have been passed to facilitate that war, including the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Allow me to quote section 6.14 in full:

Various procedural issues in the Military Commissions Act are also troubling. The new
law does not allow terrorism suspects to challenge their detention or treatment through
traditional habeas corpus petitions. It permits prosecutors, under certain conditions, to
use evidence collected through hearsay or through coercion to seek criminal convictions.
The legislation also rejects any right to a speedy trial, and it empowers U.S. officials to
detain indefinitely anyone it determines to have “purposefully and materially” supported
anti-U.S. hostilities. These provisions are deeply lamentable, in part because of their
substance, and in part because they create the conditions in which further prisoner abuse
is made more likely. They violate basic principles of due process that have been
developed in Western judicial systems, including our own, for centuries. Anti-U.S.
"hostilities" is a vague term that a future administration can use against anyone perceived
as its enemy. We see this as fraught with danger to basic human rights.

It is apparent from this statement that the signatories are concerned not only about torture, and not only about habeas corpus, but about a large number of the provisions of the Military Commissions Act. Our concern is that these provisions represent a violation of our own national values, and that together they make more likely further violations of those values and of the basic God-given rights of human beings made in God's image.

Speaking as an individual, as a Christian citizen, I support the effort you are making to restore habeas corpus for detainees in US custody. I urge you to lead in the reconsideration of the full panoply of legal and moral issues raised here. And in light of the fairly wide support offered within the evangelical community to "An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in an Age of Terror," I believe that my convictions on this issue represent the views of millions of evangelical Christians.

Sincerely,

David P. Gushee

Chair, Evangelicals for Human Rights
Jackson, Tennessee

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION: Educated at The College of William and Mary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Union Theological Seminary (NY), David P. Gushee is University Fellow and Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University (a Baptist institution located in Jackson, Tennessee), a columnist for Christianity Today magazine, and Chair of Evangelicals for Human Rights.

AN EVANGELICAL DECLARATION AGAINST TORTURE:
PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS IN AN AGE OF TERROR:

1. Introduction

The sanctity of human life, a moral status irrevocably bestowed by the Creator upon each person and confirmed in the costly atoning sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, is desecrated each day in many ways around the globe. Because we are Christians who are commanded by our Lord Jesus Christ to love God with all of our being and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mt. 22:36-40), this mistreatment of human persons comes before us as a source of sorrow and a call to action.

All humans who are mistreated or tormented are somebody's brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, parents and grandparents. We must think of them as we would our own children or parents. They are, by Jesus' definition, our neighbors (Lk. 10:25-37). They are "the least of these,” and so in them and through them we encounter God himself (Mt. 25:31-46). "When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant," Elie Wiesel declares. "Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."l

However remote to us may be the victim of torture, abuse, or mistreatment, Christians must seek to develop the moral imagination to enter into the suffering of all who are victimized. Having personally witnessed the horrors of the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s, Robert A. Evans writes: "The motivation of basic human rights can never again become a matter of statistics, or theory, or strategy, or legislation, or judicial decision. It will always be, for me, the violation of the dignity of other children of God."2 Commitment to a transcendent moral vision of human dignity which is rooted in the concrete reality of particular suffering human beings motivates the signers of this statement as well.

The authors and signatories of this declaration are evangelical Christians and citizens of the United States. As Christians, we long to obey the moral demands of our faith as articulated in the Scriptures. We seek to serve Jesus Christ, who alone is Lord of our lives, of the church, of our nation, and of the world. As citizens, we bring our Christian convictions to bear on the most important matters that arise in the life of our democracy, for the health of our nation and its impact on the lives of people around the world. We know that we may not always succeed in shaping the laws and policies of the United

1 Wiesel, Elie. "Acceptance Speech for 1986 Nobel Peace Prize." Oslo, December 10, 1986.
http://www.eliewieselfiundation.org/Elie Wiesel/speech.html, September 28, 2006.

2

Robert A. Evans and Alice Frazer Evans, Human Rights: A Dialogue Between the First and Third Worlds (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), 3-4.

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States in the way we believe they should be shaped. But we must, on all occasions,
attempt to bear faithful Christian moral witness.

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The immediate occasion for this declaration is the intense debate that has occurred in our country since 2004 over the use of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of those who are detained by our nation and other nations in the “war on terror." In 20052006 this debate evolved into a broader discussion of policies related to the legal standards that would be employed in detaining, trying, transferring, or punishing suspected terrorists in what is turning out to be a lengthy struggle against individuals and groups engaged in terrorist plots and acts against our nation.

This cluster of issues would not have arisen if not for the horrifying and heinous attacks
of 9/11, which took nearly 3,000 lives and constituted a mass violation of the very moral
standards we witness to in this declaration. The U.S. response to these attacks, including
intensified intelligence activities, the invasion of Afghanistan, and later the much-debated
invasion of Iraq, has led to the apprehension of thousands of “enemy combatants,"
terrorists, suspected terrorists, and others. The question we now face is how we protect
our society (and other societies) from further terrorist acts within a framework of moral
and legal norms. As American Christians, we are above all motivated by a desire that our
nation's actions would be consistent with foundational Christian moral norms. We
believe that a scrupulous commitment to human rights, among which is the right not to be
tortured, is one of these Christian moral convictions.

2. The Sanctity of Human Life

"And God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness. ...So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

"

Genesis 1:26a, 27

We ground our commitment to human rights, including the rights of suspected terrorists, in the core Christian belief that human life is sacred. Evangelicals join a vast array of other Christian groups and thinkers-Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and others-in a long history of reflection and activism on behalf of this critical yet threatened moral conviction.

The sanctity of life is the conviction that all human beings, in any and every state of
consciousness or self-awareness, of any and every race, color, ethnicity, level of
intelligence, religion, language, nationality, gender, character, behavior, physical
ability/disability, potential, class, social status, etc., of any and every particular quality of
relationship to the viewing subject, are to be perceived as sacred, as persons of equal and

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We use quotation marks for this term because we are not convinced of the precision or cogency of a war on "terror," which is at one level a tactic (terrorism) and at another level a feeling (terror). We do not use the term with quotation marks in order to downplay the significance of the terrorist acts that have been directed at other nations and our nation in the past two decades.

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immeasurable worth and of inviolable dignity. Therefore they must be treated with the reverence and respect commensurate with this elevated moral status. This begins with a commitment to the preservation of their lives and protection of their basic rights. Understood in all of its fullness, it includes a commitment to the flourishing of every person's life.4

Christian belief in the sanctity of human life is rooted in themes that work their way
through the entire biblical canon as well as much of Jewish, Christian, and Western moral
thought. Rightly understood, the sanctity of life is a moral norm that both summarizes
and transcends all other particular norms in Christian moral thought.

Scripture reveals that life is sacred. Humans, in particular, are given life by the breath of God (Gen. 2:7) and are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28). The imago Dei serves as a common denominator for all of humanity. Every human being, therefore, deserves respect.

The sanctity of life is emphasized in legal and covenantal texts in Scripture. Murder is forbidden because human beings are made in the image of God; this theme is evident in the covenants both with Noah and with Moses (Gen. 9:5-6; Ex. 20:13). Everyone has a duty to conserve and respect human life (Gen. 9:5; 4:8-10, 15), and to accept responsibility for the life of their fellow humans (Gen. 4:9; Dt. 21:1-9). Human life is sacred because it is "precious" to God (Ps. 116:15) and must therefore be precious to us as well. The prophets remind Israel of the value of human life, especially life at its most vulnerable (Is. 1:17; Jer. 7:6; Zech. 7:10).

The incarnation (Jn. 1:1, 14) permanently and decisively elevates the value of human life. It reveals a God who is not dispassionate, but deeply moved by the brokenness of creation. The incarnation demonstrates the extraordinary value God places upon human life. It also signifies a mysterious bridging of the gap between God and humanity. Henceforth, the human experience in its joys and sorrows is inscribed upon the very Person of God in a new way. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit participates in human pathos with groans and sighs too deep for words. The cries of the tortured are in a very real sense, then, the cries of the Spirit.

Jesus Christ, God-made-flesh, taught the dignity of human life and practiced it in his treatment of those around him. He reaffirmed the biblical commands which are intended to protect human life. He diagnosed the vicious patterns of sinful behavior that lead us to violate God's commands, and the sickness of the heart and mind that lie behind that sinful behavior. He offered teachings amounting to transforming initiatives to enable us to obey God's will. This is most clearly illustrated in his single largest block of teaching, the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7).

4

David P. Gushee, The Sanctity of Life: A Christian Exploration (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming).
S IVP New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology, ed. David J. Atkinson, et al (Downers
Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1995) 757-758.

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In his ministry, Jesus in all contexts treated persons as sacred in God's sight. This was especially apparent in the way he treated the marginalized: women, the sick, the dead, the poor, people of bad reputation, children, and enemies of Israel such as tax collectors, Roman soldiers, and gentiles in general. He explicitly affirms the worth of human beings in his teaching (Lk. 12:24; Mt. 6:26; 12:11-12). He taught peacemaking rather than violence, and on the Cross forgave those who assisted in killing him. He also stood with both the Law and the prophets before him in condemning injustice in its various forms: economic, political, military, and religious (cf. Mt. 23). The justice teachings of Jesus are closely related to a commitment to life's sanctity and serve as a fundamental building block of a Christian commitment to human rights.

For many centuries, Jesus' teaching about the "least of these" (Mt. 25:31-46) has been especially significant for shaping a Christian moral vision of the sanctity of every human life. Not only does this familiar "sheep and goats" parable emphasize the centrality of practical deeds of service to the least, the last, and the lost, it also teaches us to see Jesus in the hungry, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned: "as you did it unto the least of these, you did it unto me” (Mt. 25:40). This dramatic shift of moral vision has profound implications for how we as Christians think about our nation's imprisoned, sometimes hungry, sometimes sick, sometimes naked strangers.

Ultimately, it is the Cross of Jesus Christ that demonstrates how much God values human
life. God-in-flesh dies, at human hands, for human beings who do not love him and are
not worthy of his costly sacrifice. "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
Radical human equality is emphasized in the reason for this death, the universality of its
scope, and the equality of its impact. At the Cross and in the Resurrection, by saying no
to his Son's cry of dereliction, God says yes to all of derelict humanity.

Considered etymologically, a sacred thing is something that has already been sanctified, dedicated, consecrated, venerated, or hallowed. One might say, then, that our holy God has transferred his holiness onto us and therefore sanctified each person. This confers upon each of us a dignity that our attitudes, attributes, and activities neither deserve nor can nullify."

In his Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul II asserts the sacred value of human life "from its very beginning until its end." He urges a fight against "the culture of death" and a holistic and comprehensive struggle to protect vulnerable humans, sacred in God's sight.

John Paul II is among those who have made the connection explicit: the concept of human rights is inextricably bound to the belief that human life is sacred and therefore must be held in the highest respect. "Upon the recognition of this right, every human community and the political community itself are founded."" Indeed, by focusing on human rights, we direct our attention and energy to those who need it most-those

6 Gushee, The Sanctity of Life, 3.

7 Pope John Paul II, The Gospel of Life, (New York: Random House, Inc., 1995), 2-4.