All of this seemed to run counter to the biblical accounts of Jesus’ life and death that centered on his tireless advocacy, not only for the poor and orphaned, but for the anawim: the despised, the disposed, the redundant who were cast out beyond the gates of the city and abandoned by legal and religious authorities alike. As a seminary student studying theology in this context, I was disturbed by the seeming approval of political violence, silence about racist systems, and warmongering among the Christian communities with whom I had previously identified, all of whom claimed that values of human life and dignity were essential to what their faith looked like when it went public.

Questions swirled about whether intelligence reports about the imminent threated posed by the Hussein regime in Iraq were manipulated and exaggerated by political hawks eager for war, well-funded by war profiteers and defense contractors. military and intelligence personnel, use of rendition and ‘black’ illegal CIA sites had just begun. “war on terror,” and the investigations into the use of torture by U.S. I read the first version of Mark Lewis Taylor’s The Executed God in late 2004, in the shadow of 9/11 and the resultant invasion of Iraq. The fact that this book remains so timely, that we (especially “the gilded theologians” among us) so badly need to read its pages again and anew, is without a doubt a sobering reminder that we as theologians are not doing our work well – that we have not been successful enough at bridging the gap between Christians and the demands of Christianity. I am sure that Mark wishes that the book is no longer necessary, that the first edition would have been sufficient, that Christian communities were already hard at work at “the way of the cross” in their social world. In the same way, I am sure that Mark would prefer that this book would not have required a second version. They could pack in their marching and picketing, return to the bosom of their grieving families and enjoy an evening at home instead of yet another committee meeting… The task of political radicals… is to get to the point where they would no longer be necessary because their goals would have been accomplished. That Marxism is finished would be music to the ears of Marxists everywhere. British cultural critic Terry Eagleton once quipped that Marxists wish that Marxism was as unnecessary as their critics often suggest:

I am sure it is not comforting or pleasing to Taylor that The Executed God needed such a timely revision. Published originally in 1999, it has been updated and expanded to engage more directly and clearly with the challenges of our time: the militarization of police forces, the racial caste system perpetuated by mass incarceration, and the state-sponsored industry of prisons and executions.

It is in this context that we return to the second and revised edition of Mark Lewis Taylor’s celebrated book The Executed God. 1 The unprecedented cruelty and brutality of the plan – to execute eight persons in ten days starting Ap– matches the Zeitgeist of our time: hatred, fear, and death-dealing, all of which has been commercialized by the private prison industry and incentivized by the current president’s dog-whistling call for “law and order.” This is what a terrorizing theatric of the state looks like. Their execution dates are being accelerated by the state because – of all things – expiration dates on lethal injection drugs. As I write this, eight persons await their executions in Arkansas, who has not held an execution in the last 12 years.

Multi counter kill syndicate