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June is Torture Awareness Month

This month religious and human rights groups across the nation are drawing attention to the immoral nature of torture and sending a message to the president that the American people do not support torture.

While listening to a recent radio segment on Air America’s State of Belief (one of my new favorite radio shows), I heard about the National Religious Campaign to End Torture. This month churches around the nation are hanging banners that announce their belief that torture is not a political issue but a moral issue.

For more information or to order a banner for your organization, visit their site:
National Religious Campaign to End Torture.

The intersection of faith and social justice is particularly interesting on both a very personal gut level and on a folkloric one as well.
I am curious–from a folklore and belief perspective, what would Don Yoder and Primiano make of this campaign and this larger intersection between belief and action toward political change?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 9:42 pm and is filed under folk belief, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “June is Torture Awareness Month”

  1. marty Says:
    July 3rd, 2008 at 1:16 am

    i’m glad you posted this. the other day i saw a big black banner with bold white text hanging off the fence of a baptist church that said “end torture”. patrick and i talked about it and wondering about its contextual placement (and design). had it been placed by an activist without the church’s approval? was it “graffiti”? i never thought of baptists as particularly human rights based. (biased view i know, just going off of my extended families southern baptist tendencies) then i wondered about my immediate reaction. why couldn’t a faith based organization also be human rights based?

    i agree with you that the intersection of faith and social justice is an interesting one. i know it made me think.

  2. meredith Says:
    July 14th, 2008 at 12:08 am

    I so agree. I never thought of faith based organizations being human rights based, but I think that is because we have too few models. I am learning more and more that there can be such a direct link between the two.

    When I was in DC this past week I saw a big black banner on a church near Embassy Row. Where was the banner you saw?

    Anyone else seen one?

  3. marty Says:
    July 16th, 2008 at 10:04 pm

    it was downtown in raleigh. i’m curious if others have seen them too.

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