Changing Lanes: An Execution to Be Televised Prompts a Papal Statement

Although Pope Francis amended Catholic social ethics to exclude the death penalty rather than continue to accept the punishment in cases in which no other punishment is practical or available, Pope Leo decided in October, 2026 to make a public statement of his Church’s opposition to the death penalty in reaction to the decision of the Trump administration to televise an upcoming execution live on television. That a woman had recently survived execution attempts by two lethal injections may have primed the pope’s pump, as it were. The danger is that the foray into applied ethics by leaders of a religious organization could conflate ethics and theology. That the latter transcends, and may even violate ethical principles, can easily be forgotten when a religious leader speaks out a lot on ethical issues. In the case of Pope Leo’s statement on capital punishment, a distinctly theological rationale can be found, and, I submit, should have received more emphasis, lest the religious leader be reduced to an ethical critic, or conscience. To be sure, in 2026, the world was very much in need of a public conscience, especially because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was still underway, as was Israel’s genocide in Gaza and wanton violence in the West Bank—all of this aggression was being done with obvious impunity.

Tennessee, a member of the U.S., attempted to execute Debra Johnson with two doses of pentobarbital on September 30, 2026. “At one point she was on a ventilator and her attorney did not expect her to survive. However, they said Pike woke up and began walking with assistance.”[1] This quoted passage from the media makes her recovery seem like a miracle. If it was, perhaps the distinctly Christian deity, which is selfless love (agape), saved Pike’s life out of opposition to the death penalty. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord comes from the Old Testament. In the New Testament, the deity is epitomized by compassion especially for one’s detractors and even enemies. Pray for those who persecute you, and respond to their human needs with acts of compassion. Neither prayer alone nor being compassion friends suffices. Forgiveness is implicit in being compassionate to someone like Pike, who in 1995 had beaten and stabbed one of her classmates. It is not as if she had gone a murder spree, mowing down many people with gunfire. If the botched execution could be considered to be cruel and unusual punishment, mercy in the form of a reprieve would be justified. After all, she had already spent 30 years in prison knowing that she would be executed—inflicting that expectation for three decades could also be considered as cruel.

On October 8, 2026, the U.S. announced “that the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people at a military base at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, would be livestreamed on 3 December.”[2] Hasan was an army psychiatrist when he “open fire with a handgun at a medical facility at Fort Hood on 5 November 2009 as soldiers waited for medical checks before deployment. He was shot by a police officer during his arrest and left partly paralyzed, and now uses a wheelchair.”[3] It would be interesting to determine whether he was resisting arrest when he was shot. If he was not, then the police employee should have been arrested and charged with attempted murder. As for Hasan, the United Nations’ office of the high commissioner for human rights warned after the Pentagon’s announcement of the public execution that broadcasting it would “breach the absolute prohibition of torture.”[4] Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. Secretary of State, characterized the televising of the disabled man’s execution as a “barbaric idea.”[5] Unlike Pike, Hasan murdered many people. Also unlike Pike, Hasan himself was shot and partially paralyzed, perhaps unjustly. Even so, airing the execution for the world to see could be considered cruel and unusual punishment. This question is political and jurisprudential, as well as ethical in nature; it is not in itself a religious question unless explicit reference to Hasan’s redemption is added.

In writing Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard makes the point that Abraham is both guilty of attempted murder and is faithful to the divine command to sacrifice his son. The negative jurisprudential and ethical claim is consistent with the positive attribution of faithfulness to the Yahweh—both are correct because they refer to different domains. The charge of attempted murder is valid legally and ethically, and the praise of Abraham obeying a divine command even to sacrifice Isaac is valid theologically. The validity of the theological claim is not invalidated by the unethical act of attempted murder. Theology transcends ethics. Were the Ten Commandments in Torah prior to Abraham, then attempted murder would have theological currency and the question would be: Does the commandment not to kill supersede the divine command to Abraham to murder Isaac? Moreover, how are we to navigate between two conflicting divine commands?

Not being Abraham, and with the Ten Commandments in scripture, both Tennessee and the U.S. faced both the ethical quandary of capital punishment and the divine, theological, decree not to kill. In responding to the debate on whether the U.S. should televise Hasan’s execution, Pope Leo reiterated on October 10, 2026, the World Day Against the Death Penalty, that capital punishment is “inadmissible.”[6] The American Midwestern pope claimed that the punishment is contrary to the inherent dignity of a human being. Human dignity is an ethical rather than a theological term, and thus is not useful from a distinctly theological standpoint. In other words, were the pope driving a car on a road, it could be said that he swerved into another lane; even though the two lanes are related, they not the same lane. Unfortunately, the pope did not use the car’s turning signal to indicate to other drivers that he was going from one lane to another. This analogy falls short, however, because the pope did not entirely leave his lane.

Although the pope wandered from his theological education in claiming in his written statement, “Effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens,” he stayed within his ken, and thus in the theological or religious domain, in adding that capital punishment deprives “those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption.”[7] This raises the question of whether a murderer on death row who has sought redemption could then, on religious grounds, be executed. The pope could have added that in the Ten Commandments, the commandment against killing other human beings prohibits capital punishment—that a murder carried out by a criminal does not justify yet another killing, even by a government. Two wrongs do not make a right is an ethical rather than a distinctly theological saying, and thus should not be used in a religious rationale against capital punishment. Rather than appealing to the dignity of a human being, the pope should have stuck with the theme of redemption and added the commandment against killing human beings. Rather than venture into the field of criminal justice as if he had been educated in that field of knowledge, he should have elaborated on redemption itself. It is admittedly very tempting to go beyond one’s ken to pontificate in other domains of knowledge and human experience. I will not hold this against the Pope, as he too is a native Midwesterner from northern Illinois (even though he serially sins by favoring the White Sox over the Chicago Cubs—or is his lapse merely unethical?).

In conclusion, unless an unethical act (or intent) is proscribed by a divine command or decree, or interferes with soteriology or another distinctly theological value, ethical analysis should be left to ethicists. Put another way, studying theology does not also earn a student the right to a diploma in ethics, which is a subfield of philosophy. To be sure, the two fields can be related, but this is not to say that knowledge in one constitutes knowledge in the other. Unlike theology, criminal justice and the ethics of conduct do not contain the element of religious transcendence, which, as Pseudo-Dionysius wrote, inherently extends beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility (emotions). Contrarily, to say that science still has unknowns is not to say that the empirical unknown lies inherently beyond our reach. Religious functionaries and leaders, to the extent that they are oriented existentially to the inherently beyond, and thus to interpreting other human domains of experience  in terms of the theological, radiate holiness by driving without swerving into other lanes in order to have more influence.

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1, “Christa Pike Is Discharged from a Hospital after Surviving Execution Attempt, Her Attorney Says,” APNews.com, October 10, 2026.
2, David Smith and Ariana Baio, “’Medieval’ and ‘Disturbing’: US Plan to Livestream Execution Elicits Global Condemnation,” The Guardian,  October 2026.
3. Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5, Ibid.
6, Fortunato Pinto, “Pope Leo Condemns Death Penalty, Vance Vows Not to Watch Hasan’s Execution Live,” Euronews.com, 10 October, 2026.
7. Ibid.

All of Me

The transmigration of souls is usually associated with reincarnation. In the film, All of Me (1984), at the moment of death, a person’s soul can be put “into” another person who is alive such that both people “co-exist” consciously and can control the same body. The comedy is at its best when Steve Martin, who plays Roger Cobb, into whose body the dying millionaire, Edwina Cutwater, is transferred, physically enacts an alternating struggle between Edwina’s feminine movements and Roger’s masculine movements. Martin’s physical talent is amazing. The tension within Roger’s (and Edwina’s) shared body is gradually resolved as the two “souls” become friends—attesting to the underlying goodness of Edwina in stark distinction to the sordid character of Terry Hoskins, who has falsely agreed to let Edwina share her body—two souls and one body—instead of Roger’s in exchange for $20 million. It is the goodness of Roger and the unfolding of Edwina’s goodness up against the absolute badness of Terry that underlies the film’s narrative. In the end, the good win out, and Terry’s soul is put into a horse when Edwina’s soul is transferred by a Hindu guru from Roger to Terry. With Terry’s body all to herself, Edwina is free to become romantically involved with Roger. The good souls win and the squalid one is put in a horse. The upshot is that justice does indeed apply to souls.

The full essay is at "All of Me."

The Count of Monte Cristo: On Vengeance and Forgiveness

“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord” is a Biblical saying that is perhaps as well known as it is typically ignored in the midst of passion. Even the advice that revenge is better served up as a cold dish rather than immediately when the grill is still hot is difficult to heed. The 1975 film, The Count of Monte-Cristo, can be likened to a “how-to” recipe book on how to exact revenge against multiple people, one after the other until the sense dawns on the avenger that one’s one life has been utterly consumed by the desire and then feels empty once the deserved suffering has been sufficiently inflicted. It is admittedly very difficult to walk away from a grievous injustice if the agent of the harm is allowed to evade suffering that is deserved. In the film, however, Abbé Faria, a Christian priest who has been unjustly held in an island prison for fifteen years, nonetheless urges Edmond Dantes, whose prison cell is connected to Faria’s tunnel, to resist the temptation to ruin the lives of the four men who had unjustly imprisoned Edmund, including De Villefort, Danglars, and General Fernand Mondego. In the end, Dantes, as the Count of Monte-Crisco, pays dearly for having gone down the road of vengeance. Even if the suffering inflicted on the unjust is deserved ethically, distinctly religious implications should be considered lest avengers are left existentially empty rather than as one might expect, finally at peace. The Christian notion of the Kingdom of God is prominent in this distinctly religious regard.

The full essay is at "The Count of Monte Cristo." 

The Bahá’i Religion: Theological Problems

The Bahá’i religion is based on the monotheistic teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, the nineteenth-century prophet whom Bahá’i’s maintain is the prophet even for the twenty-first century. The monotheism dovetails with the religion’s earthly goal of unity even in diversity.[1] At the same time, the religion is universalistic in that it holds that truth can come out of various religions, including non-deism Buddhism and polytheistic Hinduism. Bahá’i aims to be a tolerant religion in principle, although it seems to me that the monotheistic religions would naturally be favored. Although Hindu and Buddhist teachings and prayers are incorporated, Bahá’i does seem to emphasize Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Yet this does not absolve Bahá’iism from the tension in being both monotheist and inclusive of truth from non-monotheist religions. 

Even within Bahá’i’s grasp of the three monotheist religions an underlying tension can be found. Specifically, although Bahá’iism aims to accurately represent all three of the Abrahamic religions, the desire to emphasize what those religions have in common comes at the expense of taking each in its own, distinct terms. In particular, Bahá’i teaching treats Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed similarly even though they are different types in their respective religions. The imposed isomorphism enables Bahá’iism to claim Bahá’u’lláh as the fourth is a series of the same prophet-type. This type stresses the divine-connection of the prophet at the expense of his human nature. Meanwhile, the goal of unity—the Kingdom of God—is also portrayed in distinctly earthly terms, albeit idealized, as the unity possible around the world of different peoples in “a civilization founded on justice, equality and unity in diversity.”[2] Viewing the Kingdom of God in such concrete, even partisan terms can arbitrarily narrow and even skew the divine into terms that are human, even all too human.

According to Bahá’i teaching, a series of prophets has provided mankind with God’s teachings on how to take the next step as religion has progressed through human history.[3] Although the progression has been toward monotheism, a non-deity religious sect such as Theravada Buddhism and a polytheistic religion such as Hinduism are still drawn on in Bahá’i prayer, given the religion’s belief that truth can come from many religions.

Looking back, we see a line of prophets ending with Bahá’u’lláh. “In every era of history, God has opened the gates of grace to the world by providing us with one of His Manifestations charged with providing the moral and spiritual stimulus that human beings need to cooperate and advance.”[4] Although Bahá’u’lláh is “the One Whose teachings will bring the maturation of humanity, ushering in the long-promised time when all the peoples of the world will live side by side in peace and unity,”[5] all of the previous prophets, or Manifestations, are of the same type; or, more to the point, the claim is that Bahá’u’lláh is on par with Krishna, Siddhartha, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, but is Moses on par with Jesus?—the former being a man asked by Yahweh to lead God’s people out of Egypt and the latter being the Son of God, fully human and fully divine. Is Siddhartha, the Buddha (enlightened one), on par with Krishna, a Hindu God? The Buddha insists he is not a deity, or even a prophet; he teaches his insight as a way to end suffering. What exactly is Bahá’u’lláh on par with? The capitalization of Manifestation connotes a unique relation to God. In Christianity, the Son of God is qualitatively different that the sons or children of God. What, then, of Siddhatha, Moses, and Mohammed who do not claim to be more than human beings? Is Bahá’u’lláh like them, or is he like the divine Krishna and Jesus Christ? The reference to Manifestations may suggest that every figure in the line is sinless—more divine than merely human.

The 2019 Grassroots Teaching Conference of the Four Corners Region in the U.S. states that the prophets were “social visionaries, stainless mirrors of virtue” who “set out teachings and truth that answered the urgent needs of the age,”[6] which could last hundreds of years until the next prophet comes along even if the teachings have to cover very different contexts from that in which they sprouted. This raises the question of whether teachings from the nineteenth century are readily translatable in even the first two decades of the twenty-first century, which, like the preceding century, was so transformed by technology. If not, then Bahá’u’lláh would not be the final, definitive prophet.

Even the contention of a line of prophets is controversial. To label a Hindu deity as a prophet or even manifestation of God is project the Abrahamic religions onto Hinduism rather than be faithful to the distinctiveness of the latter. So too, the prophet figure is foreign to Buddhism. Even within the Abrahamic line, the claim of a future prophet after Jesus would not be accepted in Christianity, and likewise after Muhammed in Islam. The Bahá’i claim that Bahá’u’lláh is the last of the prophets thus conflicts with the claim that the religion is consistent with Christianity and Islam.

The prophet figure is based in Judaism, where the prophets speak truth to power used as a vice. How well does the Bahá’i notion of prophet fit with the original? Moses is not even considered a prophet in Judaism, though he is portrayed as a social visionary—but his role in freeing the Hebrews is preeminent. Does not a religious vision transcend society? Is it not rather presumptuous to claim that certain social structures are sacred? Also, is Moses a stainless mirror of virtue? Yahweh bars Moses (not a prophet anyway) from entering the promised land for having taken credit for water coming out of a rock even though Yahweh has accomplished the miracle, yet Moses is heroic in going back to Egypt to free the Hebrews enslaved there. In regard to the Hebrew prophets, they are usually pointing out God’s displeasure at another person for not being virtuous rather than being virtuous themselves. When David displays a lack of virtue with regard to Bathsheba and her husband, Nathan, a prophet, informs David that Yahweh is not pleased with David’s lack of virtue. Does this imply or necessitate that the prophet is himself (or must be) virtuous? 

Moreover, are all of the prophets recognized by the Bahá’i religion perfect reflections of virtue? Would they not have to be divine in some special way (e.g., Krishna and Jesus)? The extinct Greek deities show us, however, that to be divine is not necessarily to be virtuous. Siddhartha, Moses and Mohammed do not even consider themselves divine. Is Mohammed virtuous? If so, should we apply the standards of his own time, when he was regarded as quite progressive, or ours?

Five of the Ten Commandments are moral or normative, and God as omnipotent (all-powerful) cannot, by definition, be limited to human moral principles. Can we know that the moral commandments are divine commands rather than projections of a culture’s normativity? Bahá’iism holds that “God is unknowable in His essence and that we cannot understand the nature of God.”[7] If God is unknowable, then how can we be certain that a virtue is divine-sourced and revealed as such? Faith is of belief, and thus falls short of the certainty of knowledge. Moreover, if we cannot understand God, how can we be sure that we understand God’s message in its pristine form? The messenger and subsequent copy-editors, being human, may have their own perspectives and agendas.

God transcends the limit of human cognition (and perception), and thus human concepts, according to pseudo-Dionysus, a Christian theologian and saint of the sixth century. Even the concept of the Trinity is to be transcended. As the twentieth-century religious scholar, Joseph Campbell said, the mask of eternity becomes the final obstruction to the religious experience.[8] The message that reaches us mere mortals may, in Nietzschean coinage, be human, all too human. In David Hume’s theory, the message could be said to be so anthropomorphic (misapplying human characteristics to non-human objects) that the quality of divine simplicity is obscured like a black hole in the middle of a galaxy.

As with the kingdom of God in Christian liberation theology, the societal ending point in Bahá’i can be criticized for being human, all too human, albeit in a good way as far as ideals go. Bahá’u’lláh’s revelation “contains laws, principles and truths which make possible the unification of the human family and the construction of a world which is both materially and spiritually prosperous.”[9] The promise of material riches is rather earthly (as opposed to heavenly). Although Yahweh promises the Hebrews that Israel will have material wealth if the they faithfully keep the Covenant and the Christian Prosperity Gospel maintains that God will reward people who have true belief (i.e., that Jesus Christ is the Son of God) with material (and spiritual) wealth, treasure on Earth has generally been contrasted with spiritual wealth by religions, including Christianity.[10]

Encroachments of religion onto other domains has been endemic since antiquity; bolstering particular political and economic theories, structures, and related ethical principles by christening them in a Kingdom of God can be thought of as self-idolatrous in that certain human artifacts are deemed sacred. A religion espousing such a kingdom can actually exacerbate divisions at the expense of unity because the selection of particular artifacts can have a partisan, or partial, quality. In contrast, a Kingdom of God not of things from our world—an other-worldly Kingdom—can more easily be associated with a divine source.

The Bahá’i goal is a Kingdom of God on Earth that includes a relatively equal distribution of wealth. Both the degree of politico-economic specification and the “leftward” ideological tilt render that Kingdom much like that in Liberation Theology, and thus vulnerable to the same criticism. Although unity is highly valued in the Bahá’i teachings, the religion fails to eschew political partisanship in rendering the religion’s ideal society wherein people can be transformed such that religion is fulfilled. Interestingly, members of the religion are discouraged from discussing and participating in partisan politics because doing so is divisive rather than unifying, whereas discussion of political and economic ideals is actually encouraged under the rubric of a Kingdom of God.

Generally speaking, when a religion extends to other (related?) domains, the unique or distinctive native fauna in the religious garden can easily be overlooked. For example, transcendent experience, which transcends the limits of our concepts, thinking, perceiving and even emotions, can be clouded over by concerns that are properly of other domains, grabbed by religion as if the distinctive element of religion—transcendent experience—were not legitimate or worthy enough in itself.[11] Even within religion, fights about whether a religious founder or prophet is divine or merely human or over the nature of the divine entity, being, or object (which transcends our cognition anyway) can keep us from stepping into religious experience—beyond even the divine masks—even during worship services!

For more, see: God's Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth and Spiritual Leadership in Business: Transcending the Ethical. Both are available at Amazon.

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1. This is similar to Schopenhauer’s ethical theory of compassion being based on Plotinus’s (a second-century Christian philosopher) notion of the One.

2. From the 2019 Grassroots Teaching Conference of the Four Corners Region.

3. This notion of religion progressing through history is close to David Hume’s theory in The Natural History of Religion. Yet for Hume, the human brain can only go so far in holding onto the pristine, uncorrupted idea of divine simplicity (i.e., pure monotheism) without projecting more comfortable human attributes. Friedrich Nietzsche found a vice—that of vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord—among the other anthropomorphic divine attributes. He argues that vengeance is in conflict with omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), thus the concept of God has been discredited even as news of this has not reached the culprits and their enablers yet. Bahá’iism maintains in contrast to Hume that the last prophet’s teachings can bring mankind to construct the Kingdom of God on Earth, completing the world-historical progression of religion. I contend that even Hume underestimated the ways in which the human brain is incompatible with a fruition of religion here on Earth. Denial, for instance, is a strong force holding internal contradictions within a given religion in place—even hiding them from the culprits themselves!

4. Universal House of Justice, October 2017.

5. Ibid.

6. From the 2019 Grassroots Teaching Conference of the Four Corners Region.

7. Ibid.

8. Campbell makes this statement in the PBS miniseries, The Power of Myth (episode Masks of Eternity).

9. Ibid.

10. On the shift toward accepting wealth in Christianity, I have written the academic treatise, Godliness and Greed, published by Lexington, following which I wrote the non-fiction (i.e., dictionaries not needed) book, God’s Gold. I argue that the Commercial Revolution and the Italian Renaissance as being bench-marks for the transition from a dominant anti-wealth stance to a pro-wealth stance—the latter making the Prosperity Gospel possible. In other words, Christian social ethics were pro-wealth before the Calvinist work ethic came around in the Reformation.
11. On distinguishing the religious domain from stuff grounded in other domains, and on the primacy of transcendent experience, see my book, Spiritual Leadership in Business: Transcending the Ethical. Available at Amazon.

Justice’s Last Resort: Accountability in the Roman Catholic Church Sex Scandals

A pattern of deeply violent acts of power-aggrandizement, followed by the efforts of “organizational men” to cover up the atrocities in the interest of the organization and even the offenders at the negligent expense of the offended, cannot but have ripple effects, or make waves, once the stories are revealed to the public. It is sad, very sad, when an offending institution, or “club,” refuses to enforce accountability on its offending functionaries—members of the club. In early August, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office released to the public an 884-page report finding that six Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania had covered up sexual abuse—molestation and even rape—by 301 “predator priests” over 70 years in the twentieth century.[1]

With even at least one bishop (then cardinal)—Donald Wuerl--a prime culprit in covering up rapes, the lack of accountability on Wuerl by the Vatican would send a message that within a club, the big guys are essentially beyond reproach, even in such a sordid matter as covering for pedophile rapist subordinates. The sheer extent of injustice within one organization can trigger vigilante acts at justice. Hence, Rev. Basil hJ. Hutsko was thrown to the ground while praying at his church one morning—the assailant saying, “This is for all the little kids.”[2] It is sad, very sad, when justice is so imperfect as to be “accomplished” on an innocent priest. This incident thus reflects badly back on the lack of justice having been enforced by the Vatican on its own.

After the grand jury report was issued by the Attorney General, Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s upcoming appearance at a Roman Catholic conference on the family. Additionally, a Catholic High School in Pittsburgh removed mention of Wuerl from the school’s name—ostensively because Wuerl suggested that mention of his name would “detract from the purpose of Catholic education.”[3] The remaining question at the time was whether the pope would remove Wuerl from the College of Cardinals.

In line with the dictum, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, I got a snapshot of how Bishop Wuerl’s cathedral operated when I was a graduate student studying business and religion at the University of Pittsburgh. Late one weekday afternoon when the church was open, I knelt down near the low fence separating the place for the laity from the liturgical area. A janitor came up to me from behind and pushed me down, even though I was on the people side. So, interestingly, I can have a sense of how the innocent priest felt when he was pushed down from behind. At the very least, I concluded at the time that the bishop was probably a hard-ass, or at the very least he put up with some rather squalid employees. I complained at the time to the church office receptionist, but she gave it only a cursory notice. Clearly, Wuerl’s little world in Pittsburgh was not to be a part of my study of places of worship there.

My point is that the callousness and even violence one a very small scale in a religious organization can be just one sign of a broader and much deeper dysfunctional organizational culture. In such cases, accountability and justice from within are not likely; presumptuous boundary-issues are more likely. The press reported in the wake of the report that American Catholics were demanding action rather than just words in enforcing accountability; even so, I was struck by how many Catholics kept going to their same Roman Catholic church as if news of the report had not been made public. Perhaps accountability can easily be slighted by religious laity who believe that going to their church—receiving Catholic communion—is vital soteriologically even if not ethically. Yet Jesus surely would have tapped the dirt from his sandals and moved on had he been amid a religious group that covered up rapists in the group and even the cover-uppers. Great harm to others is antithetical to the Golden Rule, let alone the notion emphasized by Augustine and Calvin both that God is love. How can love of this sort overflow in an organization that covers up rapists and then the cover-uppers? We all know what Jesus thought of the hypocrites—the Pharisees.

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[1] Hayley Miller, “Indiana Priest Beaten Unconscious, Allegedly Told ‘This Is for All the Little Kids.” The Huffington Post, August 22, 2018.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Michelle Lou, “Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s Name Removed from School after Abuse Coverup,” The Huffington Post, August 22, 2018.

Faith Leadership Over Ethical Leadership

Leadership under religious auspices can be distinguished from ethical leadership. The shift from ethical to religious principles is more involved than merely swapping one kind for another. The dynamics pertaining to faith are distinct. Kierkegaard makes this point very well in his text, Fear and Trembling. In short, an individual of faith must go it alone when the paradox of faith violates ethical principles.

The full essay is at “Faith Leadership and Ethical Leadership”

Big Money in a Big Church: Thieves Hit Osteen’s Megachurch

Joel Osteen’s “megachurch,” also known as Lakewood Church, adheres to the Prosperity Gospel, which maintains that God rewards true believers with material wealth in addition to heavenly salvation. Implications from this theological perspective put the congregation and the leadership in a sticky position following the theft of $600,000 from the church. In the following essay, I intend to apply Christian principles to Christianity. How well Christianity makes out may give us some indication of the religion’s future, for a house divided cannot stand—at least for long after the inertia has run out.

The Prosperity Gospel is grounded in the Jewish Scriptures, wherein God repeatedly promises wealth to those of the chosen people who keep faith rather than lapse in maintaining the covenant. Yahweh being the “Possessor of heaven and earth,” the world is God’s property.[1] Human possessions are therefore gifts from God. Proverb 10 promises, “The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, without painful toil for it.”[2] Rather than becoming the absolute owner of the gifted property, the Hebrew is meant to act as God’s steward.[3] That is, God retains the basic or foundational ownership right in His property. Moreover, the property relations embody a relation between Israel and God in which the Israelites owe obedience and service as stewards in exchange for a right to Jehovah’s blessings, which include riches.[4] 

Although the notion of stewardship took root in historical Christian thought, the Prosperity Gospel sprung up in the late twentieth century in the theological approach that privileges the Biblical criterion of “literal meaning” as first advocated in Moody’s 1904 Fundamentals of the Christian Faith. One of the fundamentals is a belief in Jesus Christ. The Prosperity Gospel makes this belief the basis of God’s material rewards. Because the Christian with true belief is “saved” whereas a Jew (as well as Israel collectively) can break the covenant, the conditionality of the wealth once bestowed to those having true belief is muted if not applicable. If my interpretation is correct, then the conditionality in the Prosperity Gospel applies only until the person is “saved”; thereafter, the promise of wealth is unhinged at least in part from the notion of responsibility applied to use.

Joel Osteen's megachurch during a weekend service. A substantial amount of money is doubtless collected even just from one such service. 

This rationale may explain Osteen’s reaction on March 10, 2014 to the theft of $600,000 on the previous day from that weekend’s collections. According to a statement, church administrators were “heartbroken to learn . . . that funds were stolen” and relieved that the funds had been fully insured and thus would be replaced.[5] Tellingly, the administrators added that they were working nonetheless to get back the stolen funds. This orientation involves more than a quite understandable desire for justice—albeit public legal justice rather than the sort of justice that Augustine “Christianized” from Plato and Leibniz, the co-inventor of calculus, developed: love as universal benevolence. Whereas the dominant justice in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is in line with Shylock’s banking scales being restored to balance (e.g., an eye for an eye, or a pound of flesh for late repayment of a loan), justice that has love as charity due to everyone (i.e., neighbor-love as justly owed) is in line with Jesus’s new commandment to love one another unconditionally.[vi]

I submit that taking up the Prosperity Gospel points a Christian to the Old Testament notion of justice as well; the promise being extended to earthly wealth implies that those people who are motivated to quality would also be oriented to getting the wealth back rather than losing even more. Such people would tend to concur with the predilection of the administrators at Lakewood Church to get the funds back even though insurance covers the loss.

Every human perspective is limited, given how we are “hard wired.” So a focus on getting stolen money back and seeing that the culprits pay both literally and in suffering the pain of punishment comes not without an opportunity cost (i.e., the benefits of alternative perspectives that are given up for lack of sight in their directions). In the case of the Prosperity Gospel and the related inclination to view justice as its public legal variety, Christians can slight or even violate Jesus’s dicta in Luke 6:28-30 (NIV) without being aware of the hypocrisy.  Let’s unpack the verse as per the Lakewood case.

The preceding verse has Jesus saying, “bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” As a theft mistreats the owner(s) of the stolen goods—at the very least in not respecting the property rights—Jesus can be read here as proclaiming even the thieves of church funds as blessed. From such a basis the justice of loving the culprits (i.e., they being owed love nonetheless) can readily be grasped. Indeed, Jesus sees to it that the love is operational as benevolence even to one’s enemies (including those who steal from one’s property). First, Jesus gives the general principle: “whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also.” Anyone who has had their residence broken into would doubtless agree that discovering the theft can feel like a slap on the face. Once while studying at Yale, I returned from martial-arts (self-defense) training at the gym to find my apartment ransacked. I felt like someone had slapped me on my face. To be sure, the irony of returning from a self-defense class mitigated the sting somewhat.

As though tailor-made for Lakewood’s administrators and ministers, Jesus makes his imperative concrete. Whoever “takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either.” If stealing qualifies as taking away, then the officials at Lakewood Church should have put out a statement offering still more money to the thieves. Lest by some convoluted logic an administrator agree to extend the church’s charity program to the thieves even as he or she tries to get the stolen funds back, Jesus provides no such relieve. “Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back.” While the church officials’ announced intent to get the funds back is strategically in line with keeping insurance premiums down (car owners are doubtless very familiar with this game), it flies in the face of Jesus’s demand not to demand back that which someone has taken away.

Moreover, while the intent is in line with public legal justice, Jesus’s notion of justice as “Give to everyone who asks of you,” or universal benevolence, is quite other. In the seventeenth century, Leibniz labeled the latter theory of justice as caritas naturalis seu benevolentia universalis. Natural love is sublimated from garden-variety lust (eros) to Plato’s love of the eternal moral verities “Christianized” by Augustine as God as the Highest Good, and yet unlike Plato’s intellectual love the human love directed heavenly is expressed as love of one’s neighbor (anyone). Achieving this sort of justice is one of the primary costs of adopting the Prosperity Gospel and (relatedly) Shylock’s notion of public legal justice as akin to demanding a pound of flesh.

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1. Charles R. Smith, The Bible Doctrine of Wealth and Work. London (1924): Epworth Press, p. 23; Genesis 14:19,22.

2. Prov. 10:22.

3. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, p. 25.

4. Ibid., pp. 26, 55.

5. KHOU.com, “Osteen’s Lakewood Church Suffers Theft of Over $600,000 Shocking Texas Megachurch,” The Huffington Post, March 11, 2014.

6. John 13:34.