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TAIWAN: Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Blasts Capital Punishment in US and Taiwan
Only the United States and Taiwan continue to execute people, she said
By David W. Virtue DD
www.virtueonline.org
Sept. 21, 2014
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori blasted the US and Taiwan's use of capital punishment in a sermon to her House of Bishops at St. John's Cathedral in Taipei.
Addressing the issue of injustice, the Presiding Bishop said capital punishment is the human dilemma where this comes up most urgently. "Is it just? Nation after nation has abolished the death penalty in recent years. It's been ended in most nations where The Episcopal Church is present, starting with Venezuela in 1863. Ecuador and Colombia eliminated it more than 100 years ago. Honduras in 1956. Curaçao was the latest in 2010. Only the United States and Taiwan continue to execute people."
She noted that in the last three years, the United States has executed about 40 people a year, and 30 thus far in 2014, including Lisa Coleman, a black woman, last Wednesday. Taiwan executed five people in April of this year, after putting five or six to death in each of the last three years.
"The good news is that many people are raising questions of justice about the death penalty -- about the adequacy of defense, the reliability of prosecution evidence and tactics, as well as the capacity to carry out an execution without causing undue pain and suffering. All of that, however, stands in opposition to the position of this Church since 1958 -- that capital punishment is fundamentally wrong, a violation of the intrinsic worth of every human being, of the divine image each one bears. Yet the reality is that all Episcopalians live in societies where there is disagreement over what justice looks like."
Citing the story of Jonah who apparently expected something like the death penalty for Nineveh -- that it would be annihilated like the city of Sodom -- Jefferts Schori said that's an all too common reaction to apparent injustice -- well we'll just destroy the wrong-doer, we'll kill the enemy.
"God's mercy is greater than retributive human justice. Jesus challenged us to love our enemies. [Pakistan] Bishop Azariah told us on Friday that he focuses on loving his neighbors -- all of them -- for he apparently does not want to define anyone as enemy.
"There is great power when we can shift from demanding justice as punishment for wrongdoing to giving thanks for the grace of God's presence -- God's presence with us and in our neighbors. It's a shift from defensiveness to open-hearted vulnerability that ends by producing compassion, mercy, and godly justice.
"True and godly and eternal justice makes more of self, it enlarges hearts and creates more life and greater abundance. The pinched kind of self-centered justice that Jonah and the vineyard workers were looking for chooses death rather than life, and misses that expansiveness. When we know that we are held in the palm of God's hand, whether we have suffering or joy, we discover that we can choose that deeper sort of justice, and choose it for all our neighbors."
The Episcopal Church's House of Bishops is currently meeting in Taiwan.
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