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The same white evangelical Christians who want “Thou shalt not kill” posted in every public school classroom, and who oppose all kinds of reproductive rights because they’re “pro-life” are now cheering on the possibility of a live-streamed public execution.
Last week, the Pentagon announced that Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, is scheduled to die by firing squad on December 3. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution would be live-streamed so everyone can watch. Donald Trump says he’ll make the final decision about the livestream soon, though reports say he’s waffling on the matter. Who knows what’s gonna happen.
The thing is: Prominent white evangelicals who could have denounced this are doing cartwheels because they love violence, especially against a brown guy with a Muslim name.
Pastor Robert Jeffress, one of Trump’s biggest allies, supports it.
He says capital punishment is “commanded by God” and argues that “more people” should see a public execution. He told the Dallas Morning News he would likely watch it himself.
Doug Wilson, the pastor of Hegseth’s church, also prefers public executions.
In a statement to [Religion News Service], Wilson — who oversees the controversial church Hegseth attends — said he prefers “public executions to those conducted in the recesses of a prison somewhere in the middle of the night,” adding, “executions in the Scriptures were public.”
Megachurch pastor Josh Howerton echoed the idea that public executions are acceptable because they were in the Bible, implying that a televised execution isn’t un-biblical.
And the radical TheoBros like Pastor Dale Partridge were calling for more events like this.
These guys all think a Pride flag in a classroom is harmful. They don’t wants kids to watch Ms. Rachel because they insist she’ll steer them wrong. But apparently a government-sponsored snuff film is their idea of a good time. I wouldn’t put it past them to broadcast it to their churches’ Sunday Schools.
I guess I’m not surprised the sort of men who would probably cheer on lynchings are also the sort of people who’ll throw parties to watch a man die. They constantly speak about the power of Christ, but the lesson they learned from a public crucifixion was that they want to be the Romans.
To be clear, though, this is not a position all Christians share. Pope Leo opposes the death penalty in general and denounced this execution, saying it was “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who oversees Catholic ministry to military members, said Catholic soldiers should ask to be excused from participating in the firing squad assigned to murder Hasan. (Vice President JD Vance, the Catholic convert, obviously doesn’t share these views.)
Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, warned that live-streaming an execution turns it into a spectacle and promotes a “culture of death,” though he did not say the death penalty itself was wrong. He just wants it done behind closed doors. Because that’s the evangelical way.
And evangelist Franklin Graham, attempting to find some bizarre middle ground, blamed liberals for depicting fake forms of violence in movies. As if that’s worse than the Republicans he actively supports literally murdering someone to satisfy their base’s bloodlust.
It’s not surprising that Graham can’t tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction since that’s what his entire ministry is about.
The same people who have spent years insisting that Christianity must shape public discourse and who backed Project 2025 have a choice now: Listen to the Christian leaders who represent broader segments of their faith—like Kim or Pope Leo—or listen to Pete Hegseth and his merry band of incompetent frat boys.
If the execution is live-streamed, it’s not hard to guess what most white evangelicals will do, because it’s the same thing they’ve been doing for years: They’ll put out some pathetically weak statements decrying the state of the country, then allow it to happen because they’re all too damn cowardly to speak up against their Lord and Savior Donald Trump.
This administration isn’t interested in what any of these religious leaders have to say if it goes against whatever they want to to do, because they know Trump has way more sway over conservatives than the Pope or Jesus. (You know: liberals.)
So if our country goes through with this, joining the ranks of other public-execution-proponents like Saudi Arabia and North Korea, you can blame right-wing pastors and Republicans in office for continuing to prop up Trump no matter how often and how horribly he debases his office. They don’t care if our own troops will be put at more risk because of his reckless actions. They don’t care if we do what ISIS has done in the past because the desires of religious extremists overlap more than than white evangelicals in America will ever admit.
We shouldn’t be surprised, though.
White evangelicals and conservative Catholics were fine when Trump was bragging about groping women. It wasn’t a dealbreaker. They were fine when his supporters stormed the Capitol. They never cared about any of the corruption. They didn’t do anything outside of a press release when he cut USAID or allowed diseases to spread. They don’t speak out loud enough against the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza. So they’re not going to suddenly find courage when it comes to denouncing a live-streamed execution.
This is just red meat for a group of violent, heartless assholes.
If any of these people actually wanted to punish Trump over this, there is a simple thing they could do: Tell their followers right now not to vote for Republicans anywhere on the ballot. Not now. Not in 2028. They will never do that. Because they don’t actually care. They love having access to power. They can rationalize any amount of death and destruction in the name of promoting their religion. It’s easy to see how they’ll do it, too. They’re just gonna say some bullshit about how abortion kills more people than the death penalty, or whatever lie they prefer to tell to convince themselves they’re not ultimately responsible for this.
Personally, I don’t think the death penalty is acceptable in any situation. But we’re so far beyond that argument right now. If you don’t stop authoritarians, they only get more extreme. And the people with the power to stop him refuse to do anything meaningful.
I have read about people in the Reconstructionist and Dominionest movements who called for roughly half the people in America to be put to death because it would be so pleasing to their loving Jesus. Churches did not stop burning people alive because they realized it was wrong. They stopped when the rise in secular government forced them to. America's evangelical churches are no place to go in search of human decency.
This isn't just red meat for a bunch of right-wing Christian assholes. It is prime recruiting material for every Islamic group that hates the United States, wants to point to us, and say this is what the supposedly advanced country is doing. On top of everything else, it clearly makes Nadal Malik Hasan a martyr, and that is plenty of grist for their mill as it is.
It would be lovely if Trump would recognize the potential blowback and consequences of live streaming an execution. Unfortunately, I'm not certain he's that smart.