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Fleming Rutledge is a preacher and teacher known throughout the mainline Protestant denominations of the US, Canada and parts of the UK. She is the author of five books and has received a grant from the Louisville Foundation to complete a book about the meaning of the Crucifixion.
One of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church, she served for fourteen years on the clergy staff at Grace Church on Lower Broadway at Tenth Street, New York City. A native of Franklin, Virginia, Mrs. Rutledge has been married for forty-five years and has two daughters and two grandchildren.
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Ruminations: "Enhanced interrogation techniques"Monday, May 12, 2008"Enhanced interrogation techniques"My recent reading in the theology of the Cross has led me to various reflections on cultures based on honor and shame rather then guilt and innocence. This is notably true in Japan, but in our present situation it is most relevant with regard to the Middle East. Numerous articles about what happened at the Abu Ghraib prison have reported that prison guards and other soldiers charged with detaining Iraqis were instructed that Arab men have a strong sense of shame, particularly with regard to nudity, women, and sexual matters in general. We now know that this information proved to be a spur to the particular sorts of humiliations that were visited upon the prisoners at Abu Ghraib.Jesus Christ "endured the cross, despising the shame," writes the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The extreme shamefulness of crucifixion is not sufficiently emphasized or understood in today's congregations. A man who is dragged through the public streets to the howls of the crowds, then nailed up with sexual organs and bodily excretions on display for the contempt and derision of the multitudes has undergone an extremity of shame. Therefore when we look at the pictures from Abu Ghraib, we see something analogous to crucifixion: the exploiting of a helpless human being in very specific ways designed to shame him—a human being, what's more, who has been judged an insurrectionist, an enemy of the state. The world being what it is, people must sometimes be taken prisoner, held, and interrogated. This is not the issue. The issue is that when we pass over the line into deliberate state-sponsored humiliation, degradation, and torture, the fundamental affirmations of the Christian faith are profoundly undermined. If the Crucifixion of Christ was the world-overturning event that the apostolic gospel says it is, then every form of exploitative behavior should be categorically renounced in the name of the One who gave himself up as the utmost act of sacrifice, as Hebrews repeatedly says, "once for all." And so there is another aspect of this matter that elicits thought. In some of the most infamous photographs, the unfortunate female soldier Lynndie England is gleefully mocking naked male prisoners. Continuing the work of Christian imagination to see the Cross by analogy in this picture, the One who is mocked has placed himself in that position intentionally and purposefully, but that is not all. He has done so precisely and deliberately for the specific result that Lynndie England and every other perpetrator should be redeemed. That is the radical gospel.
Permanent Link for this Post: http://www.generousorthodoxy.org/ruminations/2008/05/enhanced-interrogation-techniques.htm |
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5 Comments:
"The issue is that when we pass over the line into deliberate state-sponsored humiliation, degradation, and torture ..."
Lynndie England and her cohorts were not agents of deliberate state-sponsored humiliation, etc., but disobedient soldiers w/o any authority to act as they did.
In fact,"the unfortunate female soldier" was previously ordered by her Sergeant Major to stay away from both the prisoners -- as she was an admin. specialist, not a guard -- as well as the married soldier w/whom she was committing adultery with.
Joe DeCaro
Stfd, CT
The more I ruminate on this, the more I realize that the only deliberate action by our government at Abu Grhaib was to prosecute the soldiers who precipitated this scandal; the only "unfortunate female soldier" was the female field grade officer who was later charged under military justice simply because she was the ranking commissioned officer in charge of the prison.
For the record, from the self-proclaimed paper of record, today's NYT:
"The Americans are better than Ministry of Interior prisons. They will torture you. Maybe you will die. With the Americans, if you enter Abu Ghraib, they will only wage psychological war on you."
MAHMOUD ABU DUMOUR, A former detainee, on the thousands of American detainees who are set to be turned over to the Iraqi government.
To Connecticut Yankee:
Thanks for the NYT quote,which I also saw this morning. My reaction was, as always when such comparisons are made, that we cannot be responsible (or at least, not always) be responsible for what others do, but we can be responsible for what we do. If my child were to bully another, the fact that others have bullied more often and more egregiously does not change my responsibility to teach my child not to bully others.
In a sense, the "mother" of Lynndie England -- the female MP commander then in charge of the prison -- has (reluctantly) accepted responsibility for her daughter's action under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
From my own military experience in Bosnia and elsewhere, soldiers like England are not causes but catalysts; I doubt the scandal at Ghraib could have happened w/o her participation.
But it would be ironic indeed if, after the inevitable ill-treatment that awaits them at the hands of their fellow Muslims, the prisoners of Abu Ghraib ask for us back!
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