Interview With Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson spearheads the Montgomery, Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, which has embraced many controversial and difficult cases since its inception in 1989. A committed Christian, Stevenson has been working since law school with indigent and marginalized people caught in the crosshairs of the judicial system. Instead of reaping the financial benefits of his top-tier education and launch at a private law firm in the Northeast, Stevenson moved to Alabama, a state which boasts one of the highest death penalty rates and some of the most shameful racial legacies in the United States.

Question: One of the major social groups that oppose your fight against the death penalty is evangelicals. But in theory, they too believe in redemption and share your concept of God. Why do you think that is?

Stevenson: I don't know. I worry about what I would call institutional Christianity--cultural preferences and political perspectives that are cloaked in Christian garb but which underneath don't seem very integrated. I don't want to be critical of other institutions, but I am critical of the way the church is sometimes used that is wholly inconsistent with the teachings of Christ. We're not forced to explain ourselves if we say we're a Christian organization and our top goal this year is to fight against tax increases, which is what we see so much of in this state.

I spend a lot of time talking to evangelicals, some of whom I think come from very conservative communities, and so much of what I encounter is a real lack of thought. This notion that God is Republican, and therefore every Republican speaks for God--it's scary how comfortable some folks have gotten with that. Obviously Christians are called to reject the notion that God's a Republican or a Democrat, that God belongs to us and to no one else, that our Christianity is intended to justify morally our pursuit of wealth and power and our distance from the problems of the poor and disadvantaged. To me that just doesn't settle with the life of Christ. At a minimum, I think we need to talk about these things.

Question: I've heard spokespeople for evangelical organizations make the argument that God not only permits the death penalty but actually requires it. What's your response to that?

Stevenson: I'd say it's not, in my view, an integrated understanding of the Scriptures. Jesus says, when asked about the death penalty, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." It doesn't say it's absolutely not permissible. I think what Jesus says (and what I believe) is that the question about the death penalty is not "Do some people deserve death for the crimes they commit?" but rather "Do we deserve to kill?" Are we so perfected, so beyond sin, so comfortable in our condition of grace that we are now capable of picking up the stones and throwing them? Jesus understood that we are never in that condition. We are saved by grace. We are perfected only through love and through daily acts of redemption and suffering and struggle and prayer and reflection; we never get to the point where we can act on this arguably permissible, scriptural authority to kill. Evangelicals say we believe that we're put on the planet to spread the gospel and share the love of Christ, but to me it's wholly inconsistent to be committed to that task and yet to want a secular government to eliminate folks before that act of ministry and reconciliation can be completed.

I am thoroughly convinced by the transformations that I see in people. I don't believe that anybody is beyond the grace of God. I've known a lot of people on death row about whom I could say, "This person is ill" or "This person may never be in a position to be released," but I've never met anybody about whom I could say, "This person is beyond redemption--his life has no value, no meaning, no purpose - and it is morally justifiable to kill him." And I certainly have not encountered a system of government or government officials about whom I could say, "These folks have it together; they are so beyond discrimination against the poor, so infallible that they should absolutely decide who lives and who dies."

We don't deny that we've got clients who've done horrific things that deserve really severe punishment. We just don't think that a state like Alabama, or Mississippi, or Georgia, or Pennsylvania, or New York, or California has the capacity to exercise these perfect judgments. Because when you kill a human being, you can't make mistakes--it requires perfection.

Question: Alabama has more churches per capita than any other state in the country, yet it sentences more people to death than any other state. Is there a relationship?

Stevenson: I think there's something really corruptive at play in a lot of our churches. We have politicians, both locally and nationwide, who are preaching fear and anger. They don't want Christians and people of faith thinking about how to love, how to restore, how to serve, how to respond to the suffering of those without. They want them angry. They want them angry about Hollywood and angry about people who are gay and angry about liberals and angry about taxes. They want them fearful of crime and fearful of terrorism and fearful of all these threats. That then yields social and political policies that are very predictable. What that will give you is a desire for the death penalty, support for mass incarceration, resistance to social justice, indifference to the poor, contempt for those who are disadvantaged and marginalized. This explains how we can be so saturated with churches and religious institutions and yet so silent on social justice issues and so lax in doing the things Jesus called for us to do.

The same level of religiosity, the same number of churches existed when we were comfortably defending segregation in this state. Churches have comfortably defended segregation and Jim Crow laws and comfortably tolerated lynching. Many of them comfortably accepted slavery. The comfort level of religious institutions and people expressing Christian ideology in the face of horrific human suffering, tragedy, and abuse has some historical antecedent. It's only when we get past that--usually because we're pushed by somebody who's not necessarily a person of faith - that we begin to come around. Any meaningful conversation about where we are has to focus on this: Why have we so frequently allowed ourselves to sit silently in church pews while horrific abuses and injustices and evil are being tolerated, oftentimes with our support? That's the challenge, I think, for all of us, because we've seen the church do so many things that undermine the kingdom of God. Human history is filled with volumes of gross abuse and evil, all in the name of God. Unfortunately, people are still very comfortable using God and Christianity to legitimate conduct that is very ungodly.

A lot of us really deprive ourselves of opportunities for incomparable joy and extraordinary spiritual affirmation and meaning when we shield ourselves from engaging people who are in crisis, suffering, sick, in prison. What I'd like to communicate to everyone is that if you get proximate to death row prisoners, to people who are struggling, and you just bear witness to their struggle and assist them when you can, there is this extraordinary redemptive experience that will reach you. Don't go into it thinking that you're doing this for somebody else; understand that you're doing this for yourself, because I guarantee you'll get more from it than you'll give. I think when we shield ourselves from those sort of experiences we deny ourselves a lot of miraculous redemptive excitement that being a person of faith can offer us.