Religious Leaders Run Full Page Ad in Roll Call to Tell Congress: Abolish Torture Now

Monday, September 18, 2006

Washington, D.C. – As both Houses of Congress consider legislation this week on the treatment on military detainees, religious leaders are calling for the elimination of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as part of U.S. policy in a statement to be published in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. Originally published in the New York Times on June 13, 2006, the statement will run as a full page ad in Roll Call on Tuesday, September 19.

The statement, “Torture is a Moral Issue,� proclaims that torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions hold dear. Shepherded by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), the statement is signed by 27 national religious leaders, including Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, D.C.; Rev. Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; and Nobel laureates President Jimmy Carter and Elie Wiesel.

Other signatories include Dr. Rick Warren pastor and author of the runaway bestseller, The Purpose Driven Life; Rev. Bob Edgar, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches; Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; Dr. Frank Thomas, pastor and editor of The African-American Pulpit; and Dr. Sayyid Syeed, National Director of the Islamic Society of North America.

NRCAT bridges theological and political divides by uniting mainstream Protestants and evangelical Christians; Muslims with Reform and Conservative Jews; Orthodox and Roman Catholics; Sikhs and members of peace churches.

Fifty-four national, regional and local religious organizations and congregations have already joined NRCAT. NRCAT will continue the “Torture is a Moral Issue� campaign by encouraging people of faith across the country to endorse the statement by visiting www.nrcat.org.

Jeanne E. Herrick Stare, the chair of the Coordinating Committee of NRCAT and a member of the staff of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, stated that NRCAT is publishing this ad in Roll Call because “Congress is now considering legislation that would no longer make it a war crime to inflict brutal, inhuman and degrading treatment on a prisoner. The legislation would allow coerced testimony to be used in trials of detainees. It would strip detainees of the right to challenge their detention before independent courts, meaning individuals could languish in prison without trial indefinitely.�

Ms. Herrick-Stare added, “It would enable detainees to be convicted of capital crimes without seeing the evidence used against them. And, the legislation would exonerate, retroactively, any U.S. official who participated in torture since our invasion of Afghanistan.�

Dr. George Hunsinger, the founder of NRCAT and a professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary said, “NRCAT urges Congress to stand by the Geneva Conventions and the moral grounding with which our country has governed itself for well over 200 years.�

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CONTACT: Jeanne Herrick-Stare, (202) 547-6000 x 2513, jeanne@fcnl.org or Rev. Richard Killmer, (207) 846-9963, killmerrp@aol.com