A Child of God is a Child of God is a Child of God
My Dear People,
As a teenager, I went on a school field trip to "CCI," as everyone called it, the Central Correctional Institution, a mammoth red-brick penitentiary, built the year after the Civil War ended, in Columbia, South Carolina, where I grew up.
While there, we visited the "death house."
And I sat in the electric chair.
+
It's strange even to write those words.
+
Over the weekend, I read "Five Myths About the Death Penalty," a Washington Post piece by David Garland, an NYU professor of law, whose book Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition is about to be published.
I didn't know that France was still using the guillotine when I was older than Nelson is now. Nor did I realize that, in other Western countries, majorities of the populations still favor the death penalty. And, while I knew that most executions in the U.S. take place in the South, I'm not sure I would have guessed eighty percent.
+
An eye for eye makes the whole world blind.
So said Gandhi.
And I can only see that he was right.
+
I cannot believe that that there is any room in "Love your neighbor as yourself" for capital punishment, for putting to death a child of God, no matter what that child of God has done.
Whatever that child of God has done, a child of God is still a child of God (see Gospel of Jesus Christ).
+
More violence doesn't undo violence already done. Indeed, more violence (capital punishment in answer to a heinous crime) only degrades and violates our shared humanity further.
I pray for the end of capital punishment. That God would open our eyes to the reality of what we are doing. And to the reality of what is being done on our behalf.
Your brother in Christ,
Wallace+
