I’ve been asked by a partner in resistance over at Death and the Maiden to write my thoughts on the ethical status of torture. Specifically, I’ve been asked to answer two questions: 1) What is torture? and 2) Is it necessarily immoral?
In answer to the first question, some dictionary definitions:
1) The act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty.
2) The deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason.
The United Nations Convention Against Torture defines torture as
any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.
To read the complete convention, click here. It should be pointed out that in Section 1 torture is defined as severe pain or suffering, which means there must be levels of pain and suffering which are not severe enough to be called torture (often termed “cruel, degrading or inhumane treatment”). However, “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” is independently prohibited in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5.
The second question is where the rub’s at. Given these definitions, is torture “necessarily” (by which I think she means always) immoral? Or, put differently, could there ever conceivably be a time in which the use of torture would not be immoral?
And you would think the answer would be obvious. You would think we’d have settled this issue by now. But the fact is the question of torture is far from settled in our society. (Michael Westmoreland-White sings a lament here.) The fact is, the United States currently has a President, Vice President and Attorney General who not only condone the use of torture theoretically but are actually personally responsible for torture sessions which are transpiring even as I write. The United States President has admitted, nay, gloated, on national television that his administration not only condones but implements torture in secret locations around the world. This is the example set by the leader of the rhetorical “free world.”
Not only does the President condone and implement torture, but he claims that he does so with the understanding and approval of a majority of United States citizens. Not only does the President claim the support of a majority of United States citizens, he may well have it. According to a recent poll, more than one third of the United States military serving Halliburton in Iraq believe that that torture should be allowed (by the U.S. or its allies, that is, not by the enemy). Up to forty percent would approve of torture “if it would save the life of a fellow soldier.” Furthermore, two-thirds of Marines and fifty percent of Army troops surveyed said “they would not report a team member for mistreating a civilian or for destroying civilian property unnecessarily.” Fewer than fifty percent believed that even Iraqi non-combatants deserved to be treated with dignity and respect. Ten percent of the troops surveyed admitted to having “mistreated civilians in Iraq, such as kicking them or needlessly damaging their possessions.”
Domestically, two of the top-rated television shows in America (one a fictional drama, 24, and the other, reportedly a “news” program, The O’Reilly Factor) are adamantly pro-torture. In virtually every episode of 24, the “hero” (played by Kiefer Sutherland) uses torture techniques, including “kneecapping” (shooting a victim in the knee with a handgun), in order to extract information. Faux News guru Bill O’Reilly has forcefully supported torture on his show, in part by downplaying the pain involved in such techniques as waterboarding (simulated drowning while attached feet over head to a board) sleep deprivation, and prolonged exposure to extreme cold. O’Reilly eschews the word “pain” in favor of “mild discomfort.” The fact that these two shows continue to enjoy top ratings in their genres attests to the strong possibility that President Bush was not lying (pinch me) when he said that his position on torture enjoys the support of the American people.
In addition to Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, at least forty percent of the United States Army and Marine Corps, Fox Television, Bill O’Reilly, and a large number of American TV watchers, all but one of the Republican candidates for the presidency of the United States support torture. (The one exception, John McCain, himself a victim of torture in Vietnam, is wishy-washy.) What’s more, a Democrat controlled Congress just voted not to close the infamous School of the Americas (rightly dubbed the School of Assassins). (More on this here and here.) According to Westmoreland-White, the School of the Americas, originally located in Central America but now run out of Fort Benning, Georgia,
has been a sponsor of state-funded, pro-government, right-wing terrorism since the 1970s, at least. Here, the U.S. military and CIA, with American tax dollars, trains Latin American militaries in “counter-insurgency” tactics–including torture, assassination, the “disappearances” of whole families, etc. Until Abu-Ghraib and the Guantanamo Bay Gulag, this school was the largest source of U.S. shame to human rights activists. Those who murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero were trained here. So were those who slaughtered the Jesuit school in El Salvador, those who wiped out whole villages in Guatemala, and those who raped and tortured nuns in Nicaragua.
The vote to keep the SOA open was a close one (214-206). But that’s not good news. That’s bad news. The vote should have been unanimous! That’s 214 representatives representing 214 constituencies voting in favor of United States sponsored terrorism. If the President is serious about this “War on Terror” (which he isn’t), it would seem the United States would be next in line for invasion, by the United States. (No doubt we would find significantly more allies for that war!) Although, it is doubtful that the United States would ever attack the United States, if for no other reason than that another Abu Ghraib could not be justified merely by calling attention to the inferior nationality of the victims. (Still, there’s no rule that says we would have to torture white boys.) Nor could there be any offshore detentions of enemy combatants because unfortunately, habeas corpus does in fact apply to United States citizens.
Of course, I guess anyone suspected of terrorist activity (like, for instance, the soldiers at Fort Benning, Georgia or anyone at MSNBC) could be detained indefinitely and without trial on the premise that terrorists are traitors and thus have relinquished their citizenship. They could therefore be held as enemy combatants in the War on Terror, and tortured because, as terrorists not soldiers, they are not properly prisoners of war and thus do not fall under the protection of the Geneva Convention, which is quaint and subject to interpretation anyhow.
In the end I guess it could go either way. It depends on whether we can successfully torture an Iranian into confessing that Iran has WMDs with intention to kill. If not, I suspect McCain will change his tune, from Bomb, Bomb Iran to Georgia on My Mind. Either way freedom will continue to advance, so it doesn’t really matter as far as I’m concerned.
What does all of this mean? It means we are living in dark days. We live in a capitalist democracy approaching boiling point—capitalism all grown up. Of course, the “democracy” in the capitalist democracy is an oligarchy of transnational corporations, virtual nation-states in their own right. United States policy, domestic and foreign, is determined not “by the people for the people” but by global market trends, oil, munitions and fast food. Accordingly, we are a society of virtual killers (television, PlayStations), killers (high-schoolers and the LAPD), and credit consumers, who have been formed by McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and Hiroshima to inhabit the “real world” where expediency always trumps truth. In such a society the question, “Is torture necessarily immoral?” is no longer intelligible. The question assumes that “morality” is something that can be determined apart from considerations of national interest (oil, munitions and fast food = security). If it’s expedient for us to torture some sandnigger, if it prevents having our way of life (obesity, debt, poverty, warfare, torture) taken away from us, the very question is offensive. It’s immoral not to torture! A bleeding heart liberal is no better than a terrorist when our children’s lives are at stake. So if we have to kill a few Muslim kids to save our children, well, that’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make, for freedom.
Seriously, just the implication that quaint notions like “immoral” or “illegal” apply to the obviously essential “enhanced interrogation” techniques of a post 9/11 world is reprehensible. If our Air Force can kill Afghani children to save American children, why shouldn’t we be able to make a full-grown man “mildly uncomfortable” when it can save lives to do so. I mean, this is a known terrorist we’re talking about (suspected anyway). He’s a big boy. He’ll get over it. We’re talking about the stabilization of society here, and in the face of globalization, that means we’re talking about the stabilization of the global market for national interest. Peace is big business. The only bigger business is war, and if we can wage the one in the name of the other there’s a lot of money to be made from every angle. And that’s good for the American economy (i.e. transnational corporations).
Besides, you can’t expect to beat terror if you’re soft. You’ve got to fight terror with terror. That’s how the Romans did it anyway. Sure, they crucified an innocent man once or twice, but they meant well, and you’ve got to make sacrifices for peace.
Obviously, the imperial pathology is impenetrable. Face to face with Truth, Pilate could only deny the utility of the notion, which is exactly the pathology of the current administration. Ultimately, from the perspective of a mature capitalist democracy, the question of the morality of torture is just bourgeois. Freedom is on the march and it can’t be slowed down just to answer philosophical questions about the nature of freedom. Those who are committed to it know what it means, and if you’re not already in on it you probably ought not to be. If you want to challenge it you’re challenging the very structure of the society itself and thus you’re an enemy of the state. Enemies of the state get crucified. There’s no other cure for them.
And there is no cure for this pathology but an eventual and inevitable implosion. There can be no convincing a mature capitalist democracy to respect human rights. A capitalist democracy is inherently, systematically inhumane because in a capitalist democracy humanity is reduced to an aggregate of individuals which become commodities bound together not transcendentally (that’s violent) but contractually. A mature capitalist democracy cannot go back on itself without utterly deleting itself, and so it conceals itself inside the ideology of liberation and stabilization. To be liberated is to be free to choose, to choose between McDonalds, Taco Bell and Subway, between Die Hard, The Notebook and Dodgeball. To have stabilization is to have the assurance that such choices will always be in front of us. And whenever our liberty is threatened by the “enemies of freedom,” the only recourse we have is to kill and shop, for to shop is to render our wartime sacrifices meaningful.
There is no penetrating this pathology, there is no converting it to something else. There is only the denial of it embodied in an alternative politics. There is no capitalist language for the rejection of torture. To argue against torture in terms of commodity and utility is to perpetuate a subtler torture, the torture of living in a society where human freedom is reduced to consumer choices. To argue that it would benefit capitalist democracy (i.e. transnational corporations) to find other means than torture to meet their ends is to aid capitalist democracy in its survival. The only alternative left to us is to answer the question as Christians. Only after we have learned what it means to be Christian in a world of torture will we be equipped to give an account to the world of what it means to renounce torture. So we pose the question not first to the state, but to ourselves as Christians.
How can one who claims to follow a crucified Messiah ever, under any circu
mstances, approve of torture? This is the riddle I cannot solve. There is no good answer for it, other than to acknowledge that such a person is so constituted by capitalist democracy, so subsumed by the imperial pathology that they are no longer able to conceive of what it would mean to follow Jesus. To approve of torture is, literally, to be antichrist. Those who commit themselves to following a victim of torture must be willing and ready to become torture victims themselves, but they can never become torturers, for to do so would be to follow the Caesar over against the Christ. To commit the act of torture is to commit the ultimate act of treason against the Crucified King.
Yet those who follow the Crucified King cannot live under any naïve delusion that the world they inhabit is basically good. Those who partake in the Eucharist remember every time they gather together that they live in a world of power-mongers who would torture and assassinate peacemakers in the name of “peace,” which when translated is just the perpetuation of the system that keeps them in power. As William Cavanaugh argues in his doctoral dissertation, Torture and Eucharist, when Christians participate in the Eucharist they are engaging in a counter-politics in which they learn to wage peace in a tortuous world by taking the world’s violence upon themselves. This absorption of the world’s violence into the Body of Christ is the militant act of resistance and imperial subversion for which the counter-polis has been training as it celebrates in the Eucharist the suffering, death, and resurrection of the Crucified One.
Only in the face of such eucharistic resistance will the torturer’s eyes be opened to the “utility” of Truth. Only in such subversive suffering will the torturer discover the meaning of power. Only after we have absorbed the torturer’s violence will he be empowered to look upon his victim and say, “Surely this was a ‘Son of God.’”
So the question then becomes: what does it mean to absorb the world’s violence into the Body of Christ? If this names the mode of our resistance to the imperial violence, what does it signify? I leave this question open for discussion. . .
Labels: Abu Ghraib, Ethics, Eucharist, George Bush, Torture, War, William Cavanaugh
8 Comments:
A beautiful piece, Thom. It leaves me breathless. Thank you!!
I realize your speaking as a Christian to other Christians, so while I'm in agreement with you as a Christian, what would you say to a non-Christian? Is torture immoral for a non-Christian who does not follow a tortured Savior? I agree that it is, but I'm wondering how you would articulate your idea of Eucharistic resistance intelligibly to a nonbeliever. I'm not looking for some objective, a-Christian definition of ethics as it relates to torture - just wondering what you would say.
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Thom, what a great post. Your satire and humor do not go unnoticed.
Obviously I agree with you. I would never torture someone so that they would yield a confession or for sheer cruelty or whatever. Or would I?
It is easy to be against not kneecapping someone for information. But I think we do need to be careful about lighter kinds of torture/cruelty. Is it tortureous to not serve your wife they way that you should so that she will act the way you want her to? Is it torture to make a friend feel guilty until he gives in to you? I think there are ways that even we are guilty of that second definition of torture. So while you and I may never kneecap someone to tell us where Bin Laden is, I hope that we are equally serious about not inflicting mental or physical suffering for our own benifits. That, I believe, is equally antithetical to a crucified Messiah. And these are the issuses that I think we are really going to struggle with - not kneecapping.
Moreover, torture does not even always work!! Even when Jack kneecapped that dude he still wouldn't talk!!
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These are some great responses. First, I want to point out that the graphic at the top of this post I designed from two real pictures. A friend of mine thought the bottom one of the torture victim was a fake. It is an actual photo taken inside Abu Ghraib. If anybody wants to see the originals, email me and I’ll send them to you. Of course the one on top is a picture of a military chaplain about to serve the Eucharist to the troops. Obviously the juxtaposition of the two images nicely displays the inherent contradictions of the imperial pathology.
Maiden: Thanks again for challenging me to write a sustained piece on this subject. Your blog is one of the most important blogs I’ve come across.
Nathan: This is a very important question. Before I answer it, let me make a few comments about why I chose to approach the question from primarily a Christian perspective. First, millions of alleged Christians in the United States are advocating torture. I think their fear of the rise of “extremist Islam” cannot be separated from their fear of the decline of Constantinian Christianity. Nevertheless, I think it is very important for Christians everywhere to confront American churches with the reality of their antichrist pathology. To support torture is to support the same kind of system that crucified Jesus; it is, almost literally, to “crucify the Lord Jesus all over again.” I think it is insane that we should even have to talk about this in the churches, but that just goes to show the depth of our religious commitment to Liberalism. Talk we must. We should shout if we have to. Preachers must preach against torture from the pulpit. Our worship should correspondingly focus on the sufferings of Christ. We must not allow our fellow Christians to be comfortable about this. I was tempted to call this an “issue.” It is not an “issue.” Being anti-torture is not a “cause.” It’s part of the grammar of being Christian. This is an integral matter of identity.
The second reason I took the approach I tried to indicate above. I don’t think there can be a successful move to persuade the powers against their recourse to torture until we have been properly formed into counter-torture base communities, pockets of resistance, viable alternatives, real threats to the status quo. I’m getting ahead of myself. The point is, my decision to focus on the Christian perspective was based on what I think is the right order of things. We cannot properly resist torture until we are prepared to be tortured.
That said, the question is, What would I say to non-Christians?, and secondarily, How would I communicate the concept of “eucharistic resistance” to non-Christians in a way that is intelligible to them?
In answer to the first question, it all depends on which “non-Christian” I’m talking to. My approach is obviously going to be different depending on who I’m engaging, and the contingencies of their belief system. But I am certainly not opposed to using other belief systems to argue against torture. We can put our opposition to torture in terms of human rights, habeas corpus and other legal approaches, character and virtue ethics, pragmatic realism, even in terms of Darwinian evolution if necessary (a species that tortures itself is a species that tortures itself, a species committed to its own self-destruction). There are countless possibilities. Of course, I don’t expect any of these arguments to convince everybody. If you already commend torture, there’s something wrong with your ability to reason morally. More moral reason isn’t necessarily going to fix that. What is required is a demonstration of eucharistic resistance powerful enough to lay bare the truth before the eyes of the torturer. Even then, some will be hardened, some will be saved.
What is this eucharistic resistance? How can it be made intelligible to non-Christians? Well, I suppose that’s precisely the question I posed for further discussion, meaning, what do you think it is? How do you think it communicates? My initial response is that it communicates by display. What was it about the way Jesus died that opened that centurion’s eyes? What did Newton see that caused him to renounce the slave trade? Our peculiar Christian language is perfectly communicable when it’s properly embodied. That does not guarantee that those to whom it communicates will like the message, but it communicates nonetheless. The message that is eucharistic resistance (I don’t want to reduce eucharistic resistance to the “container” of the message, as though the message were something different from its performance) will always be foolishness to some, a stumbling block to others, and salvation to those who are called.
So when we gather ourselves together and stand in solidarity with the oppressed, with the tortured, we are communicating something beyond the ambit of moral reason. When we abandon our circles of influence to suffer with those who are suffering, we are embodying the gospel of sufferings, which is a subversive alternative to the gospel of peace through torture. When we non-terrorists, we U.S. citizens (according to the U.S. anyway) stand up next to those who are being targeted, we become targets with them.
But the government doesn’t want us to do that, because it undermines their program. The legitimacy of their tactics supposedly hinge on the idea that there is a clear distinction between the good guys and the bad guys. When we traverse that artificial line, we undermine the structure of their program. This is what eucharistic resistance is. When we participate in the eucharist, we celebrate and share in the sufferings of an enemy of the state. We stand in solidarity with the defeated, the tortured, the crucified. We take upon ourselves his plight. Ultimately, eucharistic resistance terminates in vicarious suffering. When he calls us to take up our crosses and follow him, he is calling us not just to renounce violence, he is calling us to follow him in suffering, suffering vicariously for our so-called enemies. When we who are “innocent” begin to suffer on behalf of those who are “guilty” (these are all designations assigned by the established system) the depravity of the system is exposed and those who were once captivated by it are now freed from it, if they so choose. Like Jesus of Nazareth, we must push the powers to go too far, we must traverse the lines they draw to draw out their core of violence, in order to expose the lie that their violence comes out only when it’s in society’s best interest. We must expose them for what they are, by redirecting their violence onto ourselves—we who seek no violence except the violence of compassion. If we can discover ways to undermine their propaganda, to expose the oppressor by loving and joining the oppressed, we have learned the meaning of Eucharist. And when the world looks upon such displays of solidarity, such displays of hope in the midst of such great injustice, the problem of communicating “eucharistic resistance” disappears. The world will look upon us and see what it means to be Christian, see what it means to be believers, see what it means to be human. They can reject it or embrace it. They can become converts or attempt to reappropriate it in terms of their own tradition. What they do with it is up to them. But our responsibility is to preach, and to preach is to act, and to act is to suffer.
And this is precisely where my good friend Andy Rodriguez brings up a vital point. The eucharistic resistance of torture is not just about resisting systematic violence against an alleged enemy. It is about becoming a people in whom there is no guile, a people in whom there is no violence, no anger, no fear, no impatience, no selfishness, no capitalism. If our resistance is to be successful, if it is to be intelligible to the watching world, we must rid ourselves of every form of evil: deceit, envy, malice, injustice, slander, manipulation, etc. Our solidarity with the tortured must be built upon a solid foundation of freedom—not the kind offered by capitalist democracy, which is only bondage by another name, but the kind offered by the Spirit of the living God who indwells the cruciform community. We must love our wives. We must respect our elders. We must not take advantage of those weaker than us, but rather we must extol the weak as the greatest among us. If our resistance does not flow naturally out of a community that fosters this kind of character, it cannot be vicarious—it loses its power. The only way to resist injustice is to create justice. The only way to resist evil is to be and to do good. The only way to resist slander is to speak the truth. The only way to resist torture is to be kind. This does not mean we should have no unkind words for those who abuse (and are thus abused by) power. But our prophetic proclamations of judgment are only legitimate when they are preceded by our prophetic proclamations of kindness to the weak. The weak are our enemies. The weak are our children.
I don't know that I have much to add, but I don't want to continue being referred to as your "estranged friend" so I have to say something. :)
A couple of thoughts, actually, in no particular order and without a great deal of thought as to whether I am asking the right questions or offering observations that will further the conversation.
- One of the things that I think is interesting about your post is how passionately you assume that torture is obviously wrong. I don't disagree with you, and I of course see why you speak as you do, but such statements rarely convince hard-thinking Christians who do not share the same assumption. I like dramatic presentations of assumptions when I agree with them, but I also want more people to agree. I guess I am saying that what I regard as your most important paragraph (the one beside the picture) is too quick - more of an overview than a sustained argument. Depending on your audience this might be appropriate, but when I think about the friends I know who (a) claim to follow Jesus, and (b) would approve of torture in certain situations, what they need is a step-by-step clearly laid out case for this statement: To approve of torture is, literally, to be antichrist. "Those who commit themselves to following a victim of torture must be willing and ready to become torture victims themselves, but they can never become torturers, for to do so would be to follow the Caesar over against the Christ. To commit the act of torture is to commit the ultimate act of treason against the Crucified King."
- Just before this you state that you cannot conceive of a reason why a person who follows Jesus would approve of torture. In addition to the point I was trying to make above (emphasis on trying), namely, that many Christians simply have not been taught to think about Jesus' life and death as significant for their political perspectives, I am not quite as flabbergasted as you that some people could think this. That sounds stupid to me, so let me explain. I would not myself argue in this way, but I could conceive of an American Christian - who desires that as few people die as possible - supporting torture of a hostile soldier with information that would stop many lives from being taken. This is certainly not an inconceivable situation in itself, and I don't think that a person is stupid or painstakingly obviously ignoring Jesus for arguing that the pain of one man is a lesser evil than the deaths of many (sounds eerily like Caiaphas, huh). Once again, I am not convinced by their argument, but because such arguments are possible I reinforce my first point: we need to clearly (and dare I say exegetically) explain (a) that the way of Jesus is a comprehensive eschatological vision for all of life; (b) that the way of Jesus is diametrically opposed to the way of Caesar; (c) that "democratic capitalism" is but one dress worn by the way of Caesar. Or something like that.
- I must admit that your final question is quite a doozy. It is not very difficult to imagine how we might express solidarity with, say, homeless people in downtown Philadelphia - we can simply go sleep on the street with them (and therefore absorb the violence and hopefully transform the violent, at least on some level). The same cannot be said, however, in regard to victims of torture. We obviously don't have the same access to accepting their fates along with or instead of them, nor would we be accepted as substitutes by those doing the torturing. I am not allowing the question of utility to dissuade the need to embody and (thus) scream the truth, but am merely recognizing the difficulty of embodying said truth in this situation. Sorry I can't be more help, especially considering this is the one of if not the most important question(s) for us to answer.
- One more thought. I am still a bit confused on why and in what ways we should attempt to change current structures and systems. I have only read a fraction of Hauerwas and Yoder, but I was gathering that according to them at least, our task is not to make the world a better place but to be the better place for which the world longs; or in other words, to embody and eschatologically sign forth the kingdom of God, against which all kingdoms of the world pale in pathetic comparison. Why and how, then, from this starting point - or of course you can try and replace it with another starting point - do we end up trying to change the way "America" does things? I am not opposed to such action or intent, I just want to understand how it is rooted in the gospel I preach. I suppose it has something to do with Jesus being Lord, but ... well, you get my question, so I'll just let you deal with it.
Peace and Love
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Thom -
Thanks for the book suggestions on my blog - thankfully I have a birthday coming up and can put them on my wish list. I'm going to try to work up a response/rumination this post and your answers to my question on my blog.
But I also want to echo Michael's last bullet point because it sums up some of my questions in this post.
First of all, the image you've created at the top of this post is amazing. Wow.
I am with you all the way on this issue. Have you read Marilyn McCord Adams book Christ and Horrors? She has a marvelous way of bringing out the Eucharist's relationship to violence.
Sorry, all, for the lateness of my responses.
Aric,
Thanks for the comment and for the recommendation. I hadn't heard about Christ and Horrors. I took a look at it and it looks great. I look forward to reading it. Thanks!
DeFaz (and Nathan),
Yes, you are right in pointing out that my post was not a sustained argument directed at Christians who approve of torture. I was merely attempting to narrate the "issue" from a disciple's perspective. If I were debating or conversing with a Christian who argues for the justifiability of the use of torture in certain situations, I would not put my case in quite the same way as I've done here. Part of the reason I only presented my position and did not argue it exhaustively is because my post was already getting long and my friend Michael DeFazio says nobody reads my posts because they're too long. I was conscious of that, so I just opted for narration over against more explicit argumentation.
That said, Michael's positive suggestions, that my argument needs a more exegetical and theological treatment of the life of Jesus and its significance for Christians, its normativity, etc., are correct, and I think you could look at my entire blog, with each separate post, representing that comprehensive argument, even if in an ad hoc sort of way.
Regarding the question of eucharistic resistance and what it looks like, how we can tangibly and intentionally absorb the world's violence, I think Jesus is our model. Those who were oppressed and suffering, he liberated and restored. In doing so he undermined the distinction between good guys and bad guys that supported the existing power system of his day, thus resulting in his own suffering and death at the hand of the powers. He effectively replaced those in captivity and bondage. What's more he empowered a community of followers to carry crosses, commissioning them to do the same work of liberating the oppressed and suffering on their behalf. This is why the Apostle Paul can say that he suffers on behalf of the Corinthian churches, that they might be rich and free. The oppressed are taken into the community and trained to be disciples. The disciples call the oppressed and suffer the consequences of stealing them out from under the powers.
How can we do this today with victim's of state-sponsored (or any kind of) torture? We have the model in front of us. Now we just need to get creative and get to work. Where are these secret torture chambers the U.S. has across the world? Who do we know that can help us find them, and get to them? That's one of a thousand questions for which we need answers.
In answer to your last question, I think you're largely correct. Our task is not first to make the world a better place, but to be that better place, "to embody and eschatologicaaly sign forth the kingdom of God." But I don't think Yoder and Hauerwas put the same measure of emphasis on the desired result of this embodied "realized eschatology." They're close, but not identical, and Yoder I think is the more interested in seeing real change, historical, tangible, in nation-states, and in the world at large. Yoder sees the church's task not just to embody the kingdom as a sign, but prophetically (primarily through embodiment) to call the nations of the world to fulfill their God-given responsibilities to uphold and pursue justice.
In other words, we're to embody the kingdom in such a way that we're almost forcing the state's hand. Our counter-imperial communities should be a source of constant shame for the state, shame or inspiration depending on the state or the specific question.
While the distinction between the church and the world is crucial for us to sustain an eschatological and christological vision of our task, the distinction is also dangerous because it can prevent us from seeing the cosmic import of our presence. According to Yoder (primarily in The Christian Witness to the State) we are here as servant to the state, which means we are here to encourage, empower, and guide the state to become the just society the church signs forth. Our means are not constantinian, to be sure. But our task is no less cosmic, lest we fall into the danger of sectarianism or escapism. We have a vision of the church, but it is actually a vision for the whole world. To see it as anything less than cosmic is not to be sufficiently eschatological.
Thus Hauerwas is right to point out that the first task of the church is to be the church. But we are dead wrong if we take that to mean that we have nothing to say or even to demand of the state. From the state we should never accept anything less than the recognition that Jesus is Lord. Our message and our witness is absurd, to be sure, but it is no less a political manifesto to all of creation by virtue of that fact.
Now, in many cases we can communicate our message in a language the world can understand and to which it can concede. Orthopraxy is the proper terminus of orthodoxy anyway. This does not render orthodoxy unimportant, but it is precisely in those instances where our message is untranslatable, unintelligible, that orthodoxy becomes so crucial.
For instance, if it is impossible to communicate to a mature capitalist democracy (in its native tongue) that state-sponsored torture put to use in the hopes of preventing further suffering is immoral, orthodoxy reminds us that we can't let this one slide just because we can't translate it. Orthodoxy says that Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate. It says that Jesus Christ is somehow present with us in the Eucharist, which is the celebration of that torturous day in history.
Thus it is precisely where the message is unintelligible that orthodoxy becomes so vital in shaping orthopraxy, for in such cases only orthopraxy possesses the potential of intelligibility. The only hope that the powerful might see the truth is in our capacity to suffer with the same kind of grace as Jesus of Nazareth.
(I've just realized that this is Hauerwas's primary argument in With the Grain of the Universe.)
We want the world to change. We want nations to recognize Jesus as Lord and to adopt his politics. The difference between us and the constantinians is that we refuse to make those changes ourselves and we're not surprised or derailed when the world fails to live up to the gospel. We realize (even with Marxists like Herbert Marcuse) that the only way for an unjust society to be transformed is for the people in it to be transformed persons through the cultivation of counter-imperial or counter-capitalist communities, and that is precisely what the church specializes in. We realize, both as a redeemed body of people empowered by the gift of the Holy Spirit and as a body of people who have a long history of tremendous failure, that a governmental body not empowered by the Spirit has little chance of maintaining a just society for very long.
Finally, we realize, as followers of the Crucified One, that often the world will respond to our liberating witness with tremendous hostility and violence. But we welcome such hostility and violence not because we do not care whether or not the world is just but because as confessors of the resurrection we recognize that it is precisely through our suffering that God chooses to transform the world. These transformations are not always local; they are rarely immediate. But we believe that God is reconciling all of creation back to himself through the suffering of his faithful ones. And if, as in the case of Jesus, such suffering is the result of direct and/or indirect engagement with the powers, the vision of a transformed society is always in front of us, on either side of the cross.
Our means for achieving this are what they are not just because they are characteristic of the Father (though that is of unspeakable importance) but also and very importantly because they are the only means by which real transformation can be achieved. One of the things we learned after Christendom is that societies cannot be transformed from the top down. They just subsume, usurp and absorb those who would seek to transform them. Literally, the only way to build a just society, which is a society categorically different from the kind we now know, is to use the means displayed in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. We have healing, sharing, loving, truth-speaking, and suffering. We have counter-imperial communities not just because we've renounced "power," but also because they alone possess real power--the power to make a better world.
If some of you Yoderians or Hauerwasians wish to object that it is not our job to make a better world, but God's, I just ask you to take that to Jesus in prayer and ask him if the distinction makes any sense to him. Yoder wasn't speaking as a Lutheran when he insisted that the work of changing the world was God's not ours. He was making a distinction between kinds of human activity, but the objective of the activity on both sides is to change the world.
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