Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress among Christian leaders reacting to public execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan
Christian leaders are split over the Pentagon's plan to livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the convicted Fort Hood shooter.
Franklin Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and of Samaritan's Purse, noted the irony that Hollywood and the media, which often glorify death and violence, are expressing outrage at the thought of publicly killing the man who murdered 13 people and injured 32 others at Fort Hood U.S. Army base in Killeen, Texas, in 2009.
"There are a lot of strong opinions out there about live-streaming the execution of a convicted mass killer. I don’t know where that debate will land, but some network news shows were saying how disgusted they were and how terrible it is. I found it ironic that many who embrace Hollywood and its culture of death that is constantly depicting murders, rapes, and all kinds of violence — all in the name of entertainment — are saying they’re so appalled at this. Have we become desensitized to death? What are your thoughts?" Graham wrote in a Facebook post Sunday morning.
Pentagon officials have said the execution of Hasan is scheduled for Dec. 3 and would be livestreamed.
President Donald Trump on Saturday said he will make the final decision on the broadcast after criticism from Republicans and Democrats, according to The Hill.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops denounced the plan Friday, and Pastor Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Dallas, backed it on social media the same day, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, the USCCB president and archbishop of Oklahoma City, said he learned of the decision “with shock and great sorrow” and called it “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death” that must be reconsidered, according to The Catholic Herald.
Coakley said nothing excused what Hasan did and cited Romans 12:17, a New Testament verse against returning evil for evil.
He added that a public execution would damage the country’s moral fabric and Americans’ conscience. He said he was praying that the U.S. would choose life in its hardest moments.
Jeffress, who has long backed the death penalty, wrote that God ordered capital punishment in Genesis 9:6 so that people would remember human life is sacred. “The more people that can see that truth illustrated through a public execution, the better,” he wrote.
In an interview with The Dallas Morning News, Jeffress said the book of Romans supports the death penalty and that he plans to watch it.
Josh Howerton, senior pastor of Lakepointe Church, a megachurch in Rockwall, Texas, wrote on X that he “hesitantly” noted that the Bible’s executions were public, citing Leviticus. He later wrote that some readers had wrongly read him as saying governments are always bound to hold public executions or that such a step is wise every time, and said the practice could not be called unbiblical.
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, was quoted as saying that a broadcast would recall lynchings in U.S. history and the public executions held in some authoritarian countries. “We must not be blindsided by bloodlust,” she said.
The Most Rev. Sean Rowe, The Episcopal Church's presiding bishop, said a live broadcast of a firing squad is “reprehensible in the extreme” and will morally injure all those taking part, according to a statement released by the denomination. Rowe said his church has long stood against capital punishment and recently sought an immediate moratorium.
Bishop Michael Olson of the Catholic diocese of Fort Worth asked for prayers “for greater respect for human life.”
Jeff Leach, a state legislator and Republican from Collin County, Texas, who is open about being Christian, said he backs a firing squad for Hasan and opposes the livestream. “Bloodlust isn’t Biblical,” he wrote.
D. Stephen Long, an ethics professor at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, called religious support for the broadcast “a recovery of a kind of vicious theology.”
Paula Keeth, who belongs to the Quaker congregation Dallas Religious Society of Friends, called the broadcast “disgusting.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told conservative political activist Jack Posobiec in an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln that soldiers would shoot Hasan and that the public could watch, according to The Washington Post.
A Pentagon official confirmed that the execution would be livestreamed, according to CBS News. The execution is set for Dec. 3 at 1 p.m. CT at Fort Hood, and Trump had approved Hegseth's recommendation of a firing squad.
Trump told reporters Friday that Hasan "will be killed, it will be through firing squad," and that the administration was "making a determination" on the livestream. Later that day, asked in a separate press gaggle whether he had approved the livestream, Trump said, "Did I approve? Absolutely, I approve," according to Axios.
Vice President JD Vance said the same day that he would not watch and raised doubts that the public would see it.
Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Curtis of Utah criticized the plan on X, and Rep. Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican, welcomed it.
Hasan, a former Army major and psychiatrist, killed 13 people and wounded 32 others in the 2009 attack at Fort Hood. He acted as his own lawyer when a military court tried him in 2013, admitted to committing the murders and was sentenced to death.
The U.S. military has not executed anyone since 1961 and has not used a firing squad since 1945, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that tracks capital punishment.
The country’s last public execution carried out by a state was in Kentucky in 1936.
