CHRISTIANITY'S TIES TO PENAL SYSTEM EXPLORED

Book Compares Killing Of Jesus To Executions Now

The average American Christian may have almost forgotten a peculiar truth
of the faith's origin: Its founder was executed as a criminal by the Roman
Empire.

As the nation experiences the implications of its first federal executions
since 1963 -- those of unrepentant Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and
repentant drug kingpin Juan Raul Garza -- a Princeton seminary professor
challenges American Christians to confront what he calls the moral
conundrum posed by injustices in the nation's penal system.

"It is the solidarity of the executed Jesus with other imprisoned and
executed ones that makes up 'the first Christian community,' " Mark Lewis
Taylor of Princeton Theological Seminary writes in his new book, "The
Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America." He takes his
viewpoint in part from the work of another famous Christian, theologian
Karl Barth.

"The first community was this criminal element, all three, Jesus and the
criminals, hanging together -- 'exposed to the same public abuse, to the
same interminable pain, to the same slow and irrevocable death throes,' "
Taylor writes, quoting Barth.

Executed As A Criminal

In the book's preface, he deepens his argument:

"Even though Barth emphasizes the importance of this criminal identity
taken on in the process of Jesus' crucifixion, he fails to take with
theological seriousness the politically seditious character of that
identity. What later became the first Christian community and church was
birthed, as this book will argue, from a communal identity that could be
labeled both criminal and seditious."

The victims of today's judicial system, including prisoners and death row
inmates, mostly are poor people spurned by a system of imperialistic,
capitalistic wealth, Taylor says. A central thesis of the book is that
whether those convicted of murder and other horrible crimes are guilty is
as irrelevant to the government executing them today as it was to the
Romans who crucified Jesus.

Taylor said he knows he may not sway pro-death penalty Christians.

"Christian supporters of the death penalty are, like others among its
supporters, invested emotionally, and rational argument and books will not
change their minds," Taylor said. "My book is more for those others,
primarily other Christians, who are already participating in movements to
end the death penalty and to terminate U.S. overdependence on prisons."

Taylor's book explores what he calls worrisome trends, saying the number of
prisoners in the United States has tripled to more than 2 million since
1980. More than 70 percent of those are people of color.

Also, more than 3,600 people are on death row in the United States.

Taylor says there are other disturbing problems, including inordinate
sentencing, prison rape and racism within the criminal justice system.

"Those on death row may or may not be there for the same reasons Jesus was
executed," he said. "In other words, they may or may not be there because
they acted up creatively and found themselves vulnerable to state powers of
execution. Even if those on death row today are there because they
committed some vicious and murderous act, their execution, as I argue in
the book, is still flawed because the state today is using their execution,
and that of others, to strengthen its own executive powers, i.e. to
announce to all of the rest of us citizens that the State is the ultimate
power, that it has the right to take human life."

Citizens Seen As Victims

His book is not designed "to say that people awaiting execution on today's
death rows are suffering like the executed Jesus did," Taylor said. "No,
the book's point is more that we as a whole U.S citizenry, living under the
unjust political and economic order . . . are the ones suffering as Jesus
and all his subordinated people did when living under the unjust order of
the Romans."

Christians cannot organize effectively against the death penalty until "we
see that we are the ones suffering from a government that has taken unto
itself the power over life and death," he said.

While his book does not target a secular audience, Taylor has been
surprised by non-Christians' responses and is quick to note that many
non-Christians are part of organized efforts opposing injustice.

"Moreover, many of my 'secularist' colleagues in justice movements know
that it is important to involve religious communities. They routinely say
to me, 'How can we get the churches, mosques, synagogues more involved in
this struggle?' They often also know that in U.S. history, a significant
involvement of churches in movements for social change has been crucial to
experiencing success."

Taylor urges an examination of the meaning of Jesus' sacrifice on the
cross. "His death was, like the deaths of thousands of others under the
Roman regime, the result of political powers, together with elite religious
officials, using executions as a way to terrorize subordinated populations.

"Jesus was enough of an eccentric, politically and religiously, to make him
vulnerable in first century Palestine to being dispatched to a quick and
brutal death by crucifixion. The Romans chose crucifixion as a kind of
public death by torture, a public spectacle, imposed it especially on those
who seemed seditious and a threat to the standing order," Taylor said.

The practice was designed to inspire fear in citizens so that they would
not disobey the reigning order. Yet Jesus refused to succumb, Taylor said.

"Jesus acted up in ways creative enough to inspire movements that could not
be quashed even after his death," Taylor said, "and after the deaths of
many others."