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By Jesse Schellenberg OMAR KHADR is a 23 year old Canadian who, until recently, had been detained in Guantanamo Bay for the better part of nine years.

 During Khadr’s prison stint, much of the evidence that was later to be used against him was elicited through various methods of physical and psychological torture – including sleep deprivation, stress positions, and being threatened with rape and death by his interrogators.

The use of such interrogation methods has been condemned by the U.N., and declared by the Canadian Federal Court to be in violation of section 6 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Not that any of this matters much, given that Khadr has since pleaded guilty – and so the hows and whys surrounding his confessed guilt can now be conveniently forgotten.

Forget the fact that Khadr was 11 years old when his father forced him into an al-Qaeda training camp. Forget the fact that Khadr was 15 when he allegedly threw a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier. Forget the fact that the UN has declared that, as a 15 year old, Khadr should have rightly been declared a child soldier – and seen as a victim of war, rather than as a terrorist.

Forget the fact that, as the sole survivor of a U.S. military attack, Khadr is believed to be the only one who could have thrown that grenade – even though eyewitness testimony from a U.S. soldier confirmed that there were actually several survivors who subsequently died, and who could possibly be responsible for the act. Forget the fact that Khadr is a Canadian citizen who was imprisoned for nine years, and has finally been tried and judged by a U.S. military tribunal.

Forget all of that. The real question is: Where was the voice of the church, while a Canadian citizen was being imprisoned and tortured for nine years?

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Maybe the reason is that there were louder monsters roaring that needed to be shouted down, like same-sex marriage and abortion, getting prayer back into schools, teaching abstinence to teenagers, and combating the rising rate of divorce.

Or maybe the reason is that the church has simply lost sight of the fact that everything is connected, that the church is embedded within society – and how we act, or fail to act, does affect our culture.

If the church wants the social clout to speak into every aspect of society, then it needs to address and act in every aspect of society.

If the church has lost its social status of years gone by, it is not because of some imaginary and inevitable push towards secularization; it is because the church has willfully withdrawn, failed to speak, and acquiesced to secular powers – just as it did in the case of Omar Khadr.

Despite what the church may think about itself, and in spite of how the church may act, we are not afforded the luxury of picking and choosing our battles. The church is called to engage in the totality of the world, at all levels of society and culture – ranging from Omar Khadr to the environment.

By remaining silent on the issue of Omar Khadr, the church has squandered a valuable opportunity to begin reclaiming its voice in the cultural sphere of Canadian society.

Pick up your Bible sometime, flip to the concordance in the back, and take a cursory look at the emphasis on the words ‘just’ and ‘justice.’ Then ask yourself how on earth, in good conscience, we as the church could allow such an injustice to happen.

Jesse Schellenberg is a graduate student at ACTS Seminaries in Langley. A longer version of this piece is available at canadianchristianity.com.

Editor’s note: The King’s University College in Edmonton has announced that several of its faculty will be providing resources to help tutor Omar Khadr while he remains in prison.

December 2010