustified or unwarranted.
Less often observed is that the practice of water-
boarding has some of its roots in the Spanish In-
quisition, and also in the persecution of Anabaptists
during the Protestant Reformation and the so-called
Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation (of which
the Inquisition was one part).13 To be sure, the
practice has been used elsewhere by the great state-
run machines of death and terror. However, while
214 Dialog: A Journal of Theology • Volume 47, Number 3 • Fall 2008
some presidential candidates also have admitted
the roots of waterboarding in the Inquisition, what
has not been noted—astonishingly enough—is the
distinctly religious meaning of this form of torture,
a topic that bears some reflection, at least briefly.
Why the use of water? Why did this specific prac-
tice develop as a way to torture heretics—whether
the heretic was an Anabaptist or, in the Inquisi-
tion, a Protestant of any stripe as well as Jews, sus-
pected witches and others? Once we understand the
religious meaning of the torture, how should
Christians respond?
The Religious Significance of Torture by
Water
Why the use of water? Consider a tiny fragment
of a complex history. In the case of the Anabap-
tists, the answer to the question about water is
simple and clear. Roman Catholics and Protestants
alike persecuted the Anabaptists, or “re-baptizers,”
since these people rejected infant baptism in favor
of adult baptism. The use of torture and physical
abuse was meant to stem the movement and also
to bring salvation to heretics by means of a kind
of baptism. Protestants under Zwingli were the first
to persecute Anabaptists; Roman Catholic author-
ities executed Michael Sattler in 1527. King Fer-
dinand declared that drowning—called the “third
baptism”—was the proper response to Anabaptists.
Water as a form of torture is an inversion of the
waters of baptism under the (grotesque) belief that
it can deliver the heretic from his or her sins.
It was believed—at least since St. Augustine—that
punishment, even lethal in form, could be an act
of mercy meant to keep a sinner from continu-
ing in sin, either by repentance of heresy or by
death.
The background idea or purpose, then, was orig-
inally the claim that torture or punishment could
save the sinner from further sin that would endan-
ger his or her soul. Interestingly, beliefs about di-
vine mercy and the ultimate good of salvation were
the fuel driving polices that justified the use of tor-
ture. The theological question that has to be asked
then, is whether or not the centrality of the cross
in beliefs about salvation is the driving force behind
the logic of redemption through suffering; or, con-
versely, if the singularity of Christ’s suffering should
defuse all ideas about that vision of redemption. In
my judgment, both of these impulses are found
within Christian piety. One theological task facing
this generation of Christians is to work continu-
ally to block any interpretation of faith that might
lead to the use of suffering for the sake of redemp-
tion. Christ and Christ alone brings atonement. But
these matters of soteriology are best treated in an-
other essay.14
In the Inquisition, the practice was not drowning
as such, but the threat of drowning, and, symboli-
cally we can say, the threat of baptism. The tortura
del agua or toca entailed, like waterboarding, forc-
ing the victim to ingest water poured into a cloth
stuffed into the mouth in order to give the sense
of drowning. Because of the broad symbolic mean-
ing of ‘water’ in the Christian and Jewish traditions
(e.g., creation, the great flood, the parting of the
Red Sea in the Exodus and drowning of the Egyp-
tians (!), Christ’s walking on the water, and, cen-
trally for Christians, baptism as a symbolic death
that gives life, as in St. Paul’s theology of baptism in
Romans 6), the practice takes on profound religious
meanings. Torture has many forms and meanings,
of course, but torture by water as it arose in the
Roman Catholic and Protestant Reformations drew
some of its power and inspiration from theological
convictions about repentance and salvation. It was,
we must surely say, a horrific inversion of the best
spirit of Christian faith and symbolism.
This poses questions. Is it the purpose of the
United States nowadays to seek the conversion, re-
pentance, and purity of supposed terrorists and thus
give waterboarding on the trappings of a religious
rite? Is waterboarding a kind of forced conversion
hidden within a political action and thereby all the
more powerful as a tool in the hands of the state
to demonize its enemy? Does this signal a break-
through of the demonic within political and mili-
tary action since a religious rite is being subverted
for immoral ends? These questions are so buried
in public discourse that their full import is hardly
recognized, even by devout Christians.
 Torture and Religious Practice • William Schweiker
The Ethical Mandate to Denounce
Waterboarding
With some history in mind, we now come to the
reasons why Christians must denounce waterboard-
ing as unjustified and thus immoral. There are three
reasons at least. First, waterboarding and virtually
all forms of torture aim, as we have seen, to dehu-
manize the victim for some political, religious, or
social purpose. Yet it is a dictate of morality that
the humanity of a person, their own integrity and
inviolability as an individual, can never be made
only a means to some end that demeans or de-
stroys her or his humanity. Recall the imperative
of responsibility: in all actions and relations we are
to respect and enhance the integrity of life. Water-
boarding is aimed precisely at the disintegration of
a person’s own sense of self; it aims to make the
victim pliable, complacent, and thus a functionary
within some other political purpose. As an attack
on humanity—an attack on the dignity of persons
and their unique capacity to be agents in the world
and their own lives—waterboarding and many other
forms of torture are immoral. That is the case no
matter what supposed political, religious, or social
purposes claim to justify the use of torture. Given
Christian convictions about the worth of persons
and the gift of life, there are reasons to endorse
this wider, and not specifically Christian, condem-
nation of torture.
Second, as a form of political action suppos-
edly justified by the good of citizens’ security, wa-
terboarding, as we have seen, encodes within it-
self aspects of a central Christian practice (baptism)
and thereby uses this practice to a political end.
Christians are instructed by Christ to render unto
Caeser’s what is Caeser’s. Yet they are not to allow
their practices of faith to be used for political ends.
Not only does this accord with the logic of the
separation of church and state, a logic crucial for
the free exercise of Christian faith itself, but it is
also a solemn demand on the church not to betray
its distinctive convictions and practice. Baptism is
entry into the Body of Christ, into the church, and
thus cannot and ought not be tied to the question
of political citizenship. Stated otherwise, Christians
215
view the world in which they dwell and for which
they have some responsibility not only in terms of
political realities, but also though the Church and
the whole realm of creation and nature. Christian
responsibility is falsely delimited when the political
order defines the scope of responsibility.
Beyond these two reasons to oppose this form
of torture, there is a deeper and more powerful
reason for Christians to denounce waterboarding.
The core of Christian faith is about the gift of new
life through Christ and the empowerment of life
in love. Baptism is the sacrament and practice of
new life. In this practice the dignity of human be-
ings as active agents of love in the world is both
announced and enacted. The act of waterboarding,
conversely, is a practice of death-dealing where the
victim is violently deprived of his or her power to
be an active force, a responsible agent, in the world.
This practice is meant to induce fear and dread to
the point that the victim is rendered passive, sub-
servient, to the torturer’s power. Baptism, again, is a
practice meant to embolden new life and empower
Christian freedom. In this respect, the practice of
waterboarding, despite it roots in Christian history,
is, in fact, an affront to the very nature of Christian
faith. For religious as well as moral reasons
Christians are called to oppose the practice of wa-
terboarding.
Conclusion: Faced with a Choice
In the light of the religious meanings and back-
ground to waterboarding, Christians in the USA
have to make a choice. This choice is part of their
wider understanding of the place of faith and re-
sponsibility in the political order. Christians may
decide to repudiate and repent a sordid legacy that
now finds grisly, if hidden, expression in current
practices of torture and thereby work for the most
humane expression of their faith. They can reject
any claim by the State to have the right to use
this form of torture, especially given connections to
the most woeful expressions of Christianity. Chris-
tian responsibility demands actively working to
216 Dialog: A Journal of Theology • Volume 47, Number 3 • Fall 2008
transform political policy and practice in order to
render them more just, more peaceful.
Conversely, Christian communities can fall prey
to fear and questionable reasoning, and thus con-
tinue to support an unjust and vile practice that
demeans the nation’s highest political and civic ide-
als even as it desecrates one of the most impor-
tant practices and symbols of Christian faith. Or
they can retreat behind the walls of the church and
claim to witness to the world about peace while
horrific acts of violence are done against prisoners
to no viable political or moral end.
Like the symbolism of baptism itself, it is a time,
I judge, for repentance, the affirmation of new life,
and the humane expression of religious convictions.
This requires that believers know the possible dis-
tortions and abuses of their convictions, and that
they labor unceasingly to live out their beliefs and
practices in ways that respect and enhance, rather
than demean and destroy, the integrity of life. Re-
ligious people can no longer allow their beliefs,
practices, and symbols to be used for political and
ideological purposes that violate our shared, if frag-
ile, humanity.
Endnotes
1. This essay is an expansion of “Baptism by Torture” which ap-
peared in Sightings, an on-line publication of the Martin Marty Cen-
ter of the University of Chicago Divinity School on November 29,
2007 http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/sightings/archive 2007/1129.shtml.
Another version of the essay appeared in New Theology Review, Signs of the
Times, May 2008.
2. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology 3 vols. in 1 (Chicago, IL: The
University of Chicago Press, 1967).
3. Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred , trans. P. Gregory (Baltimore,
MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977). Also see Curing Violence,
eds. Mark I. Wallace and Theophus H. Smith (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge,
Press, 1994).
4. See, Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise
of Religious Violence ( Los Angles, CA: University of California Press, 2003)
and Bruce Lincoln, Religion, Empire and Torture: The Case of Achaemenia
Persia, with a Postscript on Abu Ghraib. (Chicago, IL: The University of
Chicago Press, 2007).
5. For the classic statement of the position see Joseph Fletcher, Sit-
uation Ethics: The New Morality, intro. James F. Childress (Louisville, KY:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997).
6. For a discussion of this matter and many others see The Oxford
Handbook of Theological Ethics, eds. Gilbert Meilaender and William Wer-
pehowski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
7. William Schweiker, Responsibility and Christian Ethics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985).
8. For an ardent representative of this position see Stanley Hauerwas,
Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living In Between
(Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press, 1988).
9. For example, The Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 6th
ed. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1978), or for some of the features
of torture see the entry on “torture” in Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge
(Danbury, CT: Grolier, Inc. 1991).
10. On this see Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter (Athens,
GA: University of Georgia Press, 1983).
11. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals,
trans. G. Gilffing (New York, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1956). For a more
recent study in a similar vein see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish:
The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (New York, NY: Pantheon Books,
1977).
12. On the idea of ‘moral madness’ see William Schweiker, Theological
Ethics and Global Dynamics: In the Time of Many Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell,
2004).
13. Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner, Tolerance and Intolerance
in the European Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002).
14. On the need to provide a reconstructive interpretation of religious
convictions that is both responsible and humane, see David E. Klemm and
William Schweiker, Religion and the Human Future: An Essay on Theological
Humanism (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).