A UMNS Commentary
By John C. Goodwin*
March 28, 2008

“You have women cler­gy in The United Methodist Church?” The ques­tion was posed to me sev­er­al years ago by Sister Dorothy Briggs, a new friend in the move­ment to abol­ish the death penal­ty.

Acknowledging that she knew very lit­tle about the Protestant church, she was delight­ed to learn that most Protestant church­es ordain women. She was espe­cial­ly pleased to learn that The United Methodist Church has female bishops.

I went on to tell her about the spir­it of ​’56.

In 1956, the Methodist Church gave women full cler­gy rights. The 1956 General Conference also added oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty to the church’s Book of Discipline. There had been church edi­to­ri­als against cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment going back at least to the tri­al and exe­cu­tions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the 1920s, but it wasn’t until 1956 that oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty became church pol­i­cy. Movement in New Jersey

On Dec. 17, 2007, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine signed a bill abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty, mak­ing New Jersey the first state to abol­ish the prac­tice since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1976 after a U.S. Supreme Court-ordered hia­tus. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 36 states now allow cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, while 14 oth­ers, plus the District of Columbia, do not.

Why New Jersey? Corzine had stat­ed that he has been against cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for his entire polit­i­cal life. But gov­er­nors can’t change state laws with­out the sup­port of a major­i­ty of the state’s leg­is­la­tors. Legislators need to know the views of their con­stituents. An impor­tant role for the church is to edu­cate peo­ple on moral issues and to encour­age them to express their views, and the posi­tion of the church, to their leg­is­la­tors.

Many church mem­bers are unaware that The United Methodist Church oppos­es cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and cer­tain­ly there are United Methodists on both sides of this issue.

In 1998, the New Jersey Council of Churches called togeth­er 10 Protestant lead­ers to dis­cuss the death penal­ty and pos­si­ble respons­es. Out of that meet­ing came a pas­toral let­ter in which the denom­i­na­tion­al lead­ers explained that in their view the death penal­ty was incom­pat­i­ble with Christian teach­ings, and they pledged to edu­cate their members.

Former United Methodist Bishop Alfred Johnson, a sign­er of the pas­toral let­ter, estab­lished the New Jersey area Task Force to Abolish the Death Penalty. I became the co-con­ven­er of the task force, work­ing first with the Rev. Bryan Bass-Riley and then with the Rev. William Greene. Coordinating close­ly with the con­fer­ence board of church and soci­ety, we devel­oped edu­ca­tion­al and wor­ship mate­ri­als, spon­sored a pub­lic event with guest speak­ers, led work­shops in church­es and wrote res­o­lu­tions which, after pas­sage at each annu­al con­fer­ence, were mailed by the con­fer­ence sec­re­tary to all 120 state leg­is­la­tors and the gov­er­nor.

The task force also aligned itself with a new­ly formed sec­u­lar orga­ni­za­tion – – New Jerseyans for a Death Penalty Moratorium – – which lat­er became New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. I joined their exec­u­tive com­mit­tee as did the Rev. Karl Kraft, a United Methodist pas­tor, and our bish­ops have served on the advisory committee. 

Laying the groundwork

Without this orga­ni­za­tion — and the faith and sec­u­lar groups they enlist­ed in the cause of abo­li­tion — New Jersey would not have made death penal­ty his­to­ry.

They vis­it­ed leg­is­la­tors, orga­nized pub­lic meet­ings and let­ter-writ­ing cam­paigns, often in church­es, and devel­oped a data­base of more than 10,000 sym­pa­thet­ic indi­vid­u­als. They brought in inno­cent exon­er­at­ed Death Row inmates to speak and to tes­ti­fy before gov­ern­men­tal com­mit­tees. Several sur­viv­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers of vio­lent crimes active­ly proved that sur­vivors don’t always demand exe­cu­tions to bring about ​“clo­sure.“

Sister Briggs, who died in 2006 at the age of 83, orga­nized a pro­gram that encour­ages peo­ple to ring their church bells or put up ban­ners on those days when some­one, any­where in the coun­try, is exe­cut­ed. My church dis­plays such a ban­ner, which is often seen by our pro-death penal­ty state sen­a­tor.

I am con­vinced that the United States will join Western Europe and most of the democ­ra­cies of the world in giv­ing up the death penal­ty. But here, for a time at least, the work must be done on a state-by-state basis. This is how The United Methodist Church can help to make a dif­fer­ence.

*Goodwin, a pho­to­jour­nal­ist, is a mem­ber of the United Methodist Church at Demarest, N.J.

News media con­tact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369‑3759 or [email pro­tect­ed].