wfn.org | McVeigh dead, but debate on capital punishment lives on

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

June 12, 2001 News media contact: Thomas S.
McAnally·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.     10-21-71B{265}

A UMNS News Feature
By Tom McAnally*

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh is dead, but the issues around the
morality of the death penalty are still very much alive for United
Methodists close to the case.

The United Methodist Church formally opposes capital punishment and calls
for its elimination from all criminal codes. However, all United Methodists,
like the rest of American society, are not of one mind on the subject.

"The punishment fit the crime," says church executive Anne Marshall, whose
husband was killed in the bombing. Marshall is a staff member of the United
Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns in New
York. Her husband, Raymond Johnson, was among the 168 killed in the April
19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The dead
included 19 children. 

McVeigh, 33, was put to death by lethal injection on the morning of June 11
in Terre Haute, Ind., in the first federal execution in 38 years. More than
230 people saw the execution by closed- circuit television at a site in
Oklahoma City. Marshall will not say if she was among them. 

"I felt little emotion," she says. "I didn't feel sad. I didn't feel happy.
I simply acknowledged that it was the day set for McVeigh to die. He had
plenty of time to make amends with family members of victims and others, but
he didn't. He had days to prepare, not like our family members, who thought
they would go to work and go home that day [April 19] and didn't know they
wouldn't have another conversation with family members. He had ample time to
prepare."

She also notes that McVeigh said he was ready to die. "By all accounts, it
was not cruel and unjust punishment," she says of the execution. "It was
very clinical. He had a painless death."  

Anticipating the next question, Marshall says the execution would not bring
closure. "There will always be April 19."

In a prayer for McVeigh just before his execution, Marshall says she "left
it in God's hand." The words to a popular African-American spiritual kept
going through her mind: "There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick
soul," she says. "He was a sin-sick person to do what he did and to have had
no remorse."

Marshall hopes that delegates to the next United Methodist General
Conference will reconsider the church's position, which condemns all
instances of capital punishment. She prefers a statement that would reserve
death as a punishment for "those who deserve it." She says she could support
life in prison for a person who committed a crime of passion or a crime
while drunk, but McVeigh's case was different. "He knew what he was doing." 

Watching the national media interview people at the Oklahoma City viewing
site following the execution, the Rev. Boyce Bowdon says he saw lots of
anger. "For many, the execution was clearly not closure." 

Bowdon is director of communications for the Oklahoma Annual Conference,
where he says people are clearly on both sides of the fence regarding the
death penalty. "They are equally good Christian people, faithful church
people who love God and have reasons for their positions," he says. Even so,
he is convinced that "violence begets violence" and that an execution will
not provide closure for most people.

A spiritual matter

Clergy and lay members from across the state called for a moratorium on the
death penalty by a 2-to-1 vote during the conference's annual gathering in
Oklahoma City, May 28-31.

The issue is a personal one for Bowdon, whose nephew was murdered in January
1997. One person is on death row, and another is serving a life sentence in
prison for the crime. "Closure did not come with their conviction, and it
won't come with their deaths," Bowdon says. "This is a spiritual, not a
legislative matter.  How you survive a traumatic case like this comes
because of the grace of God, not human justice."

The Rev. Nick Harris, pastor of First United Methodist Church in Oklahoma
City, declined an interview with United Methodist News Service. The church,
located across the street from the Murrah Building, was badly damaged and
later rebuilt. Part of the building was used as a morgue for victims of the
bombing.

The Rev. Bertha Potts, who lost a church member in the bombing, says she
paid little attention to the execution, choosing instead to remember the
lives of those who died. "It's terribly sad that we have to keep the killing
going," she says. "I would love for us to put more effort into the stories
of the people's lives and keep the hope of their lives strong."  

Her church member, Victoria Texter, was one of the last victims whose body
was recovered. On the Sunday after the bombing, she remembers a "beautiful
statement calling for forgiveness given by Vickie's husband Jim." A letter
he wrote to the congregation about forgiveness hangs on her office wall at
Quail Springs United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City. She was serving
Sunny Lane United Methodist Church in Dell City, Okla., when the bombing
happened.

Potts says she strongly supports the church's position against capital
punishment. "I truly believe the Christian spirit is to make us better
people and to find new ways to love one another and to be compassionate.
This is over now. If Tim's death makes us better people, OK, but we've got
to find a way to get out of this 'eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth'
mentality. I hope for a new day when we can focus more on the people and the
tremendous gift of their lives," she says.

Seeing the toll

The Rev. Robert Allen, pastor of First United Methodist Church in Wichita
Falls, Texas, was pastor of Oklahoma City's Wesley United Methodist Church
in 1995 when he was asked by state officials to hastily organize a corps of
chaplains. "We had about 550 chaplains involved in the rescue and recovery
operation at one time or another, including civilian, military, police and
fire chaplains," he says.

A high point of his ministry was being asked to speak at the dedication of
the memorial in Oklahoma City on April 19, 2000, he says. He recalls a
cartoon that best describes his feelings about the bombing. In the first
panel, someone says, "They bombed the federal building today." Someone else
asks, "How many people were hurt?" The next panel has the answer: "260
million Americans."

"I have traditionally been opposed to capital punishment for reasons of
faith, but seeing up close and first hand the human toll that takes place in
something like this helps me understand the emotionalism that calls for
execution of the individual who does something like this," Allen says.

"I think it valid for a church to lift up what our beliefs are, but I also
understand that everyone doesn't agree," he says. He surmises that 80
percent of the people in the state of Texas disagree with the church's
stance, "but I still think it beneficial for the church to call us to the
best." 

Allen did not watch the TV coverage surrounding the execution. "I'd rather
remember the good things, how in the midst of tragedy the people of Oklahoma
City and the whole nation bonded," he says. "People complain about our
government, but I saw it at its very best - local, state and federal - doing
its best to help people in need."

Rejecting vengeance

The Rev. Stan Basler, an attorney before answering a call to ordained
ministry, joined the staff of the Oklahoma Conference less than a year
before the bombing as director of criminal justice and mercy ministries. To
interpret and garner support for the work of his office, Basler says he
would go from church to church preaching on Sunday mornings. After the
bombing, he says he had to rethink how he felt about the death penalty. 

"I knew people would be looking differently at me. I had to be clear about
where I was and why. In that process I did come back to where I had been,
embracing our Social Principles against the death penalty."

During self-evaluation, he concluded, "Whatever vision I have about the
kingdom of God does not include human beings willfully killing other human
beings." He is concerned that "revenge is becoming a No. 1 value of our
society" and that "vindictiveness is being seen as a virtue."

Basler supports the church's position and grieves that the death penalty is
supported by society. He also acknowledges the importance of clergy being
able to serve the needs of people who differ on this volatile issue. "We
need to be compassionate, and at the same time I can't advocate something I
don't believe in."    

Opposition to the death penalty has been on the books in the United
Methodist and former Methodist churches since 1956. The General Conference,
the denomination's top legislative assembly, is the only body that can speak
officially for the whole church. At the most recent conference in May 2000,
delegates adopted a longer resolution "in Opposition to Capital Punishment"
(2000 Book of Resolutions).

"In spite of a common assumption to the contrary, 'an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth' does not give justification for the imposing of the
penalty of death," the statement says. "Jesus explicitly repudiated
retaliation (Matt. 5:38-39), and the Talmud denies its literal meaning and
holds that it refers to financial indemnities."

The statement says that studies conducted for more than 60 years have
overwhelmingly failed to support the thesis that capital punishment deters
homicide more effectively than does imprisonment. It also notes that 77
percent of law enforcement officials do not think capital punishment
decreases the rate of homicide and that police chiefs rank the death penalty
least effective in reducing violent crimes.

The statement says that on average, for every seven people executed, one
person under the death sentence is later found innocent. It also notes that
the United States has executed more juvenile offenders than any other nation
and that the death penalty "falls unfairly upon marginalized persons,
including the poor, the uneducated, ethnic and religious minorities, and
persons with mental and emotional illness."

"The United Methodist Church cannot accept retribution or social vengeance
as a reason for taking human life," the statement declares. "It violates our
deepest belief in God as the creator and the redeemer of humankind."
#  #  #
*McAnally is director of United Methodist News Service, the church's
official news agency, headquartered in Nashville with offices in Washington
and New York.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
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