“Thou Shalt Not Kill”? The Virginia Council of Churches Responds to Commonwealth v. Coppola

When the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in 1976’s Gregg v. Georgia, relegitimating capital punishment, Virginia’s new codes were among those upheld. Ratified by the state legislature in October 1975, Virginia’s new codes conformed to the guidance standard asked for in 1972’s Furman v. Georgia, and, with the Gregg decision, set the stage for a renewed confrontation over issues of justice with life in the balance. This was especially evident in the discursive lead-up to the execution of Frank Coppola in 1982. The state’s first post-Gregg execution, the Coppola case provides an opportunity to explore the ways in which Virginia’s religious communities attempted to reconcile their faith with the secular, modern world around them.

Utilizing the files of the Virginia Council of Churches, this paper will explore the discourses between and among the leaders of Virginia’s faith communities. Rather than looking simply at the legal, ethical and faith-based issues at stake in the religious discourse on capital punishment broadly and the Coppola case specifically, this paper will probe beyond the referential into the performative, that is, into the reflexive relationship between performance and the configurations of the social world within the divine order, as understood and expressed by the churches. Accepting that meaning is created in the relationship among the performer, performance and audience, articulations of the difficulties in reconciling, or divides between the divine and the social are the processes by which both divine and social are created.