Editor’s Note: An edited version of this article was previously published on October 1, 2026, on Premier Christianity and is reshared here with permission.
Life Wins: A Reflection on the Botched Execution of Christa Pike
As I started this article, the original news story was that the state of Tennessee is poised to execute the first female inmate in over 200 years, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row.
But last night, she survived her execution.
And she is not the only one. There have been a series of botched executions in Tennessee and others around the country. In May of this year, Tony Caruthers survived his execution by lethal injection, also in Tennessee. And in the case of Byron Black, the execution team failed to deactivate his implanted heart defibrillator, and it is believed that the device may have been shocking his heart back to life as he was being executed. He was still alive 10 minutes into his execution but eventually died. You can see why the late Supreme Court Justice, Harry A. Blackmun declared: “”From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.” He said that after twenty years of trying to make it work. But there is just no good way to kill someone.
Last night’s botched execution is the latest reminder that the death penalty is a cruel, gruesome, failed experiment in America – and the people keeping it alive are Christians.
Tennessee is my home state. I grew up in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, the same hills as Dolly Parton. I fell in love with Jesus there in what we call the Bible belt. There are so many things I love about Tennessee. And yet Tennessee is also one of the few states still executing people on a regular basis. It is also worth noting that the Bible belt states are also the formerly confederate states – a reminder that the same states that held on to slavery the longest are the ones still holding on to the death penalty. Where lynchings were happening 100 years ago is where executions are happening today. And sadly, that history still leaves a mark in Tennessee. Tennessee still has the electric chair as a legal method of execution.
More than 95% of executions in America happen in the “Bible belt” – where Christians are most concentrated. The Bible belt is the death belt. The death penalty has survived in America not in spite of Christians, but because of us – and that should trouble any of us who genuinely love Jesus – the Prince of Peace.
It is Christians who are driving the machinery of death – Christian governors, legislators, parole board members, even up to the Supreme Court. If Christians decided to abolish the death penalty in America, it would end overnight.
But what about Christa Pike, the woman facing execution this week in Tennessee?
Her crime was horrific. Unlike many death penalty cases, there is little question about her guilt. And yet, at the heart of the Gospel of Jesus is the deep conviction that no one is beyond redemption… where sin abounds, grace abounds. Mercy triumphs over judgement. That’s what the Bible says. And it is worth remembering that Moses murdered someone (Exodus 2:11). David murdered Uriah to cover up his rape of Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11-12). The apostle Paul oversaw the torturous execution of Stephen (Acts 8:1). If we murderers are beyond redemption, then we can rip out most of the Bible, because it was written by them. The Bible is a love story, a grace story – one of the central themes is that God is good even when we are not.
One of the things I am quite proud of as someone who was raised Methodist is the powerful statement of the United Methodist Church on capital punishment: “The death penalty denies the power of Christ to redeem, restore, and transform all human beings.”
Christian support for the death penalty in America is a theological and spiritual crisis. There is the iconic story of Jesus interrupting an execution of a woman caught in adultery, as he says: “Let the one who is without sin, cast the first stone” (John 8:7). It is Jesus who blesses the merciful (Matthew 5:7) and promises that in as much as we forgive, we will be forgiven (Matthew 6:14). And, of course, he didn’t just preach it – he lived it up to his last breath as he pleaded for forgiveness for the people who were killing him (Luke 23:34). If Christ refused to kill, so should we.
The early Christians got it. For the first few hundred years they were a steady voice for life on all fronts, which included the death penalty. Cyprian, one of the third century bishops insisted that it is always wrong to kill, regardless of whether the person taking a life is a criminal, or a governor, or a President. His words: “… Murder, considered a crime when people commit it singly, is transformed into a virtue when they do it en masse.” He found it utterly absurd that we would denounce murder done by an individual but sanctify it when it is done by the state.
My friend Sr. Helen Prejean often says, “Sometimes the question isn’t whether someone deserves to die, but whether we deserve to kill.” After all weren’t we all deserving of death but given the gift of life by the love and grace of God?
When people say of someone like Christa Pike: “She is sick”, I cannot help but remember the words of Christ as he said, “I did not come for the healthy but for the sick” (Luke 5:31). Christa Pike is also a child of God – made in the image of God. In the words of death penalty lawyer, Bryan Stevenson: “We are all more than the worst thing we have ever done.” No one is beyond redemption. Even someone who has committed murder.
No one is beyond redemption – not Moses, or David, or Saul… or Christa Pike. Grace gets the last word.
I am glad Christa Pike is still alive. And two things can be true – I also wish her victim Colleen Slemmer was still alive. She too is a child of God. And another murder will not bring her back.
To be against the death penalty does not mean we are against justice – or numb to the suffering of murder victims and their families. We must remember the victims – but not with more killing.
The death penalty does not heal the wounds – it only creates new ones. The death penalty mirrors the evil we are trying to heal the world of. As Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Capital punishment is society’s final assertion that it will not forgive.”
Violence is the disease, not the cure.
It is time to abolish the death penalty, once and for all – let the Church say, “Amen.”
