16 County Churches Display "Torture is Wrong" Banners

The Council of Churches of Santa Clara County announces that 16 churches in our county will join congregations in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in displaying anti-torture banners outside their buildings during the month of June. The "Banners Across America" initiative, organized by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), invites local congregations to participate in a nationwide interfaith public witness to mobilize American faith communities to respond to U.S. - sponsored torture.

More than 275 congregations across the country, including 7 in San Jose, 7 in Palo Alto and 1 in Los Gatos display large banners outside their buildings with messages like "Torture is Wrong" and "Torture is a Moral Issue." Here you see the banner at St. Martin of Tours Roman Catholic Church in San Jose. Prayers and sermons will focus on the deeply moral and religious concerns regarding torture, including an Interfaith Prayer which reads in part, "We honor Your name when we courageously speak out against those actions that harm the soul of our nation, none more than the torture of body, mind and spirit of one human being at the hands of another.... By our prayers and actions may we attain forgiveness for what we have allowed to occur in our name."

June has been designated as "Torture Awareness Month" because the United Nations Convention Against Torture went into effect on June 26, 1987. It was signed by the United States in 1988.

Local churches participating by displaying a banner against torture include San Jose churches St. Martin of Tours, First Presbyterian, Almaden Hills United Methodist, Stone Presbyterian of Willow Glen, Holy Redeemer Lutheran, St. Paul's United Methodist, Alum Rock United Methodist Church, and the First Unitarian Universalist Church; Palo Alto churches First Congregational UCC, St. Thomas Aquinas, Our Lady of the Rosary, St. Albert the Great, First Presbyterian, First United Methodist and the Unitarian Universalist; and Los Gatos United Methodist Church, with several other churches still voting on participation.

Some churches design their own banners, like this one in front of St. Paul's UMC in San Jose.

More photos of church banners: