January 30, 2005
Rev. Dr. Frank Carpenter,
D.Min.
St. John's Unitarian Universalist Church, Cincinnati, OH
We gather as creatures of a blue plane, on a cold and wintery day, we celebrate our common identity with one another. The mystical bond that binds each to each draws us into community this sacred time.
As we listen to the joys and sorrows of our friends this hour, we find ourselves in the middle of the universal human drama of hope and despair. We are grateful for the accounts of family struggles and triumphs, for the day to day victories over disease and addiction.
Gathered to consider universal themes of human rights and justice, we identify with those who are in the line of fire, soldiers in battle, voters going to the polls, men and woman on death row.
We gather in the mystery that so many have landed in places of pain and suffering. Poverty, racism determine the lives of so many in our world.
We gather in gratitude for the vision of human rights which inspires us to build a universal community where none shall be oppressed and all shall live in joy and freedom. In this silent hour we recommit ourselves to this hope for all our kindred.
Let us be still.
/Silent/
Peace be with you. Amen.
Last weekend one of the lead news stories was the abduction and murder of 19 year old Megan Leann Holden. The security tapes of her leaving her job at a west Texas Wal Mart late at night and being abducted were repeatedly played by the media.
Her alleged abductor, Johnny Lee Williams, fled Texas and was arrested at an Arizona hospital where he had gone for gun shot wounds he allegedly received in a hold up. Because Holden was kidnaped in Tyler, Texas , Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham said he would seek capital murder charges.
Johnny Lee Williams’ mother Pat Williams told the media that her son had returned from duty as a Marine in Iraq. On one morning talk show, I recall her saying that while in Iraq, Johnny Lee was forced to kill three Iraqi’s, one a child. I tried to confirm that with a search of the internet but was unable to. What I did find on the Internet was his mother’s anguish: “Something happened to my son. Some of the things that he endured I may never know. But it changed who he is and for that I'm sorry."
Today we are considering the death penalty. Howard Tolley and the Social Action Coordinating Committee have called for a Congregational Initiative on the subject. My sermon this morning are some of my reflections. The question of the murder of Megan Leann Holden raises is, “Should Johnny Lee Williams – if found guilty – be executed by the state of Texas?”
The execution of veterans brings up a serious question as to what we expect of our military. At a recent talk at the Steven Wise Synagogue in New York city, Seymour Hersh of the NEW YORKER shared a story from his research into the My Lai massacre during the Viet Nam war. At My Lai Paul Medlow had refused to shoot a two year old boy when ordered by Lieut. Calley. Not that Medlow had refused to kill women, children and elderly lined up in a ditch the day before. A year and a half after the massacre Hersh went to New Goshen, Indiana, to interview Medlow. As he came up to the farm, he met his mother. She said to Hersh, “I gave them a good boy. And they sent me back a murderer.”
This raises the question for our societies complicity in any killing, so well presented by the MUSE anthem.
For myself, I have found that the question of whether the death penalty should be legal, or is just, not an easy one. It is a struggle between my emotions and my values which I suspect will always continue.
I have always had an initial emotional response of ‘get the SOB,’ when horrendous stories come on the media. I understand why some people can hardly wait for Scott Peterson to be murdered by the state of California. At a gut level my emotions come out and say, ‘yeh,’ let him have it. Perhaps my growing up in an orphanage where bullies were always around helped form my emotions.
But I have not been satisfied with that as a resolution. As I thought about executions I wondered what the cost of life imprisonment versus the cost of execution is. But that is a distraction from the morality, from the justice of the death penalty.
An important step for me was my study of William Ellery Channing, the founder of our American Unitarianism. The deeper I got into Channing’s thought, the more I have come to understand our Unitarianism as a human rights movement. For the past 175 years, advocating the end of slavery, the right to vote for all people, we have spoken from a human rights perspective. And through these studies I have come to appreciate the UUA’s Principles and Purposes as a human rights document.
The first of these principles speaks of the inherent worth and dignity of the individual. This concept is the core of human rights. And as I thought about, this core axiom of human rights, of the infinite worth of the individual, does not allow for a death penalty.
Europeans understand this. The modern-day international human-rights movement owes its birth and moral force in many ways to the universal revulsion that followed the discovery of the concentration camps. The vibrancy of this movement can be seen in the celebration this past week, led by the United Nations, of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet forces 60 years ago.
This human rights tradition is alive and understood by the victims of the Nazi’s. That is why another story about the death penalty last week told of a top official of the Austrian Green party, Peter Pilz, calling for stripping Arnold Schwarzenegger of his Austrian citizenship. Pilz argued that Schwarzenegger is no longer worthy of Austrian citizenship as he broke Austrian law by clearing Donald Beardslee’s execution. Many European countries will not extradite criminals to the United States if they will face the death penalty. It’s not squeamishness. It’s about human rights and the hard struggles that Europeans had to win through to a sense of justice.
For me then, often times my emotions call for retribution and my values for restoration. My feelings are not fully up to speed with my basic human right values. Our emotions are conservative, they change slower than our thinking. I acknowledge my feelings, but feelings are not facts. I honor them but I do not necessarily obey them.
This struggle I have between my emotions and my human rights values was clarified for me in a conversation I had with my partner Jacquie. We were talking about her brother being a Conscientious Objector during the Viet Nam war. Jacquie told me that when he initially applied, he was denied CO status because he failed in his answer to a couple of questions. One of the question was, “Would you defend yourself or loved ones if attacked.” He was not sure, he might defend himself
On appeal he was granted CO status because the appeals board said that it was illegal to ask the question of self-defense. What you would do if someone attempted to abduct you late at night from a Wal Mart parking lot has nothing to do with your principled stand on war. [LINK]
For me that recognizes this difference between my emotions and my values. It is not a far stretch of my imagination to think I might kill someone if I thought it would protect a loved one. But that is not a statement about the death penalty, nor about war resistance. That was very helpful. Even though my emotions and my values may argue at times, I am against the death penalty, for it is a violation of the founding principle of human rights: the inherent worth and dignity of the individual.
The Congregational Initiative put forward by the Social Action Coordinating Committee does not call for a vote on the death penalty per se. Rather it calls for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. A draft of the motion to be voted on March 6th is in your Order of Service. The concept of a moratorium arises from the fact that the death penalty is irreversible. Therefore it should be applied, if at all, equitably, not casually or as a political football. Howard Tolley and other members of the committee can go into much greater detail than I can at the moment. Let me give you but one example of how due process has not been followed and the death penalty abused.
Sister Helen Prejean is one of the foremost advocates for ending the death penalty. She is the author of DEAD MAN WALKING. Her latest book is THE DEATH OF INNOCENTS: AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF WRONGFUL EXECUTIONS.
One case she writes about is a mentally retarded man of 33 with the communication skills of a seven year old. Terry Washington was executed by the state of Texas in 1997.At the time of his trial, no mention was made of Washington’s mental limitations. In preparing their clemency bid to the Texas governor, his lawyers found that Washington, along with his ten siblings had been beaten regularly with whips, water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers and fan belts. Yet the Texas Attorney general, Alberto R Gonzales – the present candidate for US Attorney General – did not include this information when he presented Washington’s clemency bid to the governor.
One of the arguments against the death penalty has been that, it is cruel and unusual punishment and thus violates the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which says “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Whether or not you think that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, it is worth thinking about death penalty as a form of torture. Threats of death are a form of torture. We cannot think about the death penalty entirely apart from torture.
This suggests that the death penalty, along with torture reflects a low view of human nature. One victim of Nazi torture, Jean Amery, argued that the question of torture was not accidental to a society’s identity, but the very essence of its view. Amery, a Belgian resistant, was arrested in Brussel in 1943 for distributing tracts in German urging soldiers of the Nazi occupation to desert. He was tortured by the SS in a Belgian jail before being shipped to Auschwitz.
Amery survived but in his account twenty four years later, he tells us that a tortured man stays tortured. Indeed Amery argued that what was worst than the memory of the pain was the moral shock of seeing other human beings reducing him to a carcass of meat. His capacity for any social trust destroyed, he eventually committed suicide as did his fellow Auschwitz inmate, Primo Levi. [Ignatieff, THE LESSER EVIL, pages 142f]
One way of looking at the moral paradox that destroyed both Levi and Amery is that they identified with their torturers. I believe it is the very height of the moral imagination to identity with others.
This identification with others drives Sister Helen Prejean. An English reporter followed Prejean around for a while. The reporter recounts that the first time Prejean witnessed a man being put to death in the electric chair, she had to stop on the drive home to vomit. After six journeys to the death chamber, she is resigned to living with the nightmares. “They always come in the form of I’m being executed, “[said Prejean]. “But I can’t afford to let it overcome me because I have to tell the story.”
People of moral imagination suffer from identifying with others. I thought of this one evening as I was watching the Daily Show. Jon Stewart was interviewing Jim Wallis editor of SOJOURNERS. Wallis is becoming one of the leading progressive Christians. Wallis was on the show as part of a book tour for his new work, GOD’S POLITICS: Why The Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get it.
In the discussion, Wallis told Stewart that he had two conversions to Christianity. One when he was young at a camp meeting. Then the other, the one that took, happened when he was reading the Gospel of Matthew.
Jesus said, 25:35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 25:36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' 25:37 Then the righteous will answer him,35 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 25:38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or naked and clothe you? 25:39 When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' 25:40 And the king will answer them, 'I tell you the truth, just as you did it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did it for me.'
I read this as Jesus calling for his followers to identify with other people. It is easy to identify with the clean and polite. It is quite another thing to identify with the dirty and hungry. It is no moral achievement to identify with the proper and appropriate, but to identify with the oppressed, the hungry, the criminal is a moral achievement.
Certainly we identify with 19 year old Megan Leann Holden who was murdered. Do with identify with Johnny Lee Williams, wonder how we would cope with being a Marine in Iraq? Do we identify with his mother as we do with Megan’s mother? If we are to be full, complete human beings, I think we must.
One of the readings I use in Memorial services is the well know verse by John Donne:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
If we would not to be diminished, it seems to me that we must inquire of ourselves and one another, whether or not the time has come to question the death penalty. I urge you to participate in the discussions planned by the Social Action Coordinating Committee and vote at the Congregational meeting March 6th.