Torture and Eucharist

During the defense of my Master's thesis, my committee asked some questions about how the topic of my thesis might look in practice. I was so worried about my content and the way I presented my research that I was not expecting a question like that, but I am grateful that it came up. The official title for my thesis is An Ethic of Nonviolence In and For the Wesleyan Tradition. In a nutshell, I approached this topic because it seems clear to me that John Wesley's doctrine of sanctification and its foundation in the restoration of  the image of God in the believer must inherently encourage Christians to eschew violence as a practice of the perfect love of God and neighbor, yet I am unaware of any Wesleyan denomination that explicitly includes peacemaking as a necessary part of Christian discipleship. And this disconnect between Wesley's focus on the perfect love of God and neighbor and the official stance of Wesleyan denominations regarding war and violence makes the question of how my thesis can be put into practice crucial for further theological reflection and Christian practice.

I mention this because it was the preface of me deciding to read William Cavanaugh's book Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ. While in the midst of writing my thesis, I had a discussion with a friend who was, as a fellow pacifist Wesleyan, interested in my topic and what could be done as a Church body to be peacemakers in North Park and its surrounding communities of San Diego in which we live and worship. He had a wonderful idea of partaking in the Eucharist at sites where violence has been committed. A part of this sacrament would also include a dropping of a piece of the bread and a spilling of the wine (or grape juice) on the ground to visibly and publicly acknowledge that Christ's body is broken and his blood is shed in the bodies of the victims of violence. I was grateful for this discussion, because it provided me with a way to begin to understand how to make the body of Christ as well as sin's violent, damaging reality visible, and I was able to explain this idea as one possible way of living out an ethic of nonviolence to my thesis committee. The defense continued with me and my committee attempting to discuss other ways that the Church can participate in the divine plan of redemption through peacemaking practices, but the idea of the Eucharist is one of the clearest practice of the Church that can help Christians orient their lives toward being peacemakers since it symbolizes Jesus's violent death on the cross. My thesis defense went well, and the discussion was extremely fruitful. One of my committee members suggested that I read Torture and Eucharist, because I had not read it before and it would be beneficial for further theological reflection on Christian nonviolence.

The premise of this book is that the Chilean Catholic church was unable to immediately respond to the violent, secret torturing of Chileans during the regime of General Pinochet (1915-2006) that began after a coup on September 11, 1973, because the church in Chile held to an ecclesiology, based on the writings of
French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), that was unprepared to respond to Pinochet's actions. Maritain's philosophy led the church officials in Chile to believe that it had authority over the souls of Chileans, but the bodies were the possession of the state. Therefore, it was difficult for the church authorities to confront Pinochet regimes despite the numerous accusations brought to their attention. The Pinochet regime kidnapped its prisoners secretly, and the government authorities continued to deny their imprisonment. They simply responded with the suggestion that the missing people had probably ran away. The secrecy and the methods of torture effectively individualized each victim so that, if they survived, they felt no connection to other people or other victims, thus eliminating any possibility of expressing and revealing the activities of Pinochet's military dictatorship.

Among the reasons for the church's lack of initial response to the disappearance and torture of Chilean citizens was the protection the church possessed as a result of an agreement made long before Pinochet's usurpation of power. The church's programs and authority over the spiritual matters of Chileans were guaranteed to be untouched by any Chilean government, which was a compromise made so that the church would not attempt to reinstate a new Christendom. This lack of authority over the bodies and actions of Chileans, however, made the church feel powerless against Pinochet's secret, violent activities. Ultimately, the church begins to experience tension between the requests for help from the poor and the abused victims of Pinochet's regime and the church's understanding of the its role in the lives of the Chileans. The church set up means for the poor to receive assistance, and legal assistance to those searching for their missing family members, and the church was able to withstand any attempts at being shut down by placing a church official at the head of these programs and appealing to the immunity the church has against government interference.

The church began to be a source of solidarity for the victims of torture and poverty by connecting them to the body of Christ. Protestors were willing to face abuse and punishment, thereby making the violence of the disappeared visible and making their martyrdom a reality. The reality of the Church as the body of Christ connected the victims to Christ's suffering on the cross. When one member of the body of Christ suffers, the entire body of Christ suffers. Christ's death on the cross is experienced in the agony of the tortured and the hungry, and all Christians are united to this suffering through our participation in the Eucharist. The Eucharist, properly understood as the participation in the suffering of Christ and others, requires Christians to relieve the suffering of others, and to never be the cause of that suffering.

Having read this book I better understand why the sacraments, the Eucharist n particular, are important. They are the common thread that connects the body of Christ with other members, but that is only the surface. In that connection of Christians to other Christians, and to Christ himself, partakers of the Eucharist are called to witness against all of sin's manifestation (like violence and destruction) by accepting and proclaiming an alternative way of understanding the world - a way that always seeks redemption. The Eucharist makes our membership in the body of Christ a reality. By partaking of the body and the blood we commit ourselves to the kingdom of God above all other things. The temptations and desires of this world make this commitment a challenge, but we are united together in one body, which helps us through our burdens and challenges. And thankfully we receive help from God with Christ as the head of that body.

And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross (Col 1:18-20).