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The first CIA agent to die in the war on terror was an evangelical Christian. He was killed on Sunday morning, November 25, 2001.

Questioning an Al Qaeda fighter in northern Afghanistan, Johnny "Mike" Spann asked the prisoner why he had come to Afghanistan. The prisoner shouted, "To kill you!" He lunged for Spann's throat, unleashing a prison riot. As prisoners rushed toward Spann, he fired on his attackers. When his weapons were empty, the prisoners killed Spann and booby-trapped his body.

The war on terror is a fight against fanatics. The day before Spann was killed, two prisoners carried out successful suicide attacks with grenades on two commanders of the Northern Alliance (America's Afghan allies). The next morning, a Western television crew recorded Spann and another CIA agent saying American officers would guarantee to abide by the Geneva Conventions only with prisoners they held—not with those in our Afghan allies' hands.

Spann didn't live long enough to experience the many dilemmas of terrorist interrogation, torture, and prisoner abuse. But had he done so, to whom could he have turned for Christian counsel? Could he have confided to his local pastor secrets that he was sworn to never divulge? The agent's job is uniquely dangerous, fraught with complex ethical dilemmas that few pastors and theologians have experienced.

In recent months, Christianity Today interviewed Christians serving in the military and intelligence services to gain their perspective on the fight against Al Qaeda, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and particularly the role of Christians in applyinig aggressive, torture-like interrogation methods.

Christians told CT that they desperately needed biblical insight, because Christians are deeply involved in the chain of influence, all the way from Washington to military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba's Guantanamo Bay, including:

• President Bush, who exempted suspected terrorists from protections in the Geneva Conventions. On February 7, 2002, Bush signed a statement that declared, "I … determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world."

• Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who, with acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, argued behind closed doors that U.S. torture policies harm the war on terror.

• Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, his aide John Yoo, and other evangelical lawyers, who promoted a "new paradigm" to fight the war on terror, which they claimed "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners."

• Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin (popular as a speaker at churches before the Pentagon told him to lower his profile), who has been a key Pentagon planner in the worldwide pursuit of Al Qaeda terrorists.

• And, in the field, individuals like Spann and evangelical enlisted men, including Joseph P. Darby, who blew the whistle in 2003 on violations at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which a military investigation called "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses."

On the front line, officers and interrogators sometimes clash sharply over specific ways to get detainees to disclose information. Christian military and intelligence professionals find it difficult to find safe, unbiased spiritual insight about interrogation methods. There are Bible studies at the CIA, run by the wife of an influential White House aide. But can members of the Bible study really debate openly the biblical merits of Bush administration policy and practices in the war on terror?

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February 2006, Vol. 50, No. 2