The Different Doctrines of the Christian Afterlife Inscribed on Tombstones

 A couple days ago I was visiting a graveyard at the oldest AME Church in Maryland that still operates in its original location where a Civil War Union patriot lies in rest. As I started exploring the graveyard, I came across at least one inscription I thought demonstrated a point we often neglect in our contemporary Christian churches: There have always been different views on the Christian afterlife.

One such view is boldly inscribed on the tombstone in the photograph I took. It notes that the deceased is "Asleep in Jesus." The doctrine being alluded to, known popularly as "soul sleep" is one almost entirely ignored by many Christians today, but rose in popularity in the 1830s (note the dates on the tombstone) through the preaching of the Millerites and some Methodists like George Storrs. Later Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists picked up on a strain called Annihilationism.

The doctrine of soul sleep comes from a literal reading of 1 Thessalonians (considered one of the oldest epistles and most likely one of the seven written by the hand of Paul the Apostle according to NT scholars). In it, Paul tells us that the dead in Christ will rise first upon his return, not before, and those remaining on earth will be caught up with the Lord in the sky. The soul and body therefore go through a sort of hibernation period. The soul and body are never extinguished. The body is eventually reified. Some, who felt this did not sufficiently answer the question of what happens to the soul in the interim between death and eternal life, claimed it had to be in the presence of Christ. And there certainly is this strain in Paul as well. “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord” he tells us. At least for Paul, aside from what appear to be contradictions, the human is a complicated body of eternal and temporal principles. He is an inward man, an outward man. He is spirit. He is soul. He is raised to a spiritual body, all depending where you read Paul. But if the soul is the essence of who we are, 1 Thessalonians doesn’t give us more than the “we” as a body in the ground awaiting the Lord. To try to resist soul sleep by saying that soul is somewhere else while it awaits final union with its body then seems an impoverished view given that the believer is identified with that body in Paul’s message!  At the least, soul sleep challenges the idea that the soulical Christian goes to heaven immediately after death.

What is the Function of the Seminary? A Reflection on Daniel Kirk and Seminary Pedagogy

The blogosphere has been active with the news that Daniel Kirk will be leaving Fuller Theological Seminary after next year.

One issue that has arisen from this news is about how invasive should an institution of learning be with its faculty and how does this affect a professor’s freedom to develop his thoughts. Some respondents have suggested that the seminary has a distinctive function, perhaps even different than the academy. This neat compartmentalization seems difficult to negotiate and suggests to me how often the seminary suffers an identity crisis: On the one hand, being an institution of higher learning with accreditation that invites debate and intellectual stimulation while on the other hand, maintaining and safeguarding the integrity of ancient creeds and customs.

It should be noted that in many corporations, an individual can be terminated stemming from actions he or she takes outside the workplace. These scenarios usually result from criminal activity. Conversely, one’s ideological freedom is a much more tangled web.

For those who do not know the situation affecting Kirk, his ruminations on homosexual unions in the church were met with resistance from other senior faculty members of FTS who informed him that his petition for tenure would most likely be opposed as a result.  For his part, Dr. Kirk has been graceful in his handling of the situation, and has allowed many responses to develop naturally without trying to direct or steer the conversation to a plea for personal justice.

As a graduate of a seminary/university myself, I wanted to focus a little bit on how we should be considering or perhaps re-examining the function of the seminary. One respondent on Fuller Theological Seminary's facebook page suggested, somewhat derisively, that intellectuals like Kirk who perhaps cannot find gainful employment in a secular university come to the seminary hoping to walk the line between dogmatic repetition of religious education and the kind of free-thinking that stimulates debate and conversation. I think this is a little misleading as it suggests that the seminary has only ever been a place that reproduces rank-and-file dogmatists. We certainly see traditions develop and challenged from within the seminary and significant changes in the last century would not have been possible had it not been for thinkers coming out of seminary educations who thought on numerous issues thoughtfully and reflectively.

Still there is something of a problem when seminaries resort to defensive posturing against the sometimes unwelcomed influences deriving from secular culture. My own experience perhaps deserves some attention. I attended the Ecumenical Institute of Theology, a project of the Roman Catholic Church through St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, MD that derived from Vatican II polity in an attempt to open the lines of communication within the Christian church and to invite those wayward Protestants back into fellowship. In perceived progressive settings like EI, where the motto is “Faith Seeking Understanding,” it was perhaps ironic that the program attracted so many fundamentalist conservatives (such as myself at that time).  One such reason was that the EI was the only game in town, and so Christians going in had expectations that they would be fleshing out opinions they already held close with intellectual support. While there was no shortage of faith-committed professors, there were also those who challenged us to think beyond the Mass or Sunday service to find a Jesus that was much  more human. If faith was to seek understanding, there was an implicit understanding of transformation. Unfortunately, no one told you what that transformation was supposed to look like. Would I come out a super saint or a skeptic?

As intellectual transformation was left unchecked, we were moved to bear all the various kinds of information back into the mold of our faith. Having a plethora of information and not knowing what to do with it is not unique to any academic program, but I would argue it is problematic for a seminary, and perhaps even more so for those with confessional creeds. A typical example would be that one evening I could take a class on the historical Jesus and meet with a cacophony of opinions from liberal professor Z only to return the following evening to sit in on a spirituality class ministered by conservative priest X.  I regularly watched students confuse lines of information, especially given that so many came in with only a basic understanding of his or her tradition and perhaps a bachelor degree to make his or her entrance into the program possible. Leaving with a master’s in Theology, I came out harder, more skeptical, and less ready for the task of assuming a faith that was now bedridden by so many questions. When I gave my exit interview, I could tell that my truthfulness was not especially a welcomed revelation, as the administrator seemed more and more impatient with my concerns, especially the one I voiced about EI being very concerned with numbers but giving no direction beyond their own walls about what to do with one’s intellectual development. I still might have aimed a similar accusation at a secular university, but for the EI, a place so enmeshed in the faith, where talk about discipleship as a lifelong journey is rote, it seemed more critical and more imperative that I was guided in the right direction. The advice I was given concerning my own intellectual aspirations:  All the jobs are gone, the PhD programs are filled with Ivy leaguers who can’t get jobs, your chances are slim. What was the point of EI then for someone in my shoes? Certainly not to waste thousands of dollars in pursuing a PhD I would never use. I was to a head to count for so many professors who were fighting to keep their jobs amid years of under-enrollment.

What seminaries, at least my seminary, did not do very well, was to help the student make sense of all the stimuli coming at him. There is a kind of hands-off response since while the Church makes disciples, the seminary makes disciples who are supposed to think more deeply about their faith. John Calvin once wrote that "None will never be a good minister of the word of God, unless he is first of all a scholar." But I often found that scholars didn't make good ministers. This is perhaps not entirely there fault as there is a line they were most likely directed to respect - different belief systems, different students coming from a variety of different backgrounds, etc. It might have been more honest to relinquish the discipleship talk, but then I can imagine some clever deflection: "discipleship must be internalized. What it means will be different for each person."

Still, students with only four years or less under their belt, and predictably so, often bastardized the influences they are vulnerable to at a seminary. The synthesis required to compartmentalize is not so much a talent as it is an arduous task, one that requires constant refinement.  In my own experience, seminary destroyed my virginal concepts of the untouchable nature of the Christian witness and taught me to challenge everything.

Which brings me to the interesting run-in I had on the issue of homosexuality. I wrote about this in a previous blog, but I want to recontextualize the situation for the moment.  As I continued my education, now in a Master’s program in Jewish Studies, I also was busy writing papers and presenting at conferences. When I decided that I wanted to touch on homosexuality as a topic, I contacted the administrator responsible for the alumni news at the EI. In the past, they have always included my news pieces and thanked me for taking the time to include something. So when I submitted the title of the presentation on a topic I had given about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and homosexual unions as responsible marriage, I received no response. When the newsletter arrived, my news was not included.  I contacted the administrator and received a rather terse response: “Sometimes things make it in and sometimes they don’t.”  Of course, space issues couldn’t have been the concern. EI deals in an electronic format newsletter. Space restrictions are therefore relic complaints of hard copy editors. No, the reason I was being dismissed was the topic. I ran this by another professor at the EI, and he agreed. I had been discriminated against based upon what was perceived to be an affirmation of homosexuality simply by a reading of the title. Let’s not forget how I got to this point. I was strongly conservative in my reasoning before entering the EI. After spending seven years at the institution (I did not spend consecutive semesters there), I was in essence being told that despite what I got out of my classes, the conclusions I came to, and the way those classes shaped my thinking, I had gone too far. Nevermind that the EI deteriorated my once-polished faith, homosexuality was taboo and incapable of being synthesized. In effect, homosexuality was worse than skepticism and the unbelief fostered in a number of the classes I took while attending.

This is why I understand the reaction to Dr. Kirk’s own coming to terms with same-sex unions as a conversation worth having, and yet at the same time shuddered to think about what’s going on here. If a student who is a lifelong seeker of coherence is meant to pull together all the information thrown at him, why do we think the plight of the professor is any different? It would be easy to say that the student is less equipped because of the level of his education, but then how much does that underscore the fact that scholarship is an even more tangled conversation as much as it is a debate. A professor working under such constraints cannot be thought to have arrived at some mythical totem of belief. He too is also a constant seeker. Sure he has a good portion (he would think) under control, but questions breed questions -- we constantly refine and measure.

Which leads me to the same concern voiced by others:   Is seminary the proper place to receive an education if by education we posit the free-thinking atmosphere of our Western institutions? I guess the question all depends on the openness or lack of concern the seminary expresses to its faculty and students. If numbers are your main concern, the individual can easily get lost. If doctrinal conformity is your concern, perhaps you have no chance. If you put your trust in an administrator who is herself conservative in her faith commitment, is it healthy to let her run your communications office without some form of counterbalance or oversight? I decided not to bring my own concerns to the Dean of the EI, primarily because I had lost nothing and gained nothing either. But for someone like Daniel Kirk, who is at risk of losing his job, the situation is quite real. It means feeding his family, it means pulling up his roots in a community that loves and respects him. It means all the talk we here nowadays about “being Jesus” or “being the gospel” or showing love to those with whom we disagree, simply revolves us back to good ole dogmatic posturing.  When Jesus went to Matthew’s house, Matthew was being accepted into a sacred circle of trust despite his own social standing. How many of us desperately need our seminaries to take similar leads, so that we can believe that the message they are putting out there is not just rhetoric.

Is Faith a Part of Buddhism?

Buddhism is often identified with personal effort. I would go so far as saying that the attractiveness of moving Buddhism out of the supernatural and into the natural has more to do with the secularization of the West then with the factual nature of the development of Buddhism narratives, which, like their Western counterparts, are diversified by various beliefs and opinions.

I certainly understand the need for spiritualism. We hypothesize root causes. Personal effort appeals to a certain type of spiritual person who does not identify with naming a God and all the baggage this carries. It removes the responsibility of defending doctrinaire accounts of the faith and allows them to move fluidly through the tradition without having to deal with what they dislike. I get it.

Buddhism, at least in the form it is often received in the West, may siphon out factors that are not necessarily testaments to human effort. However, it is important to note that other forms of Buddhism do not. I was reminded of this in an exchange I had at the regional American Academy of Religions meeting. As I was speaking with Dr. John Thatamanil (Union Theological Seminary), he spoke of a kind of “protestant reformation” that occurs in Buddhism in about 9^th-12^th century and becomes the standard expression in Japanese Buddhism. It was something that I have been connecting now for some time. By "protestant reformation," we were of course thinking of the move from a works-based form of religious expression to one of confessional form. This is perhaps not the greatest expression of all the reformation addressed and leaves room for expansion, but it does get at a similar concept in Shin Buddhism: the ordering of jiriki and tariki.

There are three narratives that come to mind that suggest Buddhism is not consigned to the bank of merit it has often been romanticized in.

Shin Buddhism is the most obvious expression here. Here, the name of Amida Buddha is venerated. By recitation of the name, strength is found in the other (the practice known as tariki) as opposed to jiriki, the practice of inner-self concentration.

A second example is the story of the Buddha who comes to his friend Gopala. The latter begs the Buddha not to leave him for fear he will fail in his sadhana (spiritual exercises) and return to adharma. So the Buddha leaves the imprint of his shadow on a cave wall. This is supposed to infuse righteousness that makes Gopala’s ability to keep dharma possible.

A third form found in Tibetan Buddhism is the Sutra Pagpa Chulung Rolyay Do. It is a mantra that was written by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and it is thought that merely casting one’s gaze upon it purifies one of negativity for many eons. There is a resemblance to the nehushtan in this manner of “faith” (the story of Moses and the bronze serpent). Certainly John thought it a faith-act, as the gospel writer records, “just as Moses lifted up the serpent, Jesus was also to be lifted up.” (John 3:14)

 

How You Should Read Matthew 26:11 in Relation to Deuteronomy 15:11. An Easter Reflection

The soon coming of the Lord Jesus beacons our attention as Easter is just around the corner! So I was thinking today on Jesus’ use of Jewish Bible passages relevant to his own teachings and Deuteronomy came to mind. The verse comes in the context of how to deal righteously with debts, debtors, and the poor. In Deuteronomy 15:11.

There will always be poor people in the land.

Jesus reported spoke similar words, “The poor you will always have among you, but me only for a short time.” (Matthew 26:11 - notice the fact that this comes as the 11th verse in both bibles is just coincidence!)

It is an interesting theological exercise to try to imagine what the writer of the gospel was thinking when he wrote these words. We know the verse occurs in the context of a woman anointing Jesus’ head with expensive perfume and the disciples arguing that it was a wasteful act. But the author reminds us that such things were done as a preamble to Jesus’ own burial.

The plain exegetical sense of the statement is hard to resist, especially when compared to its counterpart in Deuteronomy 15:11, another verse about money, the poor, and generosity.

Both verses tell us there will always be poor. And if we interpret this literally, always means always.  Really? But what about the age of the messiah, when all wrongs will be righted and all people will come to worship the one true God? Jesus doesn’t answer in this context, and so as some Christian scurry to claim that the last part of this verse is only in reference the end of his physical body (because, after all, Jesus is God divine), they conveniently do some interpretive gymnastics with the first part of the verse, consigning the always to the course of history…but not Jesus whom they parcel out in two natures!

Again, it is helpful if we go to Judaism and get an idea of what the Tannaim or Amoraim may have been thinking at the time when they also read such a verse. An early tractate in the Talmud called Berakhot, has an interesting take on the verse. Folio 34B reads:

There is no difference between this world and the days of the Messiah except the oppression of the heathen kingdoms alone, as it is said, “For the poor shall never cease from the land” (Deuteronomy 15:11)

So here we have the verse read as a gemara in a messianic context, precisely the kind of thing we’d want to see if reading about Jesus the messiah.

Yet the tractate specifically says, even in the time of them messiah, the poor will still be around. So is inequality, injustice part of the messianic reign? They are other verses that talk about an age of peace, but clearly the interpretive trend here was to read the verse literally. It means that Jesus too read the verse literally, and so to tag onto the second part of the verse, some rather forced sophistication about the separation of the two natures of Jesus, the body and soul, feels contrived to say the least. Jesus thought his end was coming. He thought he would die. End of story.

 

But now we are free to return to our theology!

If I interpret both ends of the verse faithfully, Jesus would be saying that the poor will indeed always be here insofar as the messianic age is concerned, and I will not. So, is he denying his messianic call? Denying is a strong accusation. If you are believer and looking to preserve the integrity of a faithful understanding of the verse in the tradition of a systematic theology that avoids problematic exegesis, one may simply plead that Jesus in the gospel is ignorant of the incarnation. In the garden he seems to be rattled. He seems to give up hope in various places, and in others seem sure about himself and his mission.

Furthermore, this story is shadowed in John at precisely the same time of his betrayal! In John, however, it is Judas, not the disciples who talk about wasteful acts of charity and giving. In both gospels Jesus rebukes them. John, where we would expect Jesus to say something like “you will have me for a short time, but I will rise again” – at least I this context, does not. I have a much easier time reading Matthew 26 without doing exegetical stunts, then say if it had occurred in the gospel of John the intermingling of Jesus’ two natures is obvious much more developed.

A Review of Exodus: Gods and Kings and Why You Should Watch

So I finally had a chance to see the Exodus: Gods and Kings movie starring Christian Bale. While I know the story was wrecked in the media and Hebrew bible scholars no less had a field day pointing out all the inaccuracies contained within the movie, I found it fresh and enjoyable.

If you’ve read my blog for any time, you’ll know I am not a classic liberal, who demands historical continuity at the expense of the miraculous, or an orthodox thinker, who demands faithful renderings to a biblical script that upon closer inspection is often not faithful to itself.

[Spoilers from this point on]

What I liked:

The reviews I have read all noted the unique way in which God was featured. I very much admired the way the story depicted God as a child, the innocence of whom was constantly undermined by his own unapologetic demand for Egyptian blood. There was one dialogue in which Moses and the child god go at it. Moses argues that it is insensible to seek revenge on the Egyptians and cruel (a point Rameses makes later when all the firstborn of the Egyptians are murdered). God argues that justice must be served and reminds Moses that 400 years of oppression the backdrop to his violent answer to the Egyptians who care for no one but themselves.

Exodus definitely goes beyond the biblical narrative, and this was the part I very much enjoyed. When one reads the story of Moses there are questions we all want answered but are hard to come by.

Exodus attempts to answer questions such as: How could Moses so seamlessly turn on his own people (the Egyptians) to take up the cause of his true people (the Israelites). The story does a great job holding these two aspects in tension. Moses was not easily convinced he was doing the right thing, so much that even with God, he argues about it. His loyalty towards Rameses and his family is constantly wracking his every decision, even in the final episode during the Red Sea passage where he tries his hardest to save him.

I liked the exchange between Moses and his wife Siphra. At one point, he tells her he is going to free the Israelites and like Rameses later, she questions what kind of God would take a husband away from his family? It’s interesting because it brought me back to my readings in Hegel, who also critically questioned the fidelity of Abraham as a loner who would leave his fatherland to drag his family into alien lands. Hegel was critical in the context of the German Zeitgeist which celebrated nationalism. Siphra’s question might seem more banal, but it was a thought I found important.

Perhaps what I liked the most was the way Moses was portrayed when having conversations with God. At one point he is seen having a one-way conversation. He appears quite mad, and rightfully so. But it appropriately blurs the line between madman and prophet. Any time we are asked to follow the vision presented to us of the divine by another, we are suspicious in our modern age of science. For all the lunatics who claimed to hear from God, are there some in the group who are more worthy to listen to than others? That’s the question Exodus teases. And I think it does it quite effectively.

As a post-conservative, I especially liked the way the plagues were handled. Would it be supernaturally fantastic, I wondered? And of course, they were not. The Nile turning to blood, for example, was not an entire river, just what was central to the civilization. Even those instances where the downplaying of a miracle was impossible was done mysteriously and without too much fanfare, for example, during the killing of all the firstborn. At the end of it all, you did not necessarily find a God worthy of worship and love, but perhaps fear and obedience.

The creating of the Ten Commandments was great. There was no Charlton Heston standing clenched while a lightning bolt carved in the words of the Decalogue. There was simply a madman once again who fled to a mountaintop where he painstakingly chiseled out words to a stone tablet.

 

What I disliked:

In some instances, while the story is conscious of transitioning too fast from the Egyptian Moses to the Jewish patriot Moses, there is only so much a 2.5 hour movie can do. At times, the dialogue between Moses and Rameses is wooden. You don’t believe Moses really cares about the Israelites (and in fact there is this important part towards the end of the movie where, after declaiming them to God, admits they are his people). So when Moses is speaking with Rameses, you still get the sense he is fighting blindly and without purposes for a people he doesn’t believe in. That’s not the biblical Moses, but  it is this human element that does a much better job.

After Rameses permits the Hebrew exodus, he had a change of heart. This is done without any kind of reflection and felt a bit forced. One moment we see him looking towards the ground. The next he is mounting chariots to chase the Israelites to the sea.

Some of the cast of characters surrounding Rameses were just odd and felt more like Greco-Roman advisors out of time then Egyptians.

Finally, the Israelites themselves were simply just a backdrop. This story was really about Moses’ break with his Egyptian relations and roots. Because of this you never felt any empathy towards the Israelites even though you should have. You never really got to feel the pain of slavery, say like I did in watching the movie Twelve Years a Slave. This is because the people being depicted were largely a rabble with no purpose. Even Ben Kingsley, who is an excellent actor, was diminished to a poorly cast Hebrew rebel leader with whom you could not sympathize or care about.

Some Final Thoughts

A lot of people criticized this movie because of the casting in general, saying that the roles were primarily taken up by white Westerners. From a purely technical point-of-view, I agree this is problematic. Sigourney Weaver was horribly out of place. But on the other hand, Rameses played by Joel Edgerton, at least in my opinion, pulled it off.  On a side note, it puzzles me a bit that Michele Rodriguez (an Hispanic actress known for her role in the Fast and Furious series) comes under fire last month for suggesting that minorities create their own comic book mythologies instead of taking the roles of characters not their own, but when Caucasians are cast in roles as in Exodus not their own, they draw fiery criticism. Double standard? Sure. But I didn’t find it made the movie any less unwatchable than seeing the way Marvel has developed the Nick Fury character in the Avengers movies, changing him from a white male in the comic books for many, many years to an African-American played by  Samuel L. Jackson.

And then there was the problem of taking liberties in the story. The dogmatists came out of the woodwork on this one. One such example, the one that was supposed to get Moses in trouble in the first place was when he killed an Egyptian slave master beating on a Hebrew. This never happens in the movie. Instead, Moses is mistaken for a slave after meeting with a hidden enclave of Hebrews who tell him he is really a Hebrew himself. He responds by murdering two of his Egyptian accusers. But there is no context, except perhaps for Moses to feel what it might be like to suffer discrimination. Yet, the episode does not really effective advance Moses’ transformation as a character.

Nevertheless, speaking as a student of Jewish studies, I find that the transformative re-telling of the Exodus is very much in keeping with the spirit of Rabbinical Judaism. The Rabbis constantly transformed well-known stories in an attempt to draw out the human element. The questions left unanswered such as “what was Moses early life like” all have constitutive answers in the Rabbinic literature. Even in Christianity, the unspoken years of Jesus’ early life are addressed and given shape in some non-canonical works. Still, much more in Judaism than Christianity, the idea of canon is much more malleable. And so reading this from a Jewish perspective, not a Judeo-Christian one, I didn’t have much of a problem with the recreation of the text to answer those existential questions that we’ve all asked when reading and contemplating the Exodus account.

So did I like the movie better than the book? There’s an old Rabbinic statement that says there are 70 faces to Torah. The way I approach the canonical text is different than someone else. One who approaches the movie needs merely to see that this is one director’s interpretation a text that has many interpretations throughout history. And unlike Christianity, I feel there is a call from deep within Judaism to experiment texts. Mission accomplished? Maybe.

March updates

Star Date March 11, 2015….The snow fell hard in Maryland on March 5, Thursday, and as a result, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting of the American Academy of Religion had to consolidate its normally two-day event into a one day event. So on March 6, I presented both of my scheduled papers, rather than over the course of two-days. Attendance was smaller due to the snow, and in one of the sessions the moderator failed to show and didn’t notify anyone, so I had the opportunity to stand in.

The first paper I presented was an argument for a positive and affirming theology in support of homosexual unions using the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I presented a similar paper at last year’s session where I looked at important passages specific on the topic of marriage that Bonhoeffer addressed and then examined the use of his concept of responsible marriage while in conversation with Bernd Wannenwelsch. This new paper focused primarily on three conceptual themes that also support a broader and affirming position on homosexual unions. These were:   the use of de-genderized language in Bonhoeffer’s theological writing, the use and misuse of procreation as an apology for marriage, and the ontological argument for sin as opposed to a deontological one.

My second paper was presented on a shift in the ethical language used to determine candidacy at Yad Vashem’s Gentile Holocaust Memorial. I looked at Dietrich Bonhoeffer once more, whose petition was denied on multiple occasions, to understand what reasons may have been motivating such decisions. It was my argument that this change in ethical language is largely to blame since the principle of pekuach nefesh (saving a life) – in this case a Jewish life was a guiding principle that replaced the ethical groundwork upon which the concept of the ger toshav was built. A second examination looked at how the Germans became the embodiment of evil immediately following Nuremberg, and that any association with them had to be challenged. I ended up moderating this session as well, and the papers were as diverse as they were engaging.

This coming month includes a lot of writing as well, including a very long paper on theodicy in Jewish theology for my independent studies class. More reading and writing for my Hindu Studies class.  And finally, this week I had my thesis proposal accepted. So the next phase of my writing journey begins. I promise to get to my Bonhoeffer manuscript soon as well.

Why is Kelly Gissendaner’s Spiritual Conversion so Important in Her Upcoming Execution and What it Means for the Church

As I sit here waiting to hear news on the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that could spare the life of Kelly Gissendaner, I am thinking about some of the words spoken in the last attempts made by her supporters and lawyers to save her life. Usually, this hinges on the lack of evidence or the credibility of a witness. But this case is different because this person’s life hangs in the balance because of a deep theological issue, one that, though recognized by the court, is hardly the place of the court.

As Ms. Gissendaner waits to be executed, her life depended just hours ago upon whether her lawyers could have convinced the court whether she had a conversion experience or not. It’s quite unique because I don’t recall ever following similar cases where spiritual issues were used as a point of contention in a stay of execution appeal.

I’m also interested in an issue that perhaps no one will think or care about: the efficacy of theology and the reality of doctrine. While prosecutors at this point will focus on justice and supporters of clemency will use theological languages of love and forgiveness, both have already seemed to not pick up on what is already in the rearview mirror: the spiritual lifeblood of the church seems to have already been judged.

No one would doubt that theology is a bizarre and strange place to build an appeal. But perhaps no more bizarre than a system that while based on Judeo-Christian ethics ignores the broader brushstrokes of the theological background out of which those ethics come. So in one article, we hear through Ms. Gissendaner’s bishop  that Kelly was a transformed person, her actions, her receipt of a theological degree, and her genuine attempts to change herself all tell the story of a converted Christian. Somehow this diligence also shows her experience to be more authentic than others of her inmates who made similar attempts, perhaps with less success, and therefore in the defense of her lawyers were not of the same kind as Ms. Gissendaner’s experience.

Yet in her defense’s defense, there is theological precedent for such a claim. After all, Jesus says “by their fruits you know them”, and Kelly’s fruits, at least insofar as all who knew her following her crime, blossomed voluminously in the testimonies of the people she touched. I do not doubt this. The practical spirituality preached by Jesus accords well with the empirical evidence required of courts to make difficult decisions.

On the other hand, we have a different story; this one comes from the prosecution, who rightly I might add, points to Ms. Gissendaner’s baptism in 1996, a year before the commission of the heinous crime. You can listen to that interview here:

http://www.11alive.com/story/news/local/2015/02/27/episcopal-priest-gissenbaner-murder-death-row/24159959/

So as a student of theology, we might ask what is conversion and what is baptism? According to the church and Ms. Gissendaner’s tradition, conversion is baptism. It is a transformative experience one in which the individual receives grace that both purifies and sanctifies. One is supposed to move out of darkness and into light, from ontological wrongness to rightness. The Catholic Catechism declares:

Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: "Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration through water in the word.

Likewise, the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (Gissendaner’s tradition) describes baptism as “the full initiation by Water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body.”

So those who are asking why Ms. Gissendaner’s conversion is efficient now but was not in 1996 are working under a valid assumption and exposing some of the ways in which we excuse the logic of the doctrine because quite frankly not many of us live up to the expectations that are said to occur in baptism. And that’s the real theological issue here. If the doctrine initiates us into the body of Christ, if we are brought from death to life, and regenerated, then it is not at all unreasonable that one’s life would accord with such a decision.

In 1996, Kelly Gissendaner was an adult who made a decision that was consistent with her conscience at the time.  She was baptized. In 1997, Kelly Gissendaner as an adult made a decision that was consistent with her conscience at the time. She had her husband murdered. While the public at large instinctively recognizes that baptism is only as meaningful as the person who makes it, this is not the position of the Episcopal, Protestant, and Catholic Churches. The issue here really is theological, and more than an indictment of Gissendaner, it is an indictment of theology.