Religious life and political life have this in common: the chief enemy of both is despair. Poison to church and state alike, despair comes as the conviction that while something ought to be done and probably can be done in the face of some evil, we have neither the strength nor the will to do it. We're overcome, paralyzed.

Much of the work of Christ in the world consists of disavowing that conviction. "Take up your bed and walk." To bear Christian witness, in the most effectual sense and certainly in the best political sense, means demonstrating that a witness is not the same thing as a bystander.

But where to begin? For we are always needing to begin. How about with torture. It has taken place, it continues to take place, both in detention centers run under the auspices of the United States and in other countries to which suspected terrorists are routinely outsourced for interrogation. That the passage of the McCain bill last December will change any of this seems highly unlikely.

For why should this law exercise any greater restraint on current administration policy than the United States' adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 or, for that matter, than the 1978 law that forbids domestic wiretapping without a warrant? Why should McCain's law compel compliance and not the others? The very fact that the McCain ban would be deemed necessary calls into question that it will ever be deemed binding.

In fact, the little-publicized "signing statement" that accompanied President Bush's approval of the McCain bill declares, "The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a matter consistent with the constitutional authority of the President … as Commander-in-Chief." In other words, the president reserves the right to place himself above the law in the interests of "national security."

As David Golove, a New York University law professor, put it, "The signing statement is saying, 'I will comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture… . I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me.'"

For a Christian, of course, the crux of the matter is to be found not in the nuances of the legal language but in what John the Baptist called "the fruits of repentance." No such fruit is in evidence here, nor was it in evidence as the administration fought tooth and nail to prevent McCain's bill from ever reaching the president's desk.

If Christians cannot find common ground on the issue of torture, then perhaps we deserve to despair. Torture is an insult to the image of God, a violation of the Golden Rule, and certainly a scandal to those of us who "glory in the cross" and the victory it represents over cruelty and the prerogatives of worldly power. Our task in regard to torture, then, is to keep ourselves and our fellow citizens awake to something that many of us would just as soon ignore, rationalize, or dismiss as a dead issue.

One graphic way of doing so might be to sew black cloth hoods, modeled on those featured so prominently in the photos that came out of Abu Ghraib, and to display those hoods along with tags that say "Stop Torture" in public places. The project would be simple—indeed simple enough to risk gimmickry—but it has a number of virtues.

First, it employs a traditional activity of the church, the sewing circle, and makes it militant. It takes "the stone that the builders rejected," or at least denigrated, as belonging to A) the past, B) women, and C) the elderly and turns that rock into "the chief cornerstone" of a small resistance movement. It is an attempt to approximate Gandhi's spinning wheel.

Second, for all its simplicity it makes a complex statement: not only against torture but also against the flouting of law and the people's trust. Mounted in the aftermath of the McCain bill's passage, a protest of this kind says, in effect, "We don't believe you."

Third, the project allows for some exercise of the imagination, not to mention some daring, in the matter of placement. Possible locations include mailboxes, flagpoles, cemetery obelisks, parking meters, lawn statuary, fire hydrants, car antennae, weather vanes, goalposts, street lamps, library busts, microphones, surveillance cameras, suggestion boxes, napkin dispensers, dormant birdhouses, coffee urns, bar taps, and gumball machines. Not to forget crucifixes and crosses.

Fourth, it combines the talents of the more and the less agile, the young and the old. One sows and another reaps; one sews and another leaps the wall and hoods the bronze general on his horse. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you." The hood-sewer cannot say to the hood-runner, "You are irrelevant."

Fifth, the project is both provocative and authentically nonviolent in that no piece of public or private property is permanently defaced by the hood. To the wisdom of the serpent we add the harmlessness of the dove.

Sixth—and nevertheless—it does carry the potential for arrest, at the least for littering or disturbing the peace.

Therefore, and seventh, it prompts the resistant church to engage in discernment. For example, when do we invite confrontation and when do we avoid it, when do we retreat to the Mount of Olives and when do we ride hell-bent-for-leather to Jerusalem and to the cross?

Or, for another example, how do we explain our actions to the youngest members of the congregation without acquainting them too prematurely with the horrors of this world? The delicacy of the question hardly disqualifies the project; it is a question faced every Good Friday by any Sunday school teacher who teaches little kids.

And with what arguments do we explain our actions to the unconvinced? How do we answer the person who will say, "What if the use of torture could obtain information that would save a member of your family from dying in a terrorist attack?" (Is any terrorist ever so keen to take our loved ones hostage as a rhetorical opponent of Christian nonviolence?) We will need to know our response. We will need to know that it is not and never can be an easy one.

Furthermore, if the project is taken up by others outside the church, are we prepared to see our idea shared, modified, and possibly co-opted? Are we humble enough to say with Jesus, "Forbid them not, for whoever is not against us is for us"?

And finally, how do we transition to something more substantive? Even before that, how do we make sure that a project that is largely "for the hands" also has a heart and head? We will need to do our homework, perhaps with some help from Amnesty International. We will need to pray. But eventually we will need to look ahead to engaging the related issues of militarism, global influence, and our consumption of oil. C. S. Lewis said that a good egg cannot remain a good egg for long; it must either hatch or go rotten. The same can be said of any good idea. How do we hatch this egg and what can we expect of our hatchling?

Even if the project peters out, however, it will have done something if it keeps us from despair. In the face of that enemy, a holding action is worth holding on to. We must never lose hope. Faithful Christians and faithful Christian communities have brought down empires, brought down institutions of oppression, and when those institutions included the institutional church, they have brought that down as well. This is the lesson that needs to be taught again and again in all classes and to all ages of the church. Take this project merely as a workbook exercise in that curriculum.

Garret Keizer is the author most recently of Help: The Original Human Dilemma (HarperSanFrancisco) and The Enigma of Anger (Jossey-Bass).

Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.