{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.026948288419519302, 'fraction_numerical': 0.003641660597232338, 'mean_word_length': 4.699170124481328, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Book Review: Stanley, Brian: Christianity in the Twenty-first Century: A World History

torture: it only occurred because life on the frontier (or other extreme contexts) might necessitate torture. Another one of those extreme contexts was prison, and B. presents an insightful lesson about how the American prison system began as a reform project that held out the hope of educating and training criminals to avoid future lawbreaking. However, fairly quickly the prison system became a home for an array of cruel and inhumane practices that were justified not as punishment but as corrective discipline. This chapter blends nicely with two others, one on slavery and the other on the practice of police grilling of suspects, the so-called “third degree.” One of the lessons of torture is that it happens in settings of extreme inequality of power, where one party is vulnerable and the other party seemingly invulnerable. Slaves, prisoners, and suspects in custody are all populations that have often been brutalized by torture. The chapter on the US imperialist venture in the Philippines and the defeat of the insurgency that opposed it, along with the chapters on Amer-Indians and enslaved Afro-Americans, points up another lesson about torture in the American narrative. Populations that can be placed on the margins, portrayed as outcasts, are also more likely to be the victims of torture than those that white Americans see as “like us.” Not being “like us” easily slides into being not equal to us, and the torture of “inferiors” becomes more readily excused. One of the rationales for torture that has grown in significance in recent decades is security. A person in custody would seem to be a minor security risk and would not explain torture in the Cold War or post-9/11 eras. The recent defense of torture as required for security became prominent because of the need for information in the battle against communism (chap. 7) and Islamic terrorism (chap. 8). The vital need to gain “intel” is the new justification for torture. Throughout, B. has amply documented his argument. There are 54 pages of endnotes. It is mainly a work of history, with B. offering moving illustrative cases and a convincing set of interpretations that do not shy from judgment about the morality of various practices recounted. For those who cling to views of American exceptionalism or innocence, B. provides a sobering story. For those who would understand our present, and the views of a president who boasted during his campaign, “I would bring back waterboarding, and I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” (332), there is the grim lesson that rationalizations for torture and its use run through the whole course of US history.