capital darkness


Sometimes it makes me proud. Sometimes I like, sometimes hate. Sometimes I’m ashamed, sometimes confused. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I stand and wait. Sometimes I am bitterly opposed. In about every situation, eighty percent of those I know, love and respect are on one side of an issue, the other two thirds are on the other side, I am some third side huddled elsewhere with a forty percent minority, and my pastoral role is to love all regardless. Unlike denominations in which uniformity is expected, even required to remain in good standing and on speaking terms, we Episcopalians believe and don’t believe, favor and oppose, inevitably spread across a spectrum. One reason is we do not tolerate others telling us what to think or believe. As pastor among the divided, mine is tohelp all know they are loved. 

So, what’s this lead in to? For weeks, the execution of eight condemned prisoners in Arkansas was in the news. The Episcopal Church is on record, from a General Convention resolution forty or so years ago, I remember it well, opposing capital punishment. People rile up on this blood-boilingly emotional topic. At my theological seminary in the 1980s, it was made a major focus at one point, and every student at the seminary was required to submit a paper stating and explaining one's position on capital punishment. When the papers were returned to us annotated by dean or professor, the note on my paper said that I was the only student in the seminary who wrote a position favoring capital punishment.

The question had been, “Does society have the right to exact capital punishment, the death penalty?” In short, my answer was that a democratic society has the right to exact capital punishment for unspeakable crimes if for no other reason than that it gives itself that right. As to morality, in my view some crimes are so heinous, evil, as to deprive a person of the privilege to exist among other human beings. For bible inerrantists, thumpers and literalists, it goes without saying that scripture sustains; the other side of Christianity and most of the world stands against. Many whom I love and respect disagree with me, but that’s where I am; neither easily nor unapologetically where I am. I am where and what I am, in a doubtless culturally and sociologically set place. A place where I continually examine myself and find myself in error, and when that happens I change. I am not a campaigner, but on this topic my heart is with the victims and families of the innocent against whom horrendous crime is committed. 


Seldom do I, not often am I willing to, declare myself on an issue so divisive; and never, including here, with absolute certitude. I only speak now, caught up with the rest of the world in the done and prospective executions of eight men as a batch, hurriedly before a drug expires. To me, the reason for the rush is the wrong, not the penalty, because I've read what these serpents have done. Somewhere in the Creator's multiverses may exist a world without serpent, but it is not Earth, and I do not claim to be without sin. 


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