K ingdom Ethics Seeking the Truth about What Our Nation Did I write today about the newly launched “Task Force on Detainee Treatment.” This is a national nonpartisan independent commission that will study the treatment of terrorism detainees by the US government. We will begin our inquiry with the Clinton administration and carry forward to the present day. The panel has been organized under the auspices of the Constitution Project, a respected Washington think tank that works on constitutional and rule-of-law issues in the United States. With funding from a broad spectrum of foundations and individuals, we have 12 to 18 months to do our work. It was a talented and distinguished group that gathered around the table for that first meeting: • Eleanor Hill, staff director of the joint congressional inquiry on the September 11th attacks • Asa Hutchinson, former Republican congressman from Arkansas and undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush • James Jones, former Democratic congressman from Oklahoma and former Ambassador to Mexico • Sandy D’Alemberte, past president of the American Bar Association and president emeritus of Florida State University • Richard Epstein, law professor at NYU and senior lecturer at University of Chicago Law School • Azizah al-Hibri, law professor at the University of Richmond and president of the Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights • David Irvine, a retired brigadier general and strategic intelligence officer
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•William Sessions, former US attorney, judge, and FBI director •Gerald Thomson, Columbia University medical school professor and former president of the American College of Physicians •Patricia Wald, former judge in the US and for the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia •I am the eleventh member of the panel; we may add a few more.
David P. Gushee drain the partisanship out of these issues. And I certainly hope that the bipartisanship, civility, and credentials of the panel will help gain the report credibility and a wide audience. What does any of this have to do with the Christian faith promoted in this magazine? For me, at least, I undertake these responsibilities as a citizen who cares about my country and as a Christian who seeks to be faithful to Jesus Christ. I will try to bring Christian moral principles to bear as I participate in the reflections of the panel. I believe that every human being is of sacred worth—both the people our nation is trying to protect from terrorism and those our nation detains as suspected terrorists. I want to help us develop policies that reflect the sacredness of all people before
That these professionals would agree to serve on this panel speaks well of the survival in our country of a citizenship that goes beyond partisanship and polemics. The entanglement of the debate about our detainee policies with That these professionals would agree to serve on this partisan panel speaks well of the survival in our country of a politics has made it very citizenship that goes beyond partisanship and polemics. difficult to even have a civil conversation about the God our Creator and Sovereign. real issues involved, let alone come to a I have also come to believe that one common account of what happened and of the most important ways that the sawhat we need to do as a nation moving cred worth of each human being is proforward. tected is through adherence to the rule The task force exists as a private of law. The constitutional framework so citizenship initiative rather than an official thoughtfully developed by the founders of government panel precisely because of the our nation was inconceivable apart from messy politics blocking an investigation. both high valuing of each human life and Many activists called on President Obama recognition that abuses of state power are to initiate such a panel when he first took a major source of harm to people. No one office, but he declined, citing the need to stands above the law, no situation permits look forward rather than look back. Con- us to suspend the law, and if Christians gress has undertaken several specific in- care about society we must care about vestigations over the last decade, but they the strength of our nation’s commitment have lacked national consensus-building to the rule of law. capacity and have been riven by partisan division. Learn more at ConstitutionProject.org. Our panel aims to fill this void by gathDavid P. Gushee is ering the relevant facts and laying them director of the Center out clearly and honestly. We will assess for Theology and the applicable laws and policies and how Public Life at Mercer they were implemented at each stage. We University, Atlanta, will develop recommendations for future Ga., where he is also detainee policies, along with some assessa professor of Chrisment of whether our past policies adhered tian ethics. His latest book is Religious to the rule of law. We nurture the hope Faith, Torture, and Our National Soul that we can offer a cohesive policy frame(Mercer University Press, 2010). work that can gain wide support and help