Posted: 12/17/04

After 54 years in Nigeria, 'Chief Doctor Mama' retires

By Mark Kelly

International Mission Board

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)–When King S.O. Abimola II bestowed an African chief's title on a 56-year-old woman from Texas, young people danced in procession to the palace and hundreds assembled for the ceremony.

The honoree, Southern Baptist missionary Alma Rohm, donned a traditional hand-woven Yoruba dress, coral jewelry and a headdress adorned with akoko leaves.

The king had planned to give her the title “Iya Nisin,” often used of Christian women to mean “mother of those who worship.” But one of the area's Muslim chiefs objected.

“No, we want her to be 'Iya Nisin Ilu'” or “mother in service of the whole community,” he said.

It was, in 1982, a fitting tribute to a woman who had poured out 32 years of her life for Christ among the people of Iwo, Nigeria.

But Alma Rohm was far from finished with her service in Iwo.

The Southern Baptist International Mission Board honored Rohm at her retirement this year with the title, “emeritus missionary.” She was one of 37 veteran missionaries receiving the honor, and her 54 years in Nigeria was the longest tenure in a group with 1,172 years of overseas service among them.

Only three missionaries have had longer tenures in the mission board's 159-year history–China missionary doctor Rosewell H. Graves, who served 57 years, and Brazil missionary legends William “Buck” and Anne Bagby of Texas, who served 56 years. Only three other missionaries have had tenures longer than 50 years.

A Waco native, Rohm was only 12 when she committed her life to missionary service in Africa. But it wasn't a child's decision lightly made.

“Not long after I was saved at age 9, the Holy Spirit told me I was to be a single woman missionary teacher in Africa,” Rohm said. “I objected vehemently. I wanted to get married, have a lovely home and four children.

“When I could not escape the voice of the Holy Spirit, I finally told God I would be a missionary if I could go to China or Japan and serve as a doctor or a nurse. But that was not the task God had for me. When he kept repeating the same call, I stubbornly told God I would not be a missionary.

“When I was 12 years old, our church choir sang an Easter cantata on the seven last words of Christ on the cross,” she said. “Between each anthem, the lights were dimmed except for a lighted cross in the baptistery, and the choir director read one of the seven last sayings of Jesus on the cross.

“As I heard those words, my heart was touched, and I said to myself, 'If Jesus could die for me, surely I should be able to live for him.'”

After graduation from Baylor University in Waco and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Rohm was among six new missionaries appointed May 4, 1950. She set sail for Nigeria July 5.

She arrived in Lagos in time to attend a celebration of the Nigeria Baptist Convention's 100th anniversary.

Rohm was sent to teach briefly in a girls' school in Yaba and then had three months of language study in Ire while serving as companion to a missionary nurse who was alone in the town. A year after arriving in Nigeria, she was transferred to a Baptist teacher-training college in Iwo, a Muslim town in southwestern Nigeria.

It was a time, according to Nigerian journalist Seyi Odewale, when most of Nigeria was “no more than thick jungles, lined by scanty footpaths, and the hinterland, dotted by hamlets of mud houses.”

At the Baptist college, Rohm taught English literature, education and organ classes, served as school librarian, played piano for the church, led the choir, directed Shakespearean plays and organized an annual nationwide Baptist music workshop.

When Nigeria gained its independence from Britain in 1960, her choir was called on to sing the country's new anthem as its flag was raised over the capital for the first time.

On Sundays, Rohm went out with students who preached on the town's streets.

“Iwo was one of the most solidly Muslim towns in Nigeria,” Rohm recalled.

“There was one Baptist church in the town and two small churches that had been started by student preachers, as well as a Baptist church at the college.

“In those early years, I saw two more Baptist churches established by our street preachers. One of those churches is now the largest in Iwo.”

Africans were responsive to the gospel message of God's love and salvation in Jesus Christ.

For 100 years, Nigeria was the only African country where Southern Baptist missionaries were serving. As Rohm arrived in the country, the very first Southern Baptist missionaries were just entering Ghana–then called the Gold Coast.

Whereas Southern Baptists had 131 missionaries in Nigeria in 1950, “now we have more than a thousand serving all over Africa,” said International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin.

In Nigeria, Baptist churches now number more than 7,000 and report more than 1 million members, a remarkable contrast to the 340 churches and 25,343 members counted in 1950, Rankin said.

Countrywide, Christians account for about 40 percent of Nigeria's 137 million people. In Iwo itself, some estimate the city of 300,000 is now as much as 60 percent Christian.

“Prayer meetings in the churches are crowded,” Rohm said, “not only by church members, but also by prominent Muslims.”

In a country where tensions between Christians and Muslims at times flare into violence, Rohm's tireless service and genuinely Christian spirit earned her the title “Chief Doctor Mama.”

She is chief by a king's decree. A doctor because the Baptist seminary in Ogbomosho wanted to honor her music work in churches all over the country. “Mama” is a title of respect bestowed affectionately on those the Yoruba love.

The church at the college named a new primary school in her honor. A few years later, the congregation changed its name to Alma Rohm Baptist Church. In 1992, the school erected a statue of the diminutive missionary in front of its library.

At the thanksgiving ceremony after receiving the chief's title, Rohm acknowledged she had found God faithful in her obedience.

“In the Bible, Jesus promised that 'everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold,'” Rohm said.

“I thought I was leaving all that, but here I am, living in the largest mission house in Nigeria. More than a thousand people call me 'Mama.' At least 28 I can name call me 'Grandma.' Ten call me 'Great Grandma.' And now you have given me the land.”

At her retirement service, her testimony was simple: “How blessed I have been! How undeserving I am!”

With additional reporting by Mary Jane Welch.

Posted: 12/17/04

Seaman's Center ministry makes global
impact, particularly around Christmas

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

FREEPORT–The Seaman's Center might be able to teach Santa a thing or two.

Children believe St. Nick travels the globe in one night, delivering presents to good boys and girls.

But the Gulf Coast Baptist Association-sponsored ministry never even has to leave the city limits to reach much of the planet.

The center provides gifts for nearly 1,500 sailors from more than 30 countries who come through the port between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Each seaman receives a canvas bag of presents that includes two Christian tracts and $20 in personal items such as socks, gum and handkerchiefs.

Those presents serve as launching points for conversations about sailors' families, jobs and spiritual lives.

Sailors “come out of the woodwork” when Christopher Dale, a missionary serving at the Seaman's Center, steps on board a ship with the gift bags, he said.

He normally makes six or seven contacts per ship during the year, but he meets to up 25 sailors per boat during the holiday season.

“Kindness is a very good way of talking with them and sharing Christ,” Dale said.

The gifts are meant to be a sign of compassion, Dale said. Not all sailors make a faith profession the day a gift is received, Dale noted. But they have tangible reminders that Christians are concerned about people.

The presents make lasting impressions on the men, he stressed.

“We hope it helps them out–shows them someone out there cares about them,” he said.

Posted: 12/17/04

'Star of wonder' still leaves
astronomers wondering about its origin

By Margie Wylie

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)–In Matthew's Gospel, it's the apparition that heralds the birth of Jesus. Today, it features in Christmas trappings from tree toppers to carols to cards. No children's Nativity play is complete without its tinfoil likeness above the storied stable.

But what was the Star of Bethlehem?

Suggestions have included a comet, a supernova, meteors, bright-shining planets–even a UFO. The truth may be more subtle.

Using reconstruction software and the historical record, astronomers increasingly have come to believe the three wise men “following yonder star” may have been interpreting astrological omens so esoteric only the learned would have noticed anything unusual in the night skies.

While scientists disagree on the particulars, “one thing is absolutely certain,” said Mark Kidger, an astronomer with the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias in Spain's Canary Islands. “Whatever the Star of Bethlehem was, it was not an extraordinarily spectacular object.”

King Herod hadn't seen the sign that drew the Magi to Judea. Even the meticulous astronomical observations of the Chinese show nothing truly spectacular in the years around Jesus' probable birth date.

In fact, this “star” may not have been visible at all.

Michael Molnar proposes the heavenly sign was an eclipse of the planet Jupiter that took place in the constellation Aries, among other regal portents, on April 17 of the year 6 B.C.

That morning, just before dawn, Jupiter, a planet associated with kings, emerged from behind the sun to rise in the east, appearing as a morning star. Later that day, the moon moved in front of Jupiter.

While such events can be dramatic, this one was invisible, lost in the glare of the noonday sun. Even so, the Magi would have predicted it, argues Molnar, a retired Rutgers University astronomer who lives in Warren, N.J.

“It was something very subtle, only something an astrologer would have seen as important,” he said.

The event happened in Aries, which ancient astrologers thought ruled the fate of several Near East kingdoms–including Judea, which was struggling under the yoke of Roman rule. Hence, Molnar concludes, the wise men would have read the birth of a new Jewish ruler, perhaps even the long-prophesied Messiah, in this configuration of heavenly bodies.

Kidger, author of “The Star of Bethlehem: An Astronomer's View,” disagrees.

Events like the one Molnar described are not all that rare and so wouldn't have excited seasoned skywatchers, he said. He noted the moon moved in front of various planets almost 200 times between 20 B.C. and 1 B.C.

Kidger argues that what the Magi observed was a series of astrological portents, each of which has been individually suggested as the star.

Together, they led up to a not particularly brilliant, but long-lived nova–a distant, exploding star–recorded by the Chinese in 5 B.C.

Three times in a few months during 7 B.C., Jupiter and Saturn came close together, or were in conjunction, in Pisces. In 6 B.C., Kidger notes both a massing of planets in Leo and Molnar's observation about Jupiter's eclipse in Aries.

As sign followed sign, culminating in the appearance of a “new star,” they struck out for Jerusalem, site of Herod's court.

According to Chinese records, the 5 B.C. nova appeared low in the eastern sky in the constellation Aquila and lasted 70 days. If the Magi arrived in Jerusalem two months after they set out, Kidger said, the new position of the Earth would have made the nova appear to hover in the south over Bethlehem, where Herod directed them.

Molnar begs to differ. Tying a rational explanation of the star to pagan superstitions can make scientists uneasy, so they often start by searching for a unique astronomical event and then attempt to tie it into the astrology of the time–as Kidger has done, Molnar said.

But, he argues, Hellenistic astrology was the high science of its day and surely the lens through which the Magi would have viewed the world.

Astrologers' associations of Pisces or Leo with Judea date to the 15th century or even later–long after the time of Jesus, Molnar said.

Likewise, he sees no reason for ancient astrologers to associate a nova, even one lasting 70 days, with Jesus' birth, since new stars were ignored in Hellenistic astrology.

But in the case of the 6 B.C. eclipse of Jupiter, he argues, there were many impressive portents in play.

Not only was Jupiter eclipsed by the moon, which greatly increased its power and influence, but the planet had just emerged from behind the sun and was stationed in the east–two more factors pointing to a regal birth. In addition, the sun, moon, Jupiter and Saturn all were massed in Aries, characteristics of the horoscope of a "divine and immortal person," as one prominent Roman astrologer wrote.

Molnar's theory uses the astrology of the day to explain several aspects of the star story that have defied logic for years.

When they arrived in Jerusalem seeking a future Jewish king, the wise men said they had “seen his star in the east.”

Yet they were traveling westward to reach Judea, probably from Persia or Babylon.

And when they left Jerusalem, the star “went before them” on their southward journey, then “stood over” Bethlehem.

Molnar believes the wise men were using common Greek astrological jargon to describe Jupiter's movements.

In modern terms, what they noted “in the east” was Jupiter's re-emergence from behind the sun and its appearance as a morning star on April 17, the day it was eclipsed by the moon.

Then, on Aug. 23, the planet appeared to change its direction of movement across the sky because Earth overtook Jupiter as each traveled along its orbital path.

It's the same optical illusion a car or train rider experiences when an overtaken vehicle appears to stop, then move backward.

Astronomers call it retrograde motion today, but the Magi saw the planets “move before” the stars–travel in the same direction across the sky–as they made their way south to Bethlehem.

Finally, on Dec. 19, Jupiter seemed to stand still in the skies, or to “stand above,” for a number of days before it changed directions once again.

Called stationing, this is what planets appear to do just as the Earth overtakes them.

Posted: 12/17/04

Council told new approaches could resolve stem-cell dilemma

By Kathi Wolfe

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)–A Stanford University biology professor and two Columbia University physicians told a presidential advisory council new approaches could resolve the thorny ethical problems swirling around embryonic stem cell research.

Several members of the President's Council on Bioethics reacted with enthusiasm, but some conservative religious groups remain skeptical.

Stanford professor William Hurlbut, a member of the advisory council, made one of the proposals. He suggested an unproven scientific technique that would enable stem cell research to go forward without creating or destroying human embryos.

Hurlbut said he is convinced the scientific community must come up with such solutions to bridge the ethical divide holding up research that has the potential to cure diseases and save lives.

“A purely political solution,” he said, “will leave our country bitterly divided, eroding the social support and sense of noble purpose that is essential for the public funding of biomedical science.”

Donald Landry and Howard Zucker of Columbia University made a joint proposal to the council, a high-profile advisory board that doesn't make policy but influences the White House and Congress, which control federal funding of stem cell research.

Several members of the 18-member council–made up of scientists, lawyers, doctors, theologians and others–said the proposals show promise to bridge what has been a scientific, ethical and political divide.

President Bush's policy has been to forbid government funding of research on new embryonic stem cells. He has permitted funding of researchers using stem cell lines in existence before 2001.

Council Chairman Leon Kass, who emphasized he was speaking for himself and not the entire council, said both of the proposals were “extremely interesting and very creative” and “absolutely worth not only (the council's) consideration but much more public consideration.”

Hurlbut's theory has been a hot topic among bio-ethicists for weeks, since the Boston Globe published an article exploring it in detail. Among Hurlbut's supporters has been San Francisco Archbishop William Levada, an influential thinker in the Catholic Church, which has strongly opposed stem cell research on grounds that human lives, in the form of embryos, are sacrificed.

Levada said the proposal “offers hope that there may be a solution” to the controversy.

Other religious thinkers are less than enthusiastic.

Ted Peters of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, Calif., said this hardly ends the “moral warfare” in the stem cell debate. In fact, he said, it may open a Pandora's Box of new ethical problems.

Hurlbut wants to develop an entity that would produce cells that would act like embryonic stem cells, but which would not, he says, become a human embryo. Through a cloning technique called “altered nuclear transfer,” the genetic structure (the genome) of a human egg would be altered, so that it would not become a fully developed embryo, he explained.

This procedure would take out the gene that would allow a placenta to form. Without a placenta, this mass would not become an embryo, Hurlbut argued.

Hurlbut said he is making his proposal to “bridge the discord in the debate on stem cell research.” In the past, he noted, he personally has opposed embryonic stem cell research. Technology exists to test his theory, but many animal experiments should be conducted first.

In “The Journal of Clinical Investigation,” Landry and Zucker, Columbia medical professors, make a different argument.

They say “a reality of human embryonic life” is that many of the embryos die (become non-viable) within a few days of fertilization. Landry and Zucker argue these embryos are “organismically dead” and should be viewed in the same way as people considered to be “brain dead.”

Just as some organs, such as hearts, can be healthy (and used in organ transplants) after a person is considered to be “brain dead,” Landry and Zucker say, extracted stem cells from embryos should be viewed in the same ethical framework.

Some religious ethicists aren't buying the argument, including Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education for the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia.

“You can't say an embryo is dead just because its cells have stopped dividing,” he said.

Hurlbut's proposal raises questions about what it means to be a human being, said Carrie Gordon Earll, senior policy analyst for bioethics at Colorado-based Focus on the Family, a politically conservative religious organization.

“If you turn off a gene on human matter, are you experimenting on something that could be a human being?” she asked.

Everyone is eager for ways to move stem cell research toward therapies, said C. Ben Mitchell, professor of bioethics and contemporary culture at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Ill. The proposals may in some way do this, but it will take time for nuances to be explored, he said.

Posted: 12/17/04

Texas Tidbits

Dallas pastor on national broadcast. George Mason, pastor at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, will be the featured preacher for three episodes of a national television and radio program. Mason will preach on the "Day 1" program Jan. 16, Feb. 13 and March 27. A television version of "Day 1" is broadcast Sunday mornings on the Hallmark Channel's "America at Worship" series. Formerly known as "The Protestant Hour," the program is produced by the Episcopal Media Center and features preachers from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Methodist Church and the United Church of Christ. Mason's church is affiliated with CBF. His first sermon on the program is about identifying and preparing young people for vocations in the church.

BUA offers language immersion classes. The Center for Cultural and Language Studies at Baptist University of the Americas will host a weeklong Spanish language and culture immersion course Feb. 8-12. The course features a mixture of classroom instruction and conversational interaction with BUA students from Latin America. Other experiences include attending a Spanish prayer service at an area Baptist church and field trips to cultural attractions. Cost for the class is $200, which includes expenses except housing. Texas Baptists are eligible for a $100 scholarship provided through the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions. For a class application or more information, contact Mary Ranjel at BUA by calling (210) 924-4338 ext. 202 or (800) 721-1396 or e-mailing mranjel@bua.edu.

BGCT names Internet developer. Jason Hilliard of Duncanville has been hired as Internet developer for the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Hilliard, 25, had been manager of the academic computing lab at Dallas Baptist University since December 2001. As BGCT Internet developer, Hilliard will develop web templates, pages and applications. He is a member of Faith Baptist Church in Duncanville.

Becerril Scholarship created at DBU. Dallas Baptist University has established the Mary Becerril Endowed Scholarship Fund to benefit Christian students enrolled in the master of arts in counseling program. Becerril served on the DBU faculty more than 25 years.

HBU creates choral conducting fellowship. Houston Baptist University has founded the Yarrington Fellowship for Choral Conducting. The fellowship, named in honor of John Yarrington, director of choral studies at HBU, is a gift from Candice and Richard Falk of Houston. The fellowship is offered to one student per year of Yarrington's choosing and pays one-third of the student's tuition for that year. Dusten Melear, a senior sacred music major, is the first student to receive the fellowship.

Scholarship established at Hardin-Simmons. The Dean and Charlotte Taggart Scholarship has been established at Hardin-Simmons University to assist education majors in science and mathematics. The scholarship will be awarded by the dean of the Irvin School of Education to a junior or senior education major in science or math with a minimum 3.0 grade point average. The Taggarts both are HSU alumni and members of Pioneer Drive Baptist Church in Abilene.

Howard Payne's accreditation reaffirmed. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools' commission on colleges announced during its annual meeting that Howard Payne University's accreditation has been reaffirmed for the next 10 years. Howard Payne University has been accredited by the commission since 1948. "We are delighted to receive this great news from the commission on colleges," said HPU President Lanny Hall. "Howard Payne University is committed to the peer review process, and we are pleased that our peers recognize our quality program here."

DBU honors Hemphill, Linam. Dallas Baptist University recently named Paula Hemphill distinguished alumna and Gail Linam honorary alumna. Hemphill graduated from DBU in 1997. She is a women's ministry leader and women's mobilization consultant with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board. Her husband, Ken Hemphill, is former president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and now is national strategist for Southern Baptists' Empowering Kingdom Growth initiative. Linam and her husband, Dennis, came to DBU in 1988. She has filled many roles, including teaching in the religious education department and serving as director of the associate degree program, dean of the College of Education, vice president of undergraduate affairs and academic dean. In 2001, she was named provost of the university. Poet laureate headlines UMHB writers festival. Cleatus Rattan, Texas Poet Laureate 2004, will be the featured speaker at the George Nixon Memorial Lecture Jan. 7 at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. The lecture is part of the annual UMHB Writers Festival, Jan. 5–8, which also features keynote addresses by author and illustrator Thomas Williams and poets Larry Thomas and Barbara Crooker.

Full registration for the conference is $100. Some scholarships are available. For more information, contact Audell Shelburne, chairman of the UMHB English department, at (254) 295-4561 or ashelburne@umhb.edu.

Craft receives HSU honorary doctorate. Lynn Craft, president and chief executive officer for the Baptist Foundation of Texas, received an honorary doctorate at Hardin-Simmons University's commencement exercises. Craft, a Dallas native, has been head of the Baptist Foundation of Texas since 1976. He joined the foundation staff's accounting division in 1968 and became executive vice president in 1972.

Posted: 12/17/04

TOGETHER:
Find a place for Jesus in your life

“The birth of Jesus is the sunrise of the Bible,” Henry Van Dyke said. What a powerful insight. All that came before Jesus was like the reflected light of the moon. God's activity in creation and in the hopes and aspirations of the prophets, though full of beauty, wonder and anticipation, could never match the full glory of the “Light of the world.” The inspired songs of the psalmists and the longings of the prophets looked forward to the Messiah as flowers awaken at dawn and turn toward the rising sun.

Consider how Herod missed the joy of Christmas because his heart was filled with fear and jealousy. He refused to let Jesus bring to him the gift of a new life. With implacable hatred, his sin-soaked mind set in motion a plot to kill the boy babies of Bethlehem. Herod was a corrupt, selfish, evil man. How different his life would have been if he had actually made his way to where the child was, turned his face toward him and worshipped.

Consider how the innkeeper missed out on Christmas because he could think of nothing better to do than send Jesus to the cattle stall. You ask, “What else could he have done?” His inn was full. He could have offered his own room. What gentleman would send an expectant mother to the barn when there was a bed he could have given up?

We fill our lives with excuses as to why Jesus cannot find a place in our lives, and we escape our responsibility to welcome the children into our lives who still have no place to stay this wintry month. Don't blame the innkeeper and don't blame Herod if you quietly stand by while children have no health care, no food and no safe place to sleep. “But that was Jesus,” you say. Yes, it was Jesus, and he is the one who said: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” He also said: “Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me” (Matthew 25:40, 45).

Thank God for the old and patient Simeon. When Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple to offer a sacrifice on the occasion of his birth, it was Simeon, a righteous and devout man, who turned his face to Jesus, took the baby in his arms and blessed God: “For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:30-32).

If you can get your arms around Jesus this Christmas, you can get your arms around your family and your neighbor and those who need you and, even, your enemies.

My dear daughter-in-law, Pam, and her friend, Natalie, sang a Christmas song I had never heard at our church's deacon banquet the other night. Lowell Alexander wrote: “There's a rose in Bethlehem with a beauty quite divine, perfect in this world of sin on this silent holy night. There's a fragrance much like hope that it sends upon the wind, reaching out to every soul from a lowly manger's crib.

“Oh, Rose of Bethlehem, how lovely, pure and sweet, born to glorify the Father, born to wear the thorns for me.

“There's a rose in Bethlehem colored red like mercy's blood. 'Tis the flower of our faith; 'tis the blossom of God's love. Though its bloom is fresh with youth, surely what will be he knows, for a tear of morning dew is rolling down the Rose.”

We are loved.

Charles Wade is executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas

Posted: 12/17/04

ANALYSIS: Torture and terrorism

By David Anderson

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)–President Bush's nomination of White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general almost certainly will raises issues about the relevance–or irrelevance–of ethical constraints against torture when a nation is engaged in a war on terrorism.

But whether the confirmation hearings on Gonzales will generate anything more than superficial probing by the Senate and circumspect dancing around the ethical questions by the nation's public intellectuals remains an open question.

Gonzales' confirmation hearing is likely to spark a renewed debate because he is the author of a controversial memorandum to Bush labeling some provisions of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war “obsolete” and others “quaint.”

In his view, the Sept. 11 attacks and Bush's declaration of “a new kind of war”–the war on terrorism–created a “new paradigm” requiring the government be given carte blanche authority to pursue the nation's enemies.

Almost certain to deepen the controversy are reports that the International Committee of the Red Cross told the U.S. government that interrogation techniques used on more than 500 detainees at the Guantanamo prison in Cuba are “tantamount to torture.”

Additionally, the more aggressive U.S. military operations in Iraq over recent weeks have generated a new surge in detainees, nearly doubling the number previously held to 8,300.

The 2002 Gonzales memo sought to resolve for Bush a dispute between the State Department, which said determination of Geneva Convention status for Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners should be made on a case-by-case basis, and Ashcroft's Department of Justice, which argued no such protections existed. Gonzales came down on Justice's side.

On Feb. 7, 2002, Bush, in what scholar and journalist Mark Danner has called the “Original Sin” of the administration's approval of torture, decided to withhold Geneva Convention protection from al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners.

Danner writes in “Torture and Truth” that decision made possible “the adoption of the various 'enhanced interrogation techniques' that have been used at CIA secret prisons and at the U.S. military's prison at Guantanamo Bay.”

According to Danner, decisions made by Bush and the administration in the wake of Sept. 11–to imprison indefinitely those seized in Afghanistan and elsewhere, to designate those prisoners as “unlawful combatants” and withhold from them the protections of the Geneva Convention, and to use “high pressure” interrogation methods–were “officially to transform the United States from a nation that did not torture to one that did.”

The Geneva Convention against torture of prisoners, which went into force in 1987 and has been ratified by 130 countries, does not allow the kind of distinction Gonzales made in his memo to Bush and that the administration invoked to defend torturing terrorist suspects at Guantanamo.

In fact, a key article in the convention, as Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas Law School has pointed out, says, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.” Presumably that would include a “war on terror.”

But as the “war on terror” evolved into the war on the sovereign nation of Iraq, there has been little or no public discussion of the ethical or moral implications of the decisions taken at the highest reaches of the administration.

Instead, the administration either has declared–as in the case of the Gonzales memo–international law is “obsolete” or “quaint” and therefore does not apply to it or, in the case of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, where even the administration acknowledges international law does apply, it was “a few bad apples” who were responsible for the abuse.

Neither argument is either factually persuasive or morally compelling, ethicists say.

Significantly, nearly absent from the three major administration reports on the abuse at Abu Ghraib is any discussion of the ethical issues involved.

The Schlesinger report, named after former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, who headed the investigation, contains a brief, cursory appendix on ethical issues urging more and better ethics education programs.

The military's current “core-values” programs, it concludes, “are grounded in organizational efficacy rather than the moral good.”

“They do not address humane treatment of the enemy and noncombatants, leaving military leaders and educators an incomplete tool box with which to deal with 'real-world' ethical problems.”

Although most people instinctively reject any effort to morally defend or justify torture, that does not mean a reluctant and ethically nuanced case for the rare use of torture cannot be attempted.

Indeed, the eminent ethicist Michael Walzer, in an essay, “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” reprinted in “Torture, A Collection,” edited by Sanford Levinson, builds just such a case.

Walzer argues for the necessity of having political leaders who in extreme circumstances are willing to “dirty their hands” by engaging in actions that go beyond the moral rules.

But, as Levinson notes, the “saving grace” for Walzer is in the leader's willingness to accept responsibility and feeling suitably guilty about what most people would wish were an “absolute” prohibition.

There is no indication among top Bush administration officials, including the president himself, that there are either suitable feelings of guilt or a willingness to assume responsibility for the acts.

Most observers agree it seems likely, therefore, that even with the new revelations of mistreatment of detainees at Guantanamo, the ethics and politics of U.S. involvement in torture will remain off the agenda of public discussion of America's moral values.

David Anderson is senior editor of Religion News Service.

Posted: 12/17/04

CYBERCOLUMN:
Showing the Way

By Jeanie Miley

Choosing my holiday turkey carefully, I turned from the freezer to my grocery cart, encountering a beautiful young Asian mother and her two children who were dressed in uniforms from one of the local private schools.

“Excuse me,” the mother said. “My children want a turkey dinner. What should I serve with turkey?”

“Well, there’s dressing,” I told her. “You can do sweet potatoes. Cranberry salad. Green beans. Pumpkin pie. Pecan pie. And, of course, homemade rolls.”

The woman’s daughters pulled on her sleeves and whispered something in her ear. Obviously, the children wanted to live in their new world like their peers, and they were pushing their mother to follow them out of her old world into the new world.

“Dressing?” she said. “How do you do dressing?”

A lifetime of memories of my mother’s kitchen flooded my mind, and I was caught in a dilemma. “How,” I asked myself, “can I explain that you learn how to do dressing from someone else?”

Standing there, I remembered how my aunts and my mother competed for the best dressing of the season. I thought about how my sisters and I had compared recipes, adapting what we could remember of our mother’s delicacy and what the cookbook recipe called for. I recalled my friend who brought her chopped celery and onions to my house so that we could work together to create the most savory pan of dressing possible, and then, looking at this eager mother and her daughters who were trying to adapt to their new home, I wished that I could take them home with me and let them watch me make dressing.

I did not take her home with me, but the memory of her has haunted me throughout this Advent season, for she brought home to me a Great Big Truth about being a follower of Christ, and that is that every person needs someone to show her what it means to live in the old world in a new way.

It is naïve to think that you can just tell someone how to be a Christian and then just leave them to figure it out, on their own, especially in this multicultural world that is now the new reality.

It is audacious to think that you can hand someone a tract and walk away, and that they will have a clue what it means to be formed in the image of Christ.

It is just nuts to think that you can accept a new believer as a church member and expect him to know how to relate to others in what is the radical idea of church.

And what about Christmas? How do you explain the Truth about Christmas to someone from another culture so that they really get it?

Jesus himself said, “Follow me,” and his disciples did just that, listening to him, watching him, learning from him what it meant to live in a brand new way in the world, and we, too, need role models and mentors who will show us the Way and the ways of living as a follower of Christ in this postmodern world.

Admittedly, it’s easier just to tell the Good News.

Living it is harder.

And modeling, mentoring and discipling are hard. The truth is that most of us feel inadequate in the enormity of the task of discipling and mentoring others in faith development, and I suppose that’s why we often prefer just to talk the talk.

But, in the end, I think Jesus had it right when he took followers and formed them into disciples.

Jeanie Miley is an author and columnist and a retreat and workshop leader. She is married to Martus Miley, pastor of River Oaks Baptist Church in Houston, and they have three adult daughters. Got feedback? Write her at Writer2530@aol.com.

Storylist for 12/20/04 issue