The religious roots of torture

William Schweiker has an article in Sightings (here) which, after expressing some bemusement that we should be debating torture in the twenty-first century, points to the religious roots of torture(see Martin Marty’s earlier article here).

Less often observed is that the practice of waterboarding has roots in the Spanish Inquisition and parallels the persecution of Anabaptists during the Protestant Reformation and the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation. Why did practices similar to waterboarding develop as a way to torture heretics—whether the heretics were Anabaptists or, in the Inquisition, Protestants of any stripe as well as Jews and witches and others?

Schweiker sees the use of water for torture by Christian persecutors as a kind of anti-baptism:

Torture has many forms, but torture by water as it arose in the Roman Catholic and Protestant reformations seemingly drew some of its power and inspiration from theological convictions about repentance and salvation. It was, we must now surely say, a horrific inversion of the best spirit of Christian faith and symbolism.

Christianity uses powerful symbols, its discourse addresses the great issues of life and death, morality and sin, and it also proclaims the possibility of transformatory redemption – that all things may be made new.

And beyond the symbols and discourse there is religious practice – the translation of such ideas into the reality of the way we treat one another. It is in this practice that we are judged. The question of torture should never be one of utility but one of fundamental respect for the human body: shaped by God, given for holy purposes.

And if the leaders of our religions can agree on nothing else, can they not agree that torture is reprehensible? And then that religious practice should always and actively set its face against torture – in symbol, in discourse, and in political influence?