Having read one or two John Grisham's some years ago and being an obsessive I try to read all he writes. I think this is the latest. I took it on the plane to Kenya. It focuses on the death penalty as apparently practiced in Texas and makes for a very good and easy read. You get both a good story and a mildly stimulating opportunity to think over some of the issues with regard to that matter. A bonus for me was perhaps that the hero is a clergyman (a Lutheran minister). That gave Grisham (a Baptist I believe but decidedly liberal) opportunity to say one or two interesting things that I might share in a separate blog. It also helped with the title, I guess. I also spotted a brief namecheck for Nick Needham (a detective mentioned at the beginning and end adn nothing to do with the Inverness pastor adn church historian).
3 comments:
Have you read the A Saint on Death Row: The Story of Dominique Green by Thomas Cahill [http://amzn.to/jrk533]? A true story of a young man on death row in Texas who was visited by the author. There is also a clergy man in the tale. Desmond Tutu. This book made me rethink/sharpen my position on capital punishment. If a nation is not in covenant with God or there isn't at least an overwhelming Christian consensus executing people [often African Americans and Hispanics] with no physical evidence or witnesses whilst good lawyers get middle class white kids off the hook is gross injustice.
Paul
The Christian case for Capital punishment does not rest on the Mosaic Covenant but the Noahic - a covenant not with a redeemed covenanted people but with humanity - whoso sheds a man's blood by man shall his blood be shed...
That said, I agree, the problem is not so much capital punishment as the fair administration of it. Inequity and miscarriages of justice make capital punishment difficult.
I thik I'm with you both on this. Capital punishment - yes. As currently practiced in Texas (if Grisham is at all correct) - no. It's interesting how the Osama deathhas gone down so well, though there have been murmurs.
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