Over the last week or so, some really good Christians have written about the death penalty from a Christian perspective.  It has been in the public consciousness for the last few weeks.  I gave my own response recently.

But in the responses, a curious thing happened.  There was what has to be this moment of cognitive dissonance for many conservative Christians when faced with a case so tattered as the one against Troy Davis. Davis wasn’t the monster that the other man put to death yesterday, Lawrence Brewer (Texas), seemed to have been.  There was no bogeyman or threats to come back and gnaw on the legs of our children.  There was no way to transform Troy Davis into the personification of evil that Christians could pretend is their enemy and deserving of righteous, GOD-sanctioned vengeance.  It was entirely possible that this man was a victim of essentially “driving while black”.

It laid bare all of the hypocrisy of the conservative Christian support for the death penalty as a matter of faith.  If there is anything true to Christian ethics, it would mean that you and I shouldn’t go around thinking that GOD wants people dead by our hands.  So what happened?

An argument from scripture of the state’s right to execute popped up.  We should step back and let the state take care of it.  It’s their right, they argue.  So why is it that the Christians most eager for public displays of faith from their leaders plead that the state has a right to execute, washing their own hands of it?  Should not all members of the legal system, up to and including the governor, many of whom profess to be Christian and ran on their faith and moral character, express their Christian morality in this legal matter?  Is this not the ultimate matter of faith for Christians in public service: the participation in state-sponsored execution?  How can one’s faith and commitment to Jesus not come to bear in this decision?  Otherwise, the entire scope of Christian morality is relegated to the least important matters of state and wholly absent from matters of supreme weight.  That isn’t morality, that’s cowardice.

If you think capital punishment is none of your business, then stop getting in other people’s sex lives or demanding corporate protection from poor people, because then none of it is your business.  Otherwise own up to these two very real issues: Jesus asked you to love that person and make our legal system more just.

Lastly, may we stand together against the barbarism of state-sanctioned evil.

Related articles

• The State Killed Two Men Last Night (But We Only Cared for Troy Davis) (davidrhenson.wordpress.com)
• The One About… Troy Davis Is Easy. It’s Lawrence Russell Brewer That’s Hard. (the-one-about.blogspot.com)
• who would jesus execute? (eugenecho.com)
• Michele Somerville: Troy Anthony Davis And Georgia’s Plan To Commit An Irreversible Sin (huffingtonpost.com)
• Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: The Power To Choose Life (huffingtonpost.com)