The Cathedral Connection

Each month, Trinity's Web site features an article from our newsletter, The Cathedral Connection.

What Does Jesus Have to Do with It?

Refections of a Reluctant Activist

In April 2008, this essay was recognized with a Polly Bond Award of Excellence for Editorial/Commentary by the Episcopal Communicators. It is reprinted from the March 2007 issue of Cathedral Connection

There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them. John 19:18

It might surprise some people who know me that I didnt always oppose the death penalty, and how reluctantly I became an activist. Before I got involved in this issue, I had never marched or held a sign in a demonstration. Its a mystery to me how this somewhat shy person got the courage and passion to demonstrate on street corners, but I can tell you something about how I came to feel as I do about the death penalty.

When I was in high school, I wrote a paper opposing the death penalty. At the time, a majority of people in the country shared my view. In 1972 the Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional because it was "cruel and unusual" as applied. But that paper was the last time I thought about the death penalty for almost two decades, even though executions began again in this country after many states satisfied the Supreme Courts concerns.

Sometime during the 1980's, I read an article in Time that profiled several men on death row. I began to change my mind, thinking, "These men are so damaged and irredeemable, whats the point of keeping them alive?" And that's where I left it—just maybe the death penalty was a "necessary evil," a practice that did a favor for both society and those not-quite-human beings on death row. So I sat on the fence, leaning over to the pro-death penalty side.

Then shortly before executions started up again in Ohio, a friend who was a death penalty abolitionist put me on the spot: "Do you support the death penalty?"

"I'm on the fence about it," I said. "Isn't it more expensive to keep people in prison than execute them?"

My fence-sitting didn't go over too well and neither did my putting monetary value on human life (even though, if money IS the issue, it is cheaper to keep someone in prison for life.)

Then came the deal-breaker question. He asked me, "How exactly do you reconcile that position with being a Christian?" Quickly I scanned Jesus' teachings in my head—forgiveness of enemies, mercy, not judging, repentance and reformation, respecting the dignity of every human being. I had never thought to bring Jesus into it, nor my baptismal covenant. Who was I to decide certain people were irredeemable? Unforgivable? And that they should die?

So, that's why the bumper sticker on my car simply asks the question, "What Would Jesus Do About the Death Penalty?" When I answered this for myself, I couldn't sit on the fence anymore.

—Constance Laessig

Editor's note: The Episcopal Church in the United States of America has long opposed capital punishment, and at the 2000 General Convention reaffirmed the Church's opposition to the death penalty. In 2001, the Executive Council passed a resolution calling upon the Episcopal Church "to pursue and work vigorously for an immediate moratorium and the subsequent abolition of the death penalty in all states and the federal system."