Protests after the very public murder of George Floyd were motivated by a demand for justice.  After the jury in the trial of Derek Chauvin delivered guilty verdicts on all charges, a debate arose on whether justice had been served.  In this post, I will examine many of the various positions expressed on this issue, and how they fit in the biblical ideal of the kingdom of God.

After the verdict was announced, Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison declared that he would not call it justice because justice “implies restoration.”  But he said it had brought a measure of “accountability, which is the first step towards justice.”

Most people now know the role played by the video of the interaction between Floyd and police officers in the trial.  Amazingly, Minneapolis police, after Floyd’s death, had made a brief announcement saying that he had died after a “medical incident during police interaction,” and emphasizing that no weapons had been used by police.  The statement said “Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress,” and added that “Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later.”  During the trial, Chauvin’s defense focused on showing that Floyd’s death was the result of his medical condition rather than Chauvin’s knee on his neck for more than 9 minutes.  The state had to make its case meticulously considering that the legal system has a history of protecting police officers from prosecution.

The nation itself was divided between those who acknowledge the systemic issues in the justice system against the black population, and those who unconditionally defend law enforcement and think black victims are to blame because of their tendency to resist law enforcement.

After the verdict, Tucker Carlson, the right-wing Fox News commentator, opined that political activism had affected the outcome of the trial, and made the following statement:

“After 11 months of mostly unrestrained violence and intimidation from Black Lives Matter, Americans decided to pay the ransom. They understood Derek Chauvin as a sacrifice for the sins of a nation. On television, they told us this was the case in the clearest terms. America is on trial, they told us. It’s not just Chauvin, one cop from Minneapolis on the stand. It’s all of us — our history, our culture, our system.”

Politicians and commentators who, like Carlson, were displeased with the verdict, are currently focusing on passing laws that criminalize protest and provide absolution to motorists who hit protesters with their vehicles.  In this post, I will focus on those who, unlike Carlson, were really looking for justice.

In his article What kind of justice did Derek Chauvin’s trial achieve? in The Christian Century, Benjamin Dueholm writes:

“Justice of a certain kind was done in Minneapolis. In the limited sense of giving to a person what they are due, justice was done for Chauvin himself. In our customary usage, ‘justice’ is an optimistic and aspirational term, enveloping equality, dignity, and the provision of whatever someone has been wrongly deprived of. But punishment is part of justice, too. A society can’t exist without exacting some kind of cost from people who consciously and maliciously break its common rules. Impunity is as much an injustice as stolen wages or voter disenfranchisement. A society that will not impose serious penalties on people who act as Chauvin did, in official capacity and in full sight of bystanders and the whole world, is not trying to be a society at all. It is content to be a battlefield.”

He also says Floyd was provided a measure of vindication since the jury invalidated the efforts to blame his death on his use of drugs (fentanyl), his heart disease and his resistance to law enforcement.

But Dueholm writes about his fear that the movement for racial justice may be losing its focus on law enforcement reform:

“A movement that began with a close focus on reforming law enforcement and making it democratically accountable quickly spread out to workplace trainings, school curricula, and any other terrain where the cultural power of contemporary racial liberalism could evade the political power of racial backlash. Some cities and states have made limited attempts at reforming law enforcement practices and accountability. In some places, attempts have been made to chip away at residential segregation through better housing policy. But in the shadow of the Chauvin conviction, American politics seems to be retreating from any shared outrage about what happened on that Minneapolis street corner and its deeper collective roots into our own places of strength. We are at risk of inviting only the arguments we think we can win in the venues we expect to dominate.”

The editors of The Christian Century also provided a response, noting the progress achieved because “the prosecution’s witnesses included several police officers, from peers of George Floyd’s killer to upper brass. Their testimony against Chauvin, in a trial that resulted in a guilty verdict on murder charges, may indicate some loose bricks in the blue wall of silence that has so often protected cops from what other cops know about them.”

At the same time, they warned that the focus of the prosecution was to demonstrate that Chauvin was a rare bad apple in an otherwise good system.  This means the trial did not even begin to address the systemic problems that exist in the police force.  They listed as potential improvements some provisions that are included in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which the House of Representatives passed on a party line vote in 2020 and again this year:

“The United States badly needs systemic police reform. This is about what we police for but also how they approach that job. A crackdown on pretextual traffic stops would reduce the opportunities for racial profiling and violent incidents like the one that killed Daunte Wright on April 11, ten miles from the ongoing Chauvin trial. Banning chokeholds might save the life of the next George Floyd; clamping down on no-knock warrants might save the next Breonna Taylor. Stricter rules for the use of force would prevent many dangerous situations from escalating in the first place.”

Many faith leaders reacted to the news about the verdict, generally expressing their hope that it was a good first step towards justice for all.  An article by David Creary and Luis Andres Henao in The Christian Century lists many of those responses, which are shown below:

“My prayer is that this does really invigorate all of us to want to work on the things that really matter . . . breaking down the barriers of White supremacy, providing access to those who have been marginalized.” Stacey L. Smith, pastor of St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in St. Paul and presiding elder of the AME Fourth District.

“I feel relieved. It feels like this represents a shift towards holding police to a higher standard of accountability.”  Erich Rutten, pastor of St. Peter Claver, a Roman Catholic church in St. Paul.

“What we just witnessed was the wheels of justice turning finally in the direction of minorities in this country. This is going to have global ramifications on both sides of the issue. For police officers, they now have to think twice about how they interact with minorities. For those who are being policed, we understand that this could possibly signify a change in law enforcement’s attitude toward Black and Brown people in this country.” Chris Johnson, a pastor at Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Houston.

“We must meet this public act of justice and accountability with federal legislation that will hold officers of the law accountable in every state. And we must continue to work in every community to shift public investment from overpolicing poor, Black and Brown communities to ensuring restorative justice and equity for all people.” William J. Barber II, cochair of the Poor People’s Campaign.

“God has spoken, let the church say, Amen.  Verdict indicates America has taken major step toward justice for all.” A tweet from Dwight McKissic, pastor of Cor­ner­stone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas.

“We can see to it that no one else ever faces the awful killing experienced by George Floyd and countless others. And, as we do so, we can weep. Even as we are glad for justice done, we should weep for injustices still at work, and for a life that is still gone.” Russell Moore, head of the SBC’s public policy arm.

It is noteworthy that these faith leaders were mostly expressing hope for a world in which justice, defined as equity for all, would eventually prevail.  Even though the verdict implied punishment for the guilty party, they were not expressing joy for the punishment itself.  Instead, they hoped that those who are marginalized and suffer under the status quo will be, in the future, treated with equity.  The verdict was a good first step merely because the status quo had, so far, denied to some the right to even state the trivial fact that their lives matter.

An article published by Sean Goode on April 30, 2021 in The Christian Century takes a different perspective.  Its title is The Generations of Hurt that the Chauvin Conviction Can’t Heal.  As indicated by the title, it focuses on hurt and healing rather than retribution for wrongdoing.  Drawing from his own experience, Goode restates the problem raised by the George Floyd experience as follows:

“If the last 14 months have shown us anything, it’s that we are a people in desperate need of healing. Nothing embodies this truth like the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent trial and conviction of Derek Chauvin.”

About the verdict on the Chauvin trial, he says:

“As the verdict was read, a collective exhale was felt across our country, and for at least that moment, there was a feeling that this was an example of true justice and accountability. But was it?”

He raises questions about the ability of the existing justice system to ever produce outcomes that lead to justice for all:

“The criminal legal system is rooted in explicitly racist practices, and for centuries it has disproportionately arrested, adjudicated, incarcerated, and executed African Americans. With this foundation, it’s not a system that can be expected to produce fully just outcomes … It does little to address accountability to those who are impacted when harm has been done. And it does almost nothing to create healing.

What the criminal legal system does is to allow those who have power, position, and prosperity to feel as though something in the background is working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to keep them safe from criminals who would otherwise be waiting at their doorstep to steal, kill, and destroy. This isn’t done in the pursuit of justice; it is done for the preservation of property. We can see this rationale in the system’s origins: capturing people who escaped enslavement.”

Rejecting the justice delivered through a punishment system, he presents his proposed solution:

“Thankfully, there is an escape from this vicious cycle, an off-ramp from this redundancy. It’s found in the healing and wholeness we experience in Christ.

Imagine a system that relies on grace to bring people to redemption instead of guilt that buries them in retribution. Imagine a system that isn’t focused on harm but on healing, so that those involved can be made whole and thus less likely to harm others in the future. This may seem like an abolitionist fantasy, but it is also the foundation of the Christian faith. Is it not our conviction that all of us are guilty and are saved by grace? Isn’t our call to extend to others the same unending grace that we have received?”

This may seem rather radical to those who feel that some form of retaliation is necessary for closure.  But this is exactly why the Jesus of the Bible was a radical.  In fact he was radical enough to forgive those who inflicted on him the excruciating pain from the barbaric Roman practice known as crucifixion.

Goode has evidence from his own experience that shows that his proposal is effective:

“I’ve seen these possibilities enacted in the real world. The organization I lead, CHOOSE 180, practices the conviction that grace is a better motivator for behavior change than guilt. When police criminalize the behavior of youth and young adults in our region, those young people often get referred to us. We then build supports around them, offering them community instead of a courtroom. Ninety percent of the time, 12 months later they have no new involvement with the retribution-based criminal legal system.”

Some conservative Christians, today, continue to believe that the Ten Commandments should be posted in courts because they represent divine justice at its best.  They do not realize that Jesus saw the Law of Moses as an obsolete concept.

Pope Francis, in his book The Name of God Is Mercy, rejects capital punishment (and there is a lot of it in the Law of Moses) and favors a justice system that seeks rehabilitation.  He says:

“When there is mercy, justice is more just, and it fulfills its true essence. This does not mean that we should throw open the doors of the prisons and let those who have committed serious crimes loose. It means that we have to help those who have fallen to get back up. It is difficult to put this into practice, and sometimes we prefer to shut a person in prison for his whole life rather than trying to rehabilitate him and helping him find his place in society. God forgives everyone, he offers new possibilities to everyone, he showers his mercy on everyone who asks for it. We are the ones who do not know how to forgive.”

Here is the point: many think they are on God’s side because they are on the side of law enforcement.  In reality, law enforcement is founded on ideas that do not incorporate the enlightened principles brought to us by Christ.  True followers of Christ live by his principles of love, forgiveness, peace and equal treatment of all.  Paul calls it life by the Spirit, and explains that those who are under the Spirit need no laws.  I am aware that many Christians have misused Romans 13 to legitimize the state and its law enforcement tools within a Christian context.  One of my previous posts, White Evangelicals and Their Agenda in their Own Words explains why their reasoning is a misrepresentation of New Testament teaching.