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Timothy
McVeigh:
Something is very wrong with our nation's collective behavior and conscience as we enter this new millennium. As Americans we struggle to understand the significant meanings and impact of teenage gun violence in high schools as recently experienced in Colorado and California. We are somewhat mystified and at a loss as to how to explain the rapid rise in teenage suicides. We are deeply divided over the issues of gun control as we continue to be victimized by increases in adult and juvenile felony crimes and homicides carried out with the use of hand guns and assault weapons.
At the same time our State judicial systems are becoming far more Dickensian in their treatment of juvenile offenders as well as the mentally ill. In some states, like California and Florida, it is now possible to try youngsters accused of felonies as adults. It is also allowable to impose upon them, if convicted, incarceration in adult penitentiaries, and far worse, to expose them to the possibility of the death penalty. Recently those clinically diagnosed as mentally ill have faired no better. In the Texas debate on whether to enact legislation prohibiting the execution of the mentally disadvantaged (a bill that was defeated by law makers) then-Governor George W. Bush was quoted as saying, "I like it the way that it is."
Looking at the countries of the world that still engage in capital punishment (111 countries), and then listing those countries no longer engaged in such court-mandated action is an embarrassment. The United States ranks in capital punishment with Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, China, Morocco, and practically every other third world or emerging nation in the world. Our stiff-necked reliance on capital punishment as an assumptive deterrent to murder is an embarrassment to the rest of the Western and industrialized world.
The only forms of capital punishment that we do not endorse are stoning - which is still practiced in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates - and crucifixion - which is still carried out in the Sudan. We are the only nation on earth that uses the electric chair (or 'Old Sparkie" as it is referred to by its "macabre" supporters) as a vehicle for carrying out the death penalty. For a nation that presumes to be the most advanced and civilized nation in the world, I just don't get it!
Our current, legally sustained methods of capital punishment in various states are lethal injection, the administration of lethal gas, hanging, and electrocution. They are all an abomination to any nation that presumes to call itself the most advanced and civilized nation on the face of the earth. They bring shame to a legal and judicial system that claims to compassionately and impartially protect the common good of the commonwealth of the United States.
The execution of Timothy McVeigh by lethal injection on May 16th in Terre Haute, Indiana for the horrific crime of murdering 168 innocent victims including 19 children in the 1995 bombing of the Federal Building has become a "lightning rod" for ambient discussion. The discussion traverses such topics as the pros and cons of capital punishment, the morality of the death penalty, the complex, dark psychological human need for revenge, and the perceived necessity of providing closure for those affected by the murder of a family member, loved one, or acquaintance by permitting them to watch the murderer die in the execution chamber. To me there is no such thing as solemnity or justification in taking the life of another in the name of justice. It is for me the State's response of injustice to injustice.
In fairness, none of us who speak to these issues can ever really project what our own personal response to the murder of a family member, a loved one or friend might be until we painfully have to face such a tragedy. It is also basic human nature to want to "get even" or to seek retribution for the heinous crime of murder. Yet, within the broad range of our various religious faith traditions, we can generally claim that all human beings are created in the image of God and are therefore considered equal in the eyes of God. We must, therefore, be very careful how we administer justice and carry out the punishment of those who have committed capital crimes against humanity. Our comprehensive theological understanding of stewardship is very much challenged when we exceed the moral parameters of our faith's teaching.
Some information that all of us should digest as we engage in the debate that currently swirls around capital punishment and Timothy McVeigh as the nation awaits his execution in May follows (**):
To be clear on the issue, the Episcopal Church as a national body, joined by the Roman Catholic church and many other religious faith traditions, has come out strongly in condemning capital punishment. Our Presiding Bishop, in a statement released to the press on April 19th, said; "I pray for Tim McVeigh as he prepares to encounter the God who made him, even as I pray for his victims and their families. Nothing is served by revenge. And here I note that the Episcopal Church, along with many other faith communities, is on record as being opposed to capital punishment."
The decision rendered by the Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, to allow the closed circuit telecast of McVeigh's execution to those survivors back in Oklahoma City who wish to view it and the very act of creating a lottery for the victims of the bombing so that they might draw lots to see who will actually be able to witness McVeigh's death by lethal injection are unconscionable and unhealthy, voyeuristic acts. The encounter with death in Terre Haute has become a media and commercial circus with the sale of tee-shirts and other souvenirs planned by the gathering, commercial entrepreneurs of death. Individual satellite and web contractors have petitioned the Justice Department to televise the execution, claiming their constitutional right to do so and the need for the American people to experience the healing arid closure that will come with such a telecast.
Something is very wrong with our nation's behavior and conscience as we enter this new millennium when our attention, our energy, our collective rage, and our deep-seated need for revenge are all focused on the legally justifiable execution of Timothy McVeigh.
Jesus Christ calls each of us to live our lives by a higher standard than seeking the Old Covenant admonition of reaping "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Our baptism brings us directly into the experience of being baptized into Christ's death in order that we might be forever changed by his resurrection to ultimately become a new people... a people of life, rather than death, regardless of what others may do to us. For those baptized into Christ's death and resurrection through water and the Holy Spirit, we are reminded that the only victory over death is through our living into and reaching out to a sinful and broken world through the nonviolent core teachings of Jesus Christ.
For those who choose not to live within the boundaries of kindness, human decency and mutual respect for the sanctity of life and who, for whatever reason, take another's life through jealousy, greed, rage, revenge, or as the result of deep emotional or profound psychological handicaps, we are reminded that we have been empowered by the God of all creation to author and enforce systems of justice, law and order that even under the severest of tests must always respect the dignity of every human while at the same time protecting the life, liberty and happiness of each member of society. Final judgment from the Christian theological perspective has consistently been left up to our creator God. To exceed the limits of our own stewardship through mutual vengeance and judgment and to execute another for the murder of another can only numb our human sensibilities and make us become a hardened and cruel people of darkness and death, rather than the redeemed people of the Easter experience.
By our actions in supporting human executions we become exactly like the very people we have condemned to death. Theologically speaking we are no better than the murderer who has taken another's life out of revenge, anger, jealousy or greed. We have truly become what we have despised the most! We, too, have become murderers! The only difference is that our murder is officially recorded on the death certificate of the condemned as State-assisted, legal homicide.
Surely we can and must do better if we truly believe that we are the most advanced and civilized nation on the face of the earth and if we connect in any way with the concept of one nation, under God!
** The following sources were used in compiling death penalty statistics in this article:
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John
Bryson Chane has served as dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, San Diego, California
since 1996. Previously Dean Chane served congregations and cathedrals
in the Episcopal Dioceses of Northwestern Pennsylvania, Newark, and Massachusetts.
He has been a consistent spokesperson for theological issues surrounding
human rights and inclusion issues. He has appeared on numerous television
and radio news programs and is the author of many published articles covering
the relationships between culture and the Church.