#Kellyonmymind L
College professor accompanies death row inmate By Jennifer M. McBride
Editor’s note: At presstime, Kelly Gissendaner’s fate was still undeter- mined. In 1998 she received the death penalty for persuading her boyfriend to murder her husband. If executed, Gissendaner would become the first woman in 70 years to be put to death in Georgia. Te boyfriend, Gregory Owen, will be eligible for parole in eight years due to a plea bargain. In 2010, Jennifer McBride, now a pro- fessor at ELCA-affiliated Wartburg College, Waverly, Iowa, was one of Gissendaner’s teachers in an Atlanta prison theological program. McBride became an advocate and leading activist to grant Gissendaner clem- ency and commute her sentence to life in prison.
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www.thelutheran.org
utherans have the tagline “God’s work. Our hands.” to propel Christians into action. Te
phrase holds together a paradox and a tension. Te work is God’s—God’s initiative, God’s dynamic movement, God’s power. Yet it demands human participation. Too oſten we view our participation as mere invitation instead of divine command, and so we’re tempted toward passivity and pessimism about our capacity to make real change. Addressing the tension between
divine and human action, Ger- man theologian Dietrich Bonhoef- fer wrote from prison “that being Christian” demands two things: “prayer and the doing of justice.” In an essay in which he reflects on a decade of resistance to the Nazi regime, he wrote: “I believe that God is no timeless fate, but that he waits for and answers sincere prayers and responsible action.” Tis tension consumed me in
Kelly Gissendaner, the only woman on Georgia’s death row, peers through the slot in her cell door as a guard brings her a cup of ice. Gissendaner has in recent years under- gone what writer Jennifer M. McBride calls a “significant transformation,” partly due to her involvement in an academic theology program.
the final weeks of winter earlier this year. I knew the call from Kelly Gissendaner’s lawyers would come sometime in February telling me that their client received her death warrant. Tat call would include the precise date of the execution, which was set for two weeks later, Feb. 25. My friendship with Gissendaner,
the only woman on Georgia’s death row, began when she was a student in an academic theology program in the prison, sponsored by four Atlanta area seminaries. By the time I met her, she had already under- gone a significant transformation, as expressed best in her clemency confession:
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