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Torture is a Moral Issue: Christians, Jews, Muslims, and People of Conscience Speak Out. Edited by George Hunsinger. Grand Rapids. Mich.: Eerdinans Publishing Companv, 2008. xxii + 272 pp. $26.00 (paper).
In late April 2009, the Pew Centers Forum on Religion and Public Life published a survey .showing that for the most part American white Christians, be they Evangelical, mainstream Protestant, or Roman Catholic, support their government's use of torture against suspected terrorists. There are differences within and among the Christian communities about how much torture is all right ("often," "sometimes," "rarelv"); but no group reaches higher than the Protestant main liners in claiming that it can never be justified, and they top off at 31 percent. For Catholics, whose magisteri urn holds that this practice is, like direct abortion, intrinsicallv and gravclv evil, on Iv one out ol five surveyed opposed it without exception.
Almost in passing, the IVw report notes that political "party and ideology are much better predictors of views on torture" than is religion. Given the surveys troubling findings. Christians - along with Jews, Muslims, and all people of conscience - might well say "That's what we're afraid of!" The tendency to reduce stances toward torture to partisan politics is what the volume under review, in its sad timeliness, astutely attacks; fi >r torture is a moral issue, and attempts to justify it under any circumstances on moral grounds invariably fail.
This collection of essays is divided among five subjects. Part 1, "Background," includes harrowing testimonies I rom a torturer (Tony...