Christian Schizophrenia

The state (and I don’t mean Georgia) killed Troy Davis last Wednesday, a manifestation of what I call Christian schizophrenia. I could easily be talking about Muslim schizophrenia or Jewish schizophrenia or any number of religious schizophrenias, but right now I’m talking about the good old U.S.A.’s affliction.

People like Jimmy Carter and Reverend Al Sharpton represent one side of the schizophrenic code. They temper the hail and brimstone fervor of an “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” with the “love thy neighbor as thyself.” They believe there is redemption in good conduct: society, as well as the individual, are responsible for creating an environment in which the human spirit can flourish and do good deeds. The death penalty allows no redemption. The commutation of Davis’ death sentence would have acknowledged his 20 years of self-improvement during his incarceration (or rather his 20 years of torture on death row).

The flip side of the schizophrenic code is represented by folks like Rick Perry, who as governor of Texas has presided over the execution of 235 people. As a fundamentalist Christian he’s definitely a “life for a life” kind of guy: no extenuating circumstances such as societal racism, poverty, or misogyny should ever interfere with the state’s license to kill. This license to kill is equated with God’s will.

Both forms of Christianity conflate justice and religion in their own perverse ways. While I admire many of the liberation theology priests and nuns who have devoted their lives to helping people around the world and who don’t want anybody killed in the name of God, they still believe there is a God to whose will we must submit. An NAACP leader outside the prison, right before Davis’s execution, said, when she heard of a rumored last minute stay, “We thank God, our prayers have been answered.” But then whoops, they decided to execute him after all: God’s will again. Within five minutes God had changed from the benevolent, merciful God of the Carters and Sharptons to the vengeful, unforgiving God of the Perrys. How schizophrenic is that?

I don’t know whether Davis was guilty or innocent, and the people (jury, lawyers, judge, guards, executioner) who participated in his death certainly didn’t know. Only Davis himself knew the truth. That he was put to death by state sanction (something different than the people) is tragic and inhumane. But the really unsettling part of this scenario is that the fundamentalist Christian schizophrenics (and complicity, the “love thy neighbor” schizophrenics) insist that this country was founded on Christian principles (they usually say Judeo-Christian, but that’s just a bone for AIPAC) and that these principles should guide every institution, not just the criminal [in]justice system. Its vengeful absolutism already determines the way many institutions are run: No Child Left Behind dictates that you teach kids to take a test and if they fail that test you punish the school by taking away its funding and firing its teachers. Now they want to punish all the old and sick people who don’t have IRAs, stock portfolios, or private health insurance because there is something sinful about these folks who haven’t achieved the American dream despite what Elizabeth Warren pointed out the other day, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.”

Fundamentalism has been around forever. But the increased fervor to make it the guiding “light” (darkness) of our combined lives when the Enlightenment is 300 years old, postmodernism permeates culture, and every prejudice the Bible holds dear is being smashed to smithereens is testimony to an even more insidious schizophrenia. It’s not endemic to the U.S., but when more than one of our presidential candidates is the face of this affliction it’s time to lock up the crazies instead of the criminals.