Wesley Seminary Ethicist Addresses “Torture”

on June 19, 2009

A professor from United Methodism’s Wesley Seminary in Washington, D.C. denounced past U.S. interrogation policies during a Capitol Hill luncheon for congressional staffers on June 12.

Dr. Sondra Wheeler of Wesley Theological Seminary argued that Christians should reject interrogation methods that involve “torture,” which she defined to include not only the controversial water boarding, but also sensory and sleep deprivation. “What we aim at in torture is fracturing the personality” she said. She lamented recent polls that show many Christians approve of what they call “torture” in certain circumstances.

Torture, Wheeler said, was designed to weaken the body to a state where the person is willing to abandon his “convictions desires, beliefs, [and] will.” She contended that interrogators “want a person who can no longer resist,” and this attitude “turns the victim into a thing” from which to extract information.

Wheeler warned that even more than capital punishment, the “authorization of torture takes[s] this expanding state sovereignty over human life to its ultimate” end. She listed many arguments that could be used to oppose or justify harsh interrogation, such as the “utilitarian calculus” that balances “goods and harms,” or the human rights claims and Christian “arguments phrased in terms of the golden rule” which concern what human beings owe to each other. But Wheeler focused on the Christian use of the “language of sanctity” or “sacredness.”

Sacredness or sanctity is a claim that a person should be “treated a certain way because of some relation to the divine,” said Wheeler. The Church has been “debating for centuries [about] what are the practical and political consequences of sanctity” she recalled. Although pacifism has been the “minority position” of the Church in recent centuries, “for the first four centuries of the church’s life the pacifist [position] was the presumptive position,” she argued.

Wheeler asserted that it was only after the fourth century that pacifism lost its place to Just War theory. Even then, explained the professor, “There is no permissible self-defense in Augustine’s view—and surprisingly, in Martin Luther’s. The purpose of the use of force is to give God’s work of redemption time.” During question and answer time, Wheeler admitted that she herself was a “nuclear pacifist,” or someone who believes that there is no such thing as Just War in the age of nuclear weapons, and therefore objects to all modern war.

Harsh interrogation techniques, Wheeler said, makes our “safety the pre-eminent goal, for the sake of which we are prepared to do anything at all.” According to her, the victim is “sacrificed on the altar” of national security, and “condoning torture is an act of unbelief [that says there is] no God.” The reason that Christians allow their governments to use such interrogative practices for national security, she said, is that “we no longer have a confidence in a good that cannot be” taken by death, as in the case of a terrorist attack.

One audience member asked what Wheeler believed would be the right choice in a scenario like those Jack Bauer encounters on the television show “24,” where Bauer frequently questions terrorists harshly to prevent large-scale attacks that will occur within a day’s time if not thwarted. She responded that she would still be opposed to such interrogation, because of the “principle of double effect,” sometimes summarized in the expression “thou may not do evil in order that good may come.” Wheeler concluded, “Your intention reaches through that [unacceptable] means and you cannot deny it.”

Dr. Wheeler is the Martha Ashby Carr Professor of Christian Ethics at United Methodism’s Wesley Theological Seminary.

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