By Mark Osler, Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas
In the Fall of 2000, I moved from Detroit to Waco, Texas, leaving a job as a federal prosecutor to teach at Baylor Law School. There were many changes to adjust to — including the highly Christianized political culture in Texas and the fervent support for the death penalty that has made Texas the centerpiece for capital punishment in the Western world. One day, sitting in church and preparing for communion, the juxtaposition of these two Texan mindsets became clear in my head — the same Texas that held firm for the death penalty also was dominated by a faith that had at its center a wrongful execution. I walked out of church pushing the two ideas together, and soon they meshed. Shortly thereafter, I came up with what might be the worst idea ever by an untenured faculty member at a Baptist university — I would stage the trial of Christ in that Baptist church, under Texas capital punishment rules.