The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America

by Mark Lewis Taylor

Winner, Best General Interest Book for 2001, Association of Theological Booksellers Between 1980 and 2000, the number of prisoners in the U.S. has tripled to over 2 million people, 70 percent of them people of color. Indeed, by 2000, 3,600 people were on America's death rows. This growth industry currently employs 523,000 people. Among abuses that Mark Taylor notes in this "theater of terror" are capital punishment, inordinate sentencing, violations of fairness in both process and results, racism in the justice system and prisons, prison rape and other terrorizing techniques, and paramilitary policing practices. With twenty-five years of involvement with prison reform, Taylor passionately describes and explains the excesses and injustices in our corrections system and capital punishment to foster compassionate and effective Christian action. His book convincingly relates the life-engendering power of God - demonstrated in Jesus' cross and resurrection - to the potential transformation of the systems of death and imprisonment.

Genres: Theology, Religion, Justice, Sociology

208 pages, Paperback

First published April 23, 2001

About the author

Mark Lewis Taylor is Princeton Seminary’s Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Theology and Culture. He earned his M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. A member of the Presbyterian Church, he frequently teaches and lectures in churches and supports church communities in their efforts to organize on justice and peace issues. Since 1987, he has studied regularly in Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico, where he analyzes the cultural and political dynamics of the churches as they move closer to a contextualized Mayan theology that also facilitates resistance to military repression. He is coordinator for Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal. His regular teaching duties focus on the theologies of Paul Tillich and Gustavo Gutierrez, with full courses also on white racism as theological challenge, feminist and womanist theologies, empire and capital in theological perspective, and cultural-political hermeneutics.

Reviews

[Elliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to take a course with Dr. Taylor on incarceration in the fall of 2020 and read this book alongside the class and him. Definitely one of the most illuminating experiences of my life. At the time this book helped me radically rethink how I analyze prisons, the State, and my own theology. Taylor introduces the reader to the structural triad of the US penal state (termed aptly: Lockdown America)- police violence, mass incarceration, and the death penalty. These challenges fundamentally demand a re-envisioning and a re-creating of what Christianity is. How might Christianity fundamentally challenge the “carceral state?” The way it might, according to Taylor, is by the cultivation and participation in, by Jesus-followers, of a liberating material spirituality. Taylor covers this as he works through a theatrics of state terror and the deployment of a counter theatrics of state terror. All in all a highly recommended book for Christians wanting to challenge Lockdown America.

[Jared Winkler · Rating 5 out of 5]

The single most inspiring book I've read (that isn't the Bible). When it comes to high and low Christologies, Mark Lewis Taylor takes it about a low as you can get which frames Jesus's story in a much needed and relevant way.

[TJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a light read, but a very good read. it’s sort of blowing my mind -looking at a new way to understand Jesus death as a political death. As well as reframing Paul as co-opting imperial language to refer to Jesus.

[Patrick Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best treatment of a Christian response to the death penalty I have read.

[Yanan Rahim · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

[Mark Rosekelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you only read the first few chapters you would understand the general idea of the book. The picture of Jesus not just being crucified but executed by a Roman judicial system is a powerful symbol. The rest of the book is has some logical issues and the other falls into unhelpful language that alienates the unconvinced reader. Ultimately it is a book that is very critical of the criminal justice system in America.