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martin luther king still has something to say to us

martin luther king still has something to say to us

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An excerpt from the last speech given by Martin Luther King:

Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus; and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters in life. At points, he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew, and through this, throw him off base. Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn’t stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But with him, administering first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the “I” into the “thou,” and to be concerned about his brother. Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop. At times we say they were busy going to church meetings—an ecclesiastical gathering—and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn’t be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that “One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony.” And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem, or down to Jericho, rather to organize a “Jericho Road Improvement Association.” That’s a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effort.

But I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that these men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, “I can see why Jesus used this as a setting for his parable.” It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles, or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you’re about 2200 feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the “Bloody Pass.” And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

That’s the question before you tonight. Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?” The question is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” That’s the question …

a sick and perverted spectacle

a sick and perverted spectacle

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A sick and perverted spectacle …

Those are the words Stanley Tookie Williams used to characterize his impending execution. Williams was executed early this morning, after appeals for a stay of execution were denied by the California Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court, and after a plea for clemency was rejected by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It was a sick and perverted spectacle …

… not because an innocent man was put to death. It is entirely possible that Williams did not commit the murders for which he was convicted; he always maintained his innocence. Or, as is likely and most believe, he really did do the crimes. Either way, it doesn’t matter.

… not because a changed man, a redeemed man, a man doing society much good was put to death. He may well have become a transformed man, a good man; those nominating him for Nobel Prizes for peace and literature certainly thought so. Or maybe it was all a fraud or a too convenient way to earn pity and support. Either way, it doesn’t matter.

… not because the courts or the governor failed to step in and acknowledge his transformation and show him mercy. They were simply doing their job, interpreting and enforcing the law as it stands. It doesn’t matter.

No, what matters is the law itself, the law of the land that permits this most cruel and unusual punishment. That law is sick and perverted and must be changed. That law accomplishes no useful purpose other than retribution — society exacting its revenge and satisfying its blood lust against those who have done it injury, whether real or perceived. That law diminishes our humanity, devalues human life, and damages the integrity of our advocacy of human rights.

Our need for revenge (a need that can never be satisfied) is a sickness, a sickness that eats away at the soul of our society and only proliferates a culture of violence. Our demand for the forfeiture of a life is a perversion, a perversion of the values and principles for which we claim to stand — justice, mercy, freedom, generosity, the precedence of right over might, and inalienable human dignity.

It was a sick and perverted spectacle …

a shameful milestone

a shameful milestone

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The execution by lethal injection of Kenneth Lee Boyd in North Carolina marked the 1000th execution in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. A report by Amnesty International reveals that in 2004, the United States executed more human beings than any other nation with the exception of China, Iran, and Vietnam. For more on today’s execution and the reaction to it, click on the following link:

World News Article | Reuters.co.uk

redemption

redemption

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Is redemption possible?

Yes.

Should the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams be stayed because his life has been redeemed, because his life now has some redeeming value?

No.

If Mr. Williams should not be executed because he has succeeded in turning his life around, it follows that if he had not done so, he should be executed. But he should not. There is no good reason, no justification, to execute anyone.

It is we who need redemption — redemption from our need for retribution, redemption from our reliance on violence to address our fears (even if it has the blessing of the state), redemption from our care-less treatment of a precious human life, redemption from our lack of faith in God’s power to redeem … anyone.

actions speak louder than words

actions speak louder than words

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When the government of the United States speaks, we speak, and when it acts, we act, because our government is, as President Lincoln put it, “a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.” It is our duty to take full responsibility for what our government says and does on our behalf …

We must take responsibility for our nation’s advocacy of human rights. We champion the equality of all human beings; equal entitlement to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and equal protection from any violation of these entitlements. But what do we do? We are slow to respond to allegations of prisoner abuse by US military and intelligence personnel in Iraq and Cuba and Afghanistan and eastern Europe, we are reluctant to examine fully the broader leadership environment that permits or tolerates or fails to put a stop to such abuse, and we are opposed to signing on to a declaration banning cruel or inhuman or degrading treatment by any agent of the United States government against any person anywhere in the world.

We must take responsibility for our nation’s stand against the proliferation and use of chemical and biological and nuclear weapons. We ask for international censure of other nations who are suspected of developing and stockpiling such weapons. But what do we do? We use a chemical weapon, white phosphorus, in the war in Iraq. We refuse to eliminate our own stockpile of nuclear armaments and we continue to do biological weapons research. And we are the only nation in history to have used a nuclear weapon against a civilian population.

We must take responsibility for our nation’s commitment to the rule of law. We believe that right makes might, not the contrary, and we demand that nations and heads of state abide by the tenets of international law. But what do we do? We invade a sovereign nation without provocation, justifying the unilateral action as a “preemptive strike.”

We must take responsibility … The problem is not with what we say and not with the results we seek to achieve. The isolation and containment of international terrorism is a worthy end. But a worthy end does not justify the use of any means available. If we will do anything to achieve that goal, if we make expections to the code of human rights to protect our own human rights, if we use chemical weapons to take out people we fear may one day use chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against us, if we unilaterally decide for ourselves who are the “bad guys” and which nations require “regime change,” then we will have by our actions betrayed everything we stand for.

We will have proved that some people are entitled to basic human rights and some are not, that weapons of mass destruction do have a place in this world, and that the only law that matters is the law that says the biggest and strongest gets to make the rules.

why the death penalty is wrong

why the death penalty is wrong

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The death penalty is wrong because it serves no moral or practical purpose.

1) The death penalty is not an effective deterrent. Jeffrey Fagan, Columbia Law School professor, offers this testimony:

Recent studies claiming that executions reduce murders have fueled the revival of deterrence as a rationale to expand the use of capital punishment. Such strong claims are not unusual in either the social or natural sciences, but like nearly all claims of strong causal effects from any social or legal intervention, the claims of deterrence fall apart under close scrutiny. These new studies are fraught with technical and conceptual errors … These studies fail to reach the demanding standards of social science to make such strong claims, standards such as replication and basic comparisons with other scenarios. Some simple examples and contrasts, including a careful analysis of the experience in New York State compared to others, lead to a rejection of the idea that either death sentences or executions deter murder.

2) The death penalty does not do justice, if justice is understood as upholding and encouraging lawfulness and as improving the moral and civic character of a society as a whole. The death penalty debases a society, encourages the belief in violence as an appropriate tool for solving social problems, and appeals to the perhaps understandable, but abhorrent and indefensible, desire for revenge.

3) The use of the death penalty in the “best” of circumstances is subject to the horrifying risk of executing innocent people and the unconscionable reality of unequal application. And in the “worst” of circumstances? In the hands of unethical and self-serving political leadership, the death penalty is a tool of oppression and outright injustice.

I am saddened — and angry — that Iowa legislators are once more trying to reintroduce the death penalty into the Iowa criminal code after an absence of forty years. They exploit our feelings of anger and horror and helplessness at a very public and heinous act of violence to advance their political agenda, while careful analysis and moral leadership go out the window. Again and again, Iowa’s lawmakers have said “No!” to the reintroduction of the death penalty, even in the face of other terrible acts of violence. I do hope and pray that a comparable commitment to real justice will once more prevail.

a time and a place for torture?

a time and a place for torture?

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The debate over the McCain amendment continues. The amendment, attached to a defense appropriations bill, bans the use of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by any agent of the United States government against any person anywhere in the world. The White House, led by vice-president Dick Cheney, continues to lobby against the amendment, asking that its language be changed to exempt the CIA from its provisions.

I cannot in any way fathom how making allowances for torture — used by covert agents against suspected terrorists “if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack” — helps us win the war on terror or insure our safety or make the world a better place. It is a classic instance of “winning the battle” and “losing the war!”

The White House insists that they “do not condone torture, nor would [the president] ever authorize the use of torture,” and yet they clearly want to make allowance for the use of “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treament” when they deem it necessary. I fail to to see how this is not condoning torture!

Our nation is founded on the principles of the innate equality of all human beings and the universal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Any use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment for any purpose absolutely violates those principles. Such behavior can only be justified by judging a person “less than human” and therefore not entitled to basic “human” rights. We protect ourselves at the cost of sacrificing our national soul and make ludicrous any claim to be an exemplary champion of human rights.

When the end justifies the means, eventually anything goes. And when the test is a subjective judgment of a few folks in positions of power, the risks of the abuse of power are enormous. Our system of government was expressly designed to mitigate such abuses of power.

I am hopeful that saner, wiser, and more humane hearts and minds will prevail. I am hopeful that we will uphold the principles that have made our nation a beacon of light and truth among nations. I am hopeful that evil will not win … the evil that lies too in our own hearts.