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Christian Prisons, Christian Torture?

Christian Prisons, Christian Torture?

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I wonder how many Christians regularly visit prisoners to offer consolation and comfort anymore? I’m not talking about ministers or special group missions, but regular laypeople of the many congregations in all their many denominations all over the country. Somehow I think that the ones who call for punishment and torture and war probably don’t do that.

A prisoner is someone who is held against their will in… a prison! Oh, you can call it a penitentiary, a correctional facility, a camp, a containment center or a detention center, but the thing is what it is: it’s where individuals have been physically confined, deprived of freedom of movement and other freedoms, and are treated as subhumans. Why? Because they have been convicted (it is to be hoped the conviction was established through a through a legal and ethical process) of doing a terrible awful thing, or even several terrible awful things.

Of course, prison may also function as political tool, and that is a sign of a move toward a more authoritarian regime. In such societies, the detention of enemies of state and other political prisoners is common. Prisoners of conscience and religion, people imprisoned because of ethnicity, cultural difference, sexual preference, birth nation, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time – we can all think of examples of this kind of thing. The incarceration and interrogation of prisoners of war – and what we now euphemistically call “detainees” instead of prisoners – is common during times of war and other conflicts. We used to have some laws and standards about that, remember? Many other countries still do.

The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act. – Stanley Milgram, 1974

For a deeper understanding of a few of the social dynamics involved, I recommend taking a look at one of the most famous psychological experiments ever done: Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment. Also take a look at the related Stanford Prison Experiment.

Within the context of the society that has the power to imprison, prisoners are considered to be a danger to others. This is often true enough, although much can be debated about the process – in any country – by which certain people are imprisoned and other people are not. There is also a very strong ideological debate, of course, about the merit and effectiveness of ideas about punishment/vengeance as opposed to rehabilitation.

I find much to loathe in certain kinds of criminality, but I also find much that is detestable about the ways that we choose to deal with prisoners. In some circumstances, cruel treatment – and even torture – has been condoned and approved of by many Americans.

One of every 100 Americans is incarcerated. In the United States of America, there is now a thriving private prison sector. We impose the death penalty, although almost all European nations (not to mention Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and most of Latin America) have abolished it.

Some of the people who are most enthusiastic about the punishment, torture, and killing of prisoners profess to be Christians.

Isn’t that strange?

It seems to me that following Jesus is all about interrupting cycles of violence, not perpetuating them. I don’t understand how someone can say that they are following Jesus and then ignore everything he ever said and did. Doesn’t that miss the whole point – the “good news” part?

There are clear directives not to judge or condemn others. Who can ever forget Jesus confronting the would-be executioners of an adulteress in John 8? Sure, start throwing stones, just as soon as one of you is without sin or fault! Right! Now take a deep breath and chill. Do you know that there are people who call themselves Christians who would like to bring back stoning? And when will they give UP on controlling women? It’s tiresome.

God knows what we need before we even ask, but we should pray for forgiveness for the wrongs we have done, and remind ourselves every day that we must first forgive others. Only insofar as we have forgiven those who have wronged us may we be forgiven our own wrongs. There have been times, I admit, when my prayer has been to be released from that obligation. Sigh.

If you, then, bad as you are, know how to give your children what is good for them, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him!”

But how does that chapter (of Matthew 7) start?

Pass no judgment and you will not be judged. For as you judge others, so you will yourselves be judged, and whatever measure you deal out to others will be dealt back to you.

It’s all about measuring – and that takes a bit of mindfulness and humility. It sounds a lot like conscious karma, and it’s certainly a very wise piece of guidance for the soul’s path.

Yet, for someone who knocks, the door will always, always be opened – that is grace. That is the gift, and it is open to all.

God’s gifts are irrevocable.

One very important way to understand what some of those gifts can be (and how to practice them) is to model the way you’d like to be understood and loved in your relationship with others. When you offer yourself in service to others, even in a kind of “secret service,” you are blessed in turn. It just happens.

Christians are not meant to be vengeful. It only escalates violence into never-ending cycles of death.

Over and over, the biblical Christian texts tell us to leave vengeance to the Lord, to turn the other cheek (to make them think?), to care for the least among us – the poor, the downtrodden, the detested, even to call down blessings on our enemies and persecutors! That last bit is a little over the top, but maybe the writer had an affection for flourish. At least, I hope so.

To be joyful with the joyful and mournful with the mournful, to be humble and caring and moved by love (not by hate) – to me, that’s the heart of a Christian. The whole law, Jesus believed, was completed in Love.

Not only wasn’t he the fully Anointed King of Israel that they were expecting (to usher in a messianic age of war and then a time of peace) but he even forgave the ones who were crucifying him! Nobody was ever expecting that. Seems like lunacy on the face of it. I don’t know. I only wonder how important these things really are that we fight about.

Who are you to say that you know for sure who is and who is not accepted – or acceptable – by God?

Maybe God loves everybody, even if they’re a jerk. You don’t know. Maybe there is no God – maybe it’s all about power after all. Maybe God has God’s own ways of deciding things without consulting your interpretation. Maybe God is that which is greater than anything that you can think, or that can be thought. Maybe God is Love. Maybe God is an abyss with a big eye looking back at you. Maybe God is an alien. Maybe God exceeds our expectations. Maybe God is nothing at all like anything we think.

But America, brought down so low as to forget that we are all human – or to remember but be too complacent to believe it, or to be too busy trying to live to think about it at all.

You so-called Christians that condone or cheer for the abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and other places like them, who turn a blind eye to our prison-for-profit systems and detention centers and extraditions for torture…

You who will not look at photographs because “images are too disturbing” while you let the actions that you have no spine to observe continue … it’s too easy to blame someone else…

You who think that it’s so macho and even sexy to hurt and dehumanize others…

You hypocrites and compartmentalizers, you sociopaths lacking empathy and simple human understanding…

When is the last time you visited someone in prison to console them?

When was the last time you showed kindness to someone that others in your little in-group might find detestable?

Are you so sure that your smug dehumanizing arrogance is pleasing to God? If you really are sure, give us a wee hint – how can we make you less sure? You’re destroying us.

It’s time for Christian assistant shepherds to recall their flocks to the meaning of the message. Cool, clear water of life, ratch ‘ere.

How can torturers and greedy war-mongers and spreaders of lies and fear have become so triumphant that they can brazenly assume that any real Christian could or would be a part of their “base”? How can Christians support such degrading and oppressive corruption as this? It’s a culture of fear and death.

We’ve gotten into ruts in our thinking – it’s all full of ideology and false oppositions and judgments that aren’t based in reality but on dark fantasies and projections.

Don’t dehumanize others – that’s where it all starts. Counter terror with justice, not sadism. Yes, there are reasons for prisons, but there is never a reason to degrade another human being, to invade them, to rape them, to torture them, to kill them.

And yes, I realize that I’m strident. There is an irony here, I know.

I try to understand and even to love those who hate just as much as I can. It’s a major challenge, and so perhaps the board of Benevolent Deities Inc. is having a little laugh watching me here in Georgia. For now, it’s about daily practice, trying – one person at a time – to understand how it happens, and to plant small seeds of its undoing while my imaginary guitar of the spirit gently weeps (the guitar is a permanent installation designed by John Lennon).

My assessment is that American pseudo-christians need to de-familiarize themselves again – to step away from their customary ways of thinking about religion so that they can hear and see and form their own insights again.

Agape love is a powerful way to inspire creative confrontation, restitution, and reconciliation.

Americans also need to remember and uphold the standards that we tell ourselves that we hold dear and which have been sold far too cheaply.

Ok, that’s all rather heavy, isn’t it? It all came out in a rush.

“My mind’s been going places without me lately”…

And after I truly finished the first draft, I went outside to see that the sky was an unearthly yellow.

Banning hot cross buns?

Banning hot cross buns?

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What do you get when you pour very hot water down a rabbithole?

Hot cross bun(ny)s!

One a penny two a penny – Hot cross buns!

It’s official – the memes of repression in the name of freedom and diversity have travelled to the U.K. Or have they?

For fear of offending the religious minorities at The Oaks Primary School in Ipswich, headteacher Tina Jackson has asked suppliers to remove the cross from their hot cross buns. .. “The cross is there in recognition of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ but for our students who are Jehovah Witnesses hot cross buns are not part of their beliefs. “We decided to ask to have the cross removed in respect of their beliefs. It was just a currant bun.”

For some reason, they seem worried -only- about Jehovah’s Witnesses. JW’s are not activists for such things – I smell mendacity here.

Evening Star – School decides to ban the bun

Albert Berwick, a minister with the Ipswich Cavendish Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, said the buns would indeed be offensive to members.

He said: “I can understand why the school has done this and I support the decision. Hot cross buns are a pagan symbol of fertility no different to bunnies, eggs and Easter.

The sentence is so typical in its self-confusion and half-understood prohibitions. I notice they didn’t get any offical statement from the Watchtower Society, who would never put it quite this way. Excusing the grammer (or lack thereof) for a moment, I’m simply trying to understand how hot cross buns are a symbol of fertility – you know, exactly. Since when is bread, currents and the shape of a cross made in icing a symbol of fertility? If you want to talk about the “pagan” roots of the resurrected god, that’s one thing, but this? “Hot cross buns” does of course sound a little bit suggestive (or is it just me?), but “hot cross buns” are a very different thing than “hot buns” in general…

The cross, cut into the dough before cooking or added later (as in this case) with icing, was thought to ward off evil spirits. You might not have noticed, but JWs don’t say anything when someone sneezes. The common “God bless you” or “gesundheit” has the same sort of ancient belief attached.

Of course, bunnies and eggs harken to something other than Christianity – but everyone knows that. Are egg hunts “offensive” to the Church of England?

Are the Brits turning into JWs? I’m curious about how exactly this school made the decision, and why they leave it at the feet of JWs. If they wanted to mollify JWs, they would have to end all of the holidays, delete all of the celebrations, get rid of anything that suggested a connection to any of them. Somehow I don’t see that happening.

My recollection is that JWs who are troubled by “pagan” celebrations and symbols simply do not participate, and they do not partake of those foods if they feel they are too closely associated. They simply wouldn’t eat the buns. Or – they could have an alternative, such as regular bread. Or they could simply smear the icing. You can’t spend your life trying to avoid symbols – anything can be a symbol.

An aside – I wish my son had the option of hot cross buns at school – they are delicious.

So is this for real, or are the same folks operating over there as here? Sounds either bogus or extremely silly to me. It’s a Monty Python sketch in the making. I welcome any contact from the school administrators. It would be an interesting conversation. No mention of any other religions…

As a former JW and an American liberal (as well as a scholar of religion, ethics and literature), may I suggest that banning hot cross buns has nothing to do with liberation, affirmation of cultural or religious diversity, or reducing hatred of those different from one’s own comfort group?

Pretending that traditions do not exist is not “politically correct” at all, even if you forget that the designation of “political correctness” is meant as an insult rather than a description. With all my disagreements with Jehovah’s Witnesses, I don’t know a single one who would be “offended” by such a thing as hot cross buns. If there is someone who is in fact offended by hot cross buns, please send contact information and an interview invitation. That would be the story here – someone is offended by hot cross buns! Let them explain.

A better solution might be to include some foods from other cultural and religious traditions. Some of them are downright yummy.

Inclusivity, toleration, respect and dignity for all people regardless of their religious beliefs – these are the deeper issues, and I don’t see how these are served by eroding and erasing one set of beliefs for another. There is no need to become bland in order to have dialogue. This attempt, if it was sincere, only reinforces resentment – the JW is reconfirmed in his own sense of superiority above the “impure” and the “pagan” remnants tied up with Christian tradition (as though there were a “pure” place without such influences), and the traditional Christians feel threatened and upset that even the most innocuous food should(?) be sacrificed (they don’t necessarily know the history of traditions, but why spoil them for everyone?).

If what has come to be called “political correctness” is really about attempting to erase difference in some authoritative way, then it no longer represents a move toward a language of liberation and freedom. As I recall, the main point was to create a language of inclusivity and dialogue so that everyone could speak – not to make every utterance so problematic that people were afraid to speak at all. Those who would make freedom of expression a way to limit expression have profoundly misunderstood. The regulatory function has to do with limiting hate speech, not with erasing one’s own differences from others.

Compare this to the situation of depicting Mohammed in cartoons – misunderstanding all around. The cartoon used the Prophet as a visual shortcut to depict radical Islam as terrorism. It’s sloppy, but no more so than the cartoons of Jesus and God that are seen all over. The main problem is not so much the comment on terrorism as its collapse into Islam generally, which isn’t really fair and, most importantly, it is regarded as blasphemous. There is a prohibition on depicting God (and by extention, perhaps) the Prophet in images. By the way, this prohibition is technically shared with Judaism and I’m not exactly sure how the Christians got around it. It’s a commandment. Here is the wriggle room – how does anyone know that the cartoons depicted the Prophet specifically? Were they actually labelled as such, or could they have been depictions of terrorist leaders? Personally, I was more disturbed by the exaggerated features on the one I saw, which seemed a caricature of race/nation/people more than of religion per se. There is a whole history of such caricatures of the “enemy” (see, for example Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of a Hostile Imagination by Sam Keen).

The culture clashes on religion can be mediated – with difficulty, but it is not impossible. Why just jump in to opposition, hatred, violence – without speaking with one another, without even an attempt at dialogue? Again, the differences are reinscribed as opposing ones and all sides have forgotten to care for one another as all religions of the book agree we ought to do.