Good Morning.
There was a lot of controversy during the recent Senatorial campaign in Mississippi, but none more troubling than when the ultimate winner, Cindy Hyde-Smith, said she'd like a front row seat at a public hanging. Her remark opened up terrible wounds about lynching in the south, and to make matters worse, on the day before the election, two nooses were discovered on the grounds of the state Capitol. Hyde-Smith took days to apologize and then did so only half-heartedly. News flash: the Hammurabi Code is alive and unwell in plenty of places besides Mississippi.
Here are some statistics:
59% of white people compared to 36% of black people and 47% of Hispanic people support capital punishment.
61% of men compared to 46% of women support it.
77% of Republicans compared to 35% of Democrats support it.
47% of people 18-29 years old support it compared to 57% of people over the age of 65.
7 in 10 people think an innocent person has been executed.
I have given a fair amount of thought to this issue, never more than during a tragedy many years ago when a young girl was delivering the morning newspaper and was killed by a deranged individual who happened to live in my neighborhood and who was quickly apprehended. After the trial, the girl's deeply religious parents prevailed upon the judge not to impose the death penalty on the killer who was given a life sentence with no possibility of parole. These people believed, as I do, that vengeance is a primitive longing and not reflective of a faith in a supreme being - easy to declare as a high-minded covenant but very difficult to honor when someone brings excruciating pain into your life in the most heinous way imaginable.
The churches in the United States are divided in their views about capital punishment. The Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, United Church of Christ, American Baptists, Greek Orthodox, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have official positions against the death penalty. The Assemblies of God, Southern Baptists, Missouri Synod Lutherans and smaller conservative denominations support it with the Mormons preferring to leave the matter up to civil law. Conservative and Reform Jews are against it with the Orthodox favoring a moratorium on executions to reconsider the various aspects of the issue. It's clear, however, that a lot of people, see above stats, don't agree with the positions taken by their religious leaders. In my state, the clergy, some of them anyway, troop into the Capitol every year to testify for legislation to abolish the death penalty, but the bills never even get out of committee for debate on the floor of the House or the Senate.
The United States is the only western nation, with the exception of Belarus, that still has the death penalty. This means we're in the company of China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Egypt, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Syria, Somalia, and Libya.
Abolishing capital punishment is actually a requirement for membership in the European Union, so it's a good bet that the countries that are, I hope, still our dearest allies wonder what's wrong with us when we are so intent on being vengeful, bolstered by the Supreme Court that says it's okay to be vengeful.
The new senator from Mississippi will find plenty of like-minded people in Washington, but I suspect, I hope, that few of them would make the comment that she did. I will continue to hold out for higher thought on the entire issue.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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