Church Search Advice from Michael Novak

A friend who’s been following my endless vacillation over my relationship to my church sent me the following quote from Tell Me Why by Michael and Jana Novak (Pocket Books, 1998). The book is structured as a dialogue between a Catholic theologian and his twentysomething daughter about the basics of the Christian faith. Here, he talks about finding the church and denomination that are appropriate for your spiritual journey:


Judaism and Christianity (and some other religions) are about truth and holiness. In this context holiness means to love the lord your God with your whole heart, your whole mind, and your whole soul and to love your neighbor as you would be loved. The motive of such love is awe for the love that the Creator has poured out upon you.

Therefore, choose the communion that is most likely to oblige you and nudge you to be faithful to truth — to inquiry, insight, and the hunger for evidence and sound argument — and to become holy. Resist the temptation to join the communion that offers you only comfort, sociality, and nice company. (Look for that in a good club.) Resist also the appeal of aesthetic pleasures at the services — music, poetry, visual stunningness (whether splendid or spare).”

[Here a brief footnote goes into the relationship of beauty and truth, with Novak concluding that “To rest in beauty rather than in truth is to sow seed in thin soil. That said, I concur that beauty is a sign of truth.”] (pp.159-60)

To Novak’s sound advice I would only add the caveat that novice Christians should not berate themselves too much for caring about aesthetics, sociality and the rest. It may be too early to tell what insights and arguments you really need to hear. If the music speaks to you of a God whom your mind still can’t accept, if the companionship of other believers helps you begin to think this God may be real, then go with it. Someday in the future, if you’re starting to love Jesus like a real person but your church is stuck in social club/concert hall mode, you may find it’s time to move on, but be grateful to the folks who took you as far as they could.

I sometimes forget how very recent my faith commitments are, and how only a couple of years ago I was passionately skeptical about some of the same doctrines that I now can’t live without. A reason to hold those commitments more lightly? I don’t think so. Just a reason to be charitable. To care about whatever I believe, but not to be proud of myself for believing or doubting — that’s the goal.

Walter Wink: “Homosexuality and the Bible”

Distinguished theologian Walter Wink is a professor emeritus of Biblical interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. His books include The Powers That Be, a discussion of Christian nonviolence and social justice. (Unfortunately, he also thinks Jesus was only human, but then, so is Walter.) In this article from the Soulforce website, he offers a provocative critique of the Biblical case against homosexuality (boldface emphases are mine):


Paul’s unambiguous condemnation of homosexual behavior in Rom. 1:26-27 must be the centerpiece of any discussion.


For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.


No doubt Paul was unaware of the distinction between sexual orientation, over which one has apparently very little choice, and sexual behavior, over which one does. He seemed to assume that those whom he condemned were heterosexuals who were acting contrary to nature, “leaving,” “giving up,” or “exchanging” their regular sexual orientation for that which was foreign to them. Paul knew nothing of the modern psychosexual understanding of homosexuals as persons whose orientation is fixed early in life, or perhaps even genetically in some cases. For such persons, having heterosexual relations would be acting contrary to nature, “leaving,” “giving up” or “exchanging” their natural sexual orientation for one that was unnatural to them.


In other words, Paul really thought that those whose behavior he condemned were “straight,” and that they were behaving in ways that were unnatural to them. Paul believed that everyone was straight. He had no concept of homosexual orientation. The idea was not available in his world. There are people that are genuinely homosexual by nature (whether genetically or as a result of upbringing no one really knows, and it is irrelevant). For such a person it would be acting contrary to nature to have sexual relations with a person of the opposite sex.


Likewise, the relationships Paul describes are heavy with lust; they are not relationships between consenting adults who are committed to each other as faithfully and with as much integrity as any heterosexual couple. That was something Paul simply could not envision. Some people assume today that venereal disease and AIDS are divine punishment for homosexual behavior; we know it as a risk involved in promiscuity of every stripe, homosexual and heterosexual. In fact, the vast majority of people with AIDS the world around are heterosexuals. We can scarcely label AIDS a divine punishment, since nonpromiscuous lesbians are at almost no risk.


And Paul believes that homosexual behavior is contrary to nature, whereas we have learned that it is manifested by a wide variety of species, especially (but not solely) under the pressure of overpopulation. It would appear then to be a quite natural mechanism for preserving species. We cannot, of course, decide human ethical conduct solely on the basis of animal behavior or the human sciences, but Paul here is arguing from nature, as he himself says, and new knowledge of what is “natural” is therefore relevant to the case….

Clearly we regard certain rules, especially in the Old Testament, as no longer binding. Other things we regard as binding, including legislation in the Old Testament that is not mentioned at all in the New. What is our principle of selection here?

For example, virtually all modern readers would agree with the Bible in rejecting: incest, rape, adultery, and intercourse with animals. But we disagree with the Bible on most other sexual mores. The Bible condemned the following behaviors which we generally allow: intercourse during menstruation, celibacy, exogamy (marriage with non-Jews), naming sexual organs, nudity (under certain conditions), masturbation (some Christians still condemn this), birth control (some Christians still forbid this).


And the Bible regarded semen and menstrual blood as unclean, which most of us do not. Likewise, the Bible permitted behaviors that we today condemn: prostitution, polygamy, levirate marriage, sex with slaves, concubinage, treatment of women as property, and very early marriage (for the girl, age 11-13).


And while the Old Testament accepted divorce, Jesus forbade it. In short, of the sexual mores mentioned here, we only agree with the Bible on four of them, and disagree with it on sixteen!


Surely no one today would recommend reviving the levirate marriage. So why do we appeal to proof texts in Scripture in the case of homosexuality alone, when we feel perfectly free to disagree with Scripture regarding most other sexual practices? Obviously many of our choices in these matters are arbitrary. Mormon polygamy was outlawed in this country, despite the constitutional protection of freedom of religion, because it violated the sensibilities of the dominant Christian culture. Yet no explicit biblical prohibition against polygamy exists.


If we insist on placing ourselves under the old law, as Paul reminds us, we are obligated to keep every commandment of the law (Gal. 5:3). But if Christ is the end of the law (Rom. 10:4), if we have been discharged from the law to serve, not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit (Rom. 7:6), then all of these biblical sexual mores come under the authority of the Spirit. We cannot then take even what Paul himself says as a new Law. Christians reserve the right to pick and choose which sexual mores they will observe, though they seldom admit to doing just that. And this is as true of evangelicals and fundamentalists as it is of liberals and mainliners.


The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. There is no Biblical sex ethic. Instead, it exhibits a variety of sexual mores, some of which changed over the thousand year span of biblical history. Mores are unreflective customs accepted by a given community. Many of the practices that the Bible prohibits, we allow, and many that it allows, we prohibit. The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period.


The very notion of a “sex ethic” reflects the materialism and splitness of modern life, in which we increasingly define our identity sexually. Sexuality cannot be separated off from the rest of life. No sex act is “ethical” in and of itself, without reference to the rest of a person’s life, the patterns of the culture, the special circumstances faced, and the will of God. What we have are simply sexual mores, which change, sometimes with startling rapidity, creating bewildering dilemmas. Just within one lifetime we have witnessed the shift from the ideal of preserving one’s virginity until marriage, to couples living together for several years before getting married. The response of many Christians is merely to long for the hypocrisies of an earlier era.


I agree that rules and norms are necessary; that is what sexual mores are. But rules and norms also tend to be impressed into the service of the Domination System, and to serve as a form of crowd control rather than to enhance the fullness of human potential. So we must critique the sexual mores of any given time and clime by the love ethic exemplified by Jesus. Defining such a love ethic is not complicated. It is non-exploitative (hence no sexual exploitation of children, no using of another to their loss), it does not dominate (hence no patriarchal treatment of women as chattel), it is responsible, mutual, caring, and loving. Augustine already dealt with this in his inspired phrase, “Love God, and do as you please.”


Our moral task, then, is to apply Jesus’ love ethic to whatever sexual mores are prevalent in a given culture. This doesn’t mean everything goes. It means that everything is to be critiqued by Jesus’ love commandment. We might address younger teens, not with laws and commandments whose violation is a sin, but rather with the sad experiences of so many of our own children who find too much early sexual intimacy overwhelming, and who react by voluntary celibacy and even the refusal to date. We can offer reasons, not empty and unenforceable orders. We can challenge both gays and straights to question their behaviors in the light of love and the requirements of fidelity, honesty, responsibility, and genuine concern for the best interests of the other and of society as a whole.


Christian morality, after all, is not a iron chastity belt for repressing urges, but a way of expressing the integrity of our relationship with God. It is the attempt to discover a manner of living that is consistent with who God created us to be. For those of same-sex orientation, as for heterosexuals, being moral means rejecting sexual mores that violate their own integrity and that of others, and attempting to discover what it would mean to live by the love ethic of Jesus.


Read the whole article here.

Prison Poetry by Conway: “Possessed”, “Rusted Actor”


Last month I introduced the readers of this site to “Conway,” a prisoner at a supermax facility in central California who’s serving 25-to-life under the state’s three-strikes law for receiving stolen goods. Conway (a pseudonym) is a skilled writer and artist, and an avid reader, despite the difficulty of finding either writing paper or decent books in jail. One would hope that the authorities would be more supportive of an inmate trying to better himself, but unfortunately he often finds them putting up obstacles to his education instead.  Some excerpts from his letters:

Oct. 15, 2006


I just received your letter and the poems. They were all very good. I so much appreciate you sharing them with me. They have nothing at all for reading around here 🙁   so pretty much gotta hear everyone’s war dogs when we go outside to exercise in the cages (kennels).

They don’t allow us to have contact with each other (physical) so we get chained up and escorted to these 10′ x 18′ cages all lined up. So, whomever you’re next to is who you talk with – wow! there are some very strange cats around here….

Possessed

   Barbed wire invades
the edge of this nakedness,
inside my concrete jungle.
   Towers loom the perimeter
flexed giant fists waiting,
to crush the lost wretch.
   Chain link webs surround
hypnotic formless foggy
death traps.
   Strange fears chill
of peering silhouettes
outside-in from hollow giants.
   As vents whistle and moan
terrorizing the hardest of soul
till possession is complete…

Nov. 8, 2006


I started a book (reading) “Anna Karenina” – never read any tolstoy before – he seems to be extremely longwinded; I traded a drawing for the book so got to read it all now 🙂

Haven’t wrote in my story for two weeks now, ran out of lined paper so will have to wait for my sister in Washington to send me some….

Anna Karenina – I’m reading it in the mornings 5:30 a.m. till 7:30 a.m. when the lights come on and everyone is still quiet – they slide our trays through the slot at 7:30 or so and it’s nonstop interference till the lights go out around 10 p.m. They extended my time in the hole another 6 months – some new regulation that if you’ve been sent to the hole 3 times within your sentence then you are assessed an indeterminate SHU (segregated housing unit) so I must remain disciplinary free for six months before I get back out to the main line – whatever! only thing I miss is radio and contact visits….

Rusted Actor

Hulk of skeleton rusting
   vines-n-bramble entertwined
through around over and under
   your aged girth.

Such a monster were you
   with the old man riding
completing your power trip
   the earth was no match.

Now the old man
   has passed, and ages gone
since you’ve been gassed
   with care and love.

Contempt though you had
   for all in your way, shredding
a path with steel spikes
   low gutteral growls, belching
your black breath with fury
   whenever challenged.

O’ the wizards of alchemy
   created such a monster
when they snatched your specter
   from out ore smelting
that demonic frame of bolted gears.

But you’re not so tough
   now that my father shows you
no more concern, even flowers
   mock with indignance unmoved.

I could wake you!
   Maybe someday I will conspire
with your mechanical madness
   just to show those wild interlopers
wrapping your rusted torso.

But for now you shall sleep
   while those bushes and vines creep
through your iron bones
   building your disdain.

I know my father
   would feel your pain but he’s gone
he’s passed you onto me
   so you see only I remember
your destructive glory.

I put you in this story
   old beast I care for you
in the least
   but dare not wake you up
for now.

You remind me too much
   of the love I lost
when my father was tossed
   off your back, you
then crushed him with your track.

Wretched machine!
   you were that dread actor
horrid old tractor, so
   may you rust in Hell…

Shower of Stoles Exhibit Affirms GLBT Christians


Now through March 14, Smith College in Northampton, Mass. is hosting the Shower of Stoles Project, an exhibit of liturgical stoles and other sacred items from gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender church leaders from 26 denominations in six countries. These beautiful one-of-a-kind vestments are accompanied by personal stories of the wearers’ quest to share their spiritual gifts with a congregation that also accepts their sexual orientation. There are also “signature stoles” covered with messages of support from straight allies. 

The exhibit will resonate with anyone who has ever loved a church community yet felt pressure to hide one’s difference from them, whether that difference is ethnic, sexual, theological, class-based, or a matter of personality. This Robert Frost poem, which was displayed with the exhibit at Smith, spoke to my own continuing sadness about not finding a church that loves gay people and preaches the gospel:


Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it–it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less–
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars–on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

(I find it amusing in a sick way that the banner ads accompanying this poem online are for “Funeral Ringtones” and “The Soulmate Calculator”.)

Everything That Glitters


When criticizing certain sins and excesses (particularly the ones we’re not tempted to commit ourselves), we frequently fail to ask the question, “What is the good thing that this person is seeking in the wrong way?” As a result, the listeners feel condemned, and we feel frustrated at their refusal to want what’s best for them. This article on the Golden Calf from the Chabad-Lubavitch website shows a more compassionate and effective way to frame the question:



How did G-d address the gold-sickness of His newly chosen people? He didn’t abolish gold. He didn’t even take away theirs. He told them to use their gold to build Him a Sanctuary.


Compulsive overeating is a horrible disease: it’s unhealthy, it can even kill you. But the urge to eat is not only healthy — it’s vital to life itself.


The same is true of every negative phenomenon. There is nothing intrinsically bad in G-d’s world: every evil is a perverted good, every psychosis a healthy instinct gone awry.


So before we get all riled up over that woman with the two secretaries, let us try to understand the tendency of humans to splurge, flaunt and luxuriate in their wealth. We understand why we need food; we understand why we need shelter; but why do we crave gold?


In essence, the craving for gold is a yearning for transcendence. It is man saying: I am not content to merely exist and subsist; I want to exalt in life, I want to touch its magnificence and sublimity….

The answer, however, is not to squelch these strivings, but to purge them of their negative expressions. Use your yearning for gold to make a home for G-d.

On a more contemporary note, I love the country song “Everything That Glitters” by Dan Seals, a man’s bittersweet ode to the woman who has left him to raise their daughter while she rides the rodeo. He feels she’s given up something more valuable for something of lesser worth, and yet he also sees the beauty and daring with which she pursues her dream. It’s a song about how to understand and forgive sins without excusing them, and to hope that someday the other will come to love what you love. (The lyrics convey some of this, but for the full effect, you need to hear the tender way he sings it.)

Saving Jesus (Episode 6): 99.44% Pure


After an Ash Wednesday hiatus, the Saving Jesus class resumed at my former church this week, with one of the participants as leader because the minister was out of town. In his absence, amazingly, several people revealed a deep understanding of and attachment to the Incarnation and salvation by grace. It made me hopeful that this church could once again be on fire for Christ if it had the right leadership. “Shall these bones live?”

The video presentation about Jesus’ teachings focused on several instances where he reversed his culture’s usual understanding of purity: the famous parable of the Good Samaritan, and two brief sayings from Matthew 13:31-33:


He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”

He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
According to the video, the mustard plant was a weed that could take over the garden. Yeast was considered impure or unclean in Jewish culture. How is God like the mustard plant? Maybe you don’t want Him in your life, because His presence can get out of control. Maybe He’s hiding in something or someone you think of as beneath you. When your openness to discovering God outweighs your attachment to fixed ideas about pure/impure, high/low, you are getting a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven.

With the leaven, Jesus gives us a powerful metaphor for the Incarnation. God is not tainted by commingling with impurity. In fact, He becomes the impure substance (takes on human flesh) and dies, is consumed, is merged into a new thing, the bread of life.

In the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), the priest and the Levite don’t pass by the nearly-dead man because they’re hypocrites. They are simply observing the purity laws that would make them unfit to perform their duties if they touched a corpse. Because the Samaritan belongs to a despised group of apostate Jews who accepted the Torah but not the rest of the Old Testament or the rabbinic laws, this ironically gives him the opportunity to help where others failed.

One of the class participants pointed out that Jesus actually never says that the Law, or the concept of purity (ritual or ethical), is BAD. This is in contrast to the simplistic antinomianism of the theologians on the video, who mainly see Jesus as a revolutionary leader in a world comprised of guilty oppressors and innocent victims. No less than the Levites’ purity codes, this utopian liberalism helps us avoid facing the universality of sin. As the old joke says, there are two kinds of people in this world: the ones who think there are two kinds of people in this world and the ones who don’t.

As the discussion progressed, the class concluded that Jesus spoke in parables and aphorisms because he wanted to frustrate our habits of dualistic thinking. Wisdom involves balancing competing principles in a way that takes account of the individual situation, whereas we love to pick our favorite rule and apply it mechanically to every case. Wisdom begins with actually seeing the other person, instead of first seeing our own ideas about him. Of course, when we rely on our own observations, we must face our responsibility for our mistaken judgments (no more hiding behind the rules), which makes us aware of our need for grace.

That’s the gospel, boys and girls! Enjoy it.

Richard Rohr: Reflections on Marriage and Celibacy

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico, wrote an article for Sojourners magazine back in May 1979 (not available online, alas) called “Reflections on Marriage and Celibacy” which I had to quote here for several reasons. First, because I’ve been frustrated by how some Christian conservatives idealize the nuclear family, particularly the woman’s self-sacrificing role therein, as if codependence were not a form of idolatry just as dangerous as cold-hearted careerism. Second, because the last line quoted here (boldfacing is mine) beautifully expresses how my relationship with God is so precariously balanced between adoration and terror.


For Jesus, the kingdom is the possibility of universal compassion: it is community and not just kindly coupling. Marriage is a school, a sacrament, and a promise of the coming kingdom, but not itself the final stage. Jesus dethrones married love in order to enthrone it in proper perspective. The specific love points to the universal, but only the “love that moves the sun, the moon, and the other stars” can finally protect and make possible the specific love of a man and a woman.

Jesus seems to be concerned about widening the family circle to include all the life that God is offering. He knows how paralyzing and even deadening the familial relationships can be when they have cut their lifelines from the larger truth and more universal love. Family can be both life and death. Church also can be both life and death. Church and blood family both have the greatest power to wound and the greatest power to heal.

The gospel believes in family, but it is never going to limit itself to the blood relationships and call that alone family: “Anyone who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me.” Good American Christian religion would never dare to say those words on its own. When we do, we recite them falteringly, because we cannot really understand the radical nature of Jesus’ vision….

If the community model of church has seldom taken hold, it can probably be attributed to many causes: individualism, authoritarianism, clericalism, fear, plus an overly intellectualized communication of the gospel. But the cause that I would like to deal with here is a certain kind of apathy (a pathos: no feeling), a fear of passion, which has consistently and ironically kept our incarnational faith from dealing with relationships, sexuality, emotions, bodiliness, and the power of love in general.

I am hard put to find a single century in our 2,000-year history since the Word became flesh in which there has been consistent and positive church teaching on the sexuality of this enfleshed creation. We have run from it, denied it, camouflaged it, sublimated it, died to it, sacramentalized it (thank God!) — but we have only in rare and mature instances really faced it, integrated it, and allowed it to raise us to God. We are afraid of the Word become flesh, we are afraid of heaven much more than we are afraid of hell. We live in an endless fear of the passion of God, who feels fiercely.

Blogging the Bible at Slate


Slate columnist David Plotz has been taking a lively tour through the Old Testament at Blogging the Bible, a series that combines chapter-by-chapter plot summaries with humor and contemporary cultural references. The column’s subtitle, “What happens when an ignoramus reads the good book?”, captures the essence of the project: reading the stories with fresh eyes, unencumbered by a religious (or anti-religious) agenda or the stiff piety that shies away from the Bible’s earthiness and flat-out weirdness. As Plotz said in an interview with Christianity Today:



The danger is that if you sound too casual, then people might think you’re not taking the Bible seriously. But it would be a lie for me to write in portentous language. If I were using high liturgical language or high rabbinical language, that wouldn’t be me.


Also, the Bible is often taught like that—in a formal way with moral lessons attached—but you miss the fact that this is an incredibly bawdy, hilarious, fun—hellacious, even—text. There’s a lot of sarcasm and wordplay and glee and craziness. Sometimes, I think to myself, I can never be as crude as the stuff in Judges. Or, I can never be as sarcastic as Elijah.


So, no, I don’t think I’m being too flip. The Bible is flip all the time….


There’s a notion that the Bible is pure and holy and full of family values. Thous, thees, shalls, shants—that’s all there. But what’s also there is human behavior at its most base level. Behaviors that are weird and gleeful and strange.


The writing is like that, too. There’s no stiffness to it. It’s loose and playful. So I feel like the blog should be like that, too. Obviously, I’m making allowances for my own writing, but I think there’s license to do that. You misunderstand the book if you think the only way to write about it is in an awed, distant, timid way. It’s a book that demands appreciation for all its liveliness.


US Challenged on Psychological Torture of Prisoners

One of the great non-stories of our post-9/11 world has been the brutal, depraved way that the US government treats so-called “enemy combatants” seized in the war on terror. We have incarcerated hundreds of people without trial, often based on secret evidence, and denied them access to counsel. These are not individuals who have been tried and convicted of terrorist acts. The American public and media have no way of knowing who these people are and whether they have committed any crime. The Bush administration simply says “trust us”.

Amazingly, the suspension of due process and human rights standards in America’s military prisons (as in America’s prisons generally) is no secret. It’s reported in the media, but somehow this shredding of the Constitution has never generated the same level of outraged buzz as, for example, a picture of two men kissing. 

In an article by political commentator Naomi Klein, Friday’s Guardian newspaper (UK) reports that our government’s widespread practice of deliberately driving prisoners insane is finally being challenged in court:

Something remarkable is going on in a Miami courtroom. The cruel methods US interrogators have used since September 11 to “break” prisoners are finally being put on trial. This was not supposed to happen. The Bush administration’s plan was to put JosĂ© Padilla on trial for allegedly being part of a network linked to international terrorists. But Padilla’s lawyers are arguing that he is not fit to stand trial because he has been driven insane by the government.

Arrested in May 2002 at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, Padilla, a Brooklyn-born former gang member, was classified as an “enemy combatant” and taken to a navy prison in Charleston, South Carolina. He was kept in a cell 9ft by 7ft, with no natural light, no clock and no calendar. Whenever Padilla left the cell, he was shackled and suited in heavy goggles and headphones. Padilla was kept under these conditions for 1,307 days. He was forbidden contact with anyone but his interrogators, who punctured the extreme sensory deprivation with sensory overload, blasting him with harsh lights and pounding sounds. Padilla also says he was injected with a “truth serum”, a substance his lawyers believe was LSD or PCP.

According to his lawyers and two mental health specialists who examined him, Padilla has been so shattered that he lacks the ability to assist in his own defence. He is convinced that his lawyers are “part of a continuing interrogation program” and sees his captors as protectors. In order to prove that “the extended torture visited upon Mr Padilla has left him damaged”, his lawyers want to tell the court what happened during those years in the navy brig. The prosecution strenuously objects, maintaining that “Padilla is competent” and that his treatment is irrelevant….

Many have suffered the same symptoms as Padilla. According to James Yee, a former army Muslim chaplain at GuantĂĄnamo, there is an entire section of the prison called Delta Block for detainees who have been reduced to a delusional state. “They would respond to me in a childlike voice, talking complete nonsense. Many of them would loudly sing childish songs, repeating the song over and over.” All the inmates of Delta Block were on 24-hour suicide watch.

Human Rights Watch has exposed a US-run detention facility near Kabul known as the “prison of darkness” – tiny pitch-black cells, strange blaring sounds. “Plenty lost their minds,” one former inmate recalled. “I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors.”

These standard mind-breaking techniques have never faced scrutiny in an American court because the prisoners in the jails are foreigners and have been stripped of the right of habeas corpus – a denial that, scandalously, was just upheld by a federal appeals court in Washington DC. There is only one reason Padilla’s case is different – he is a US citizen. The administration did not originally intend to bring Padilla to trial, but when his status as an enemy combatant faced a supreme court challenge, the administration abruptly changed course, charging Padilla and transferring him to civilian custody. That makes Padilla’s case unique – he is the only victim of the post-9/11 legal netherworld to face an ordinary US trial.

Read the whole article here. (The reader comments are also worthwhile.) Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine: Rise of Disaster Capitalism will be published in September.

Meanwhile, veteran civil-rights crusader Nat Hentoff keeps the spotlight on our government’s shameful treatment of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was kidnapped by the CIA and secretly deported to Syria, where he was tortured for 10 months in an underground cell before Syrian officials admitted that he had no connection to Al Qaeda. Heads have rolled in the Canadian government, which provided the shaky evidence to the CIA, but US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales continues to deny responsibility for the incident. Read the Village Voice story here. (Hat tip to Catholic bloggers Eve Tushnet and Mark Shea, who have done a heroic job challenging the pro-torture line taken by some Christian conservatives.)

Write to your representatives. Donate to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Do something!