The Penalty is Death: The 2022 Writings is a year lived inside the machinery of state killing. Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood - theologian, abolitionist, and death row spiritual advisor - writes from the edge of the execution chamber, tracking the cases of Carl Buntion, Melissa Lucio, Kosoul Chanthakoummane, Anthony Sanchez, Benjamin Cole, Scott Eizember, and others as their execution dates approach, arrive, and pass. These are dispatches written under pressure: clemency letters, lamentations, open letters to governors, reflections composed hours before a man dies.
But The Penalty is Death is more than advocacy journalism. Hood moves between the execution chamber and the theological imagination, tracing what state killing does to the soul of a nation - and to his own. Woven through the urgency of individual cases are meditations on incarnation, doubt, forgiveness, and the weight of a dead man's belongings. His seven-part dialogue with Ohio death row philosopher Keith LaMar on a concise theology of love stands alongside open confrontations with Catholic indifference, Christian nationalism, and the abolitionist movement's own failures of honesty. The penalty, Hood insists, is always death - not only for the condemned, but for the society that kills them.
Hood, Jeff: - "
The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a Catholic Priest (Old Catholic) and nationally recognized theologian and spiritual advisor to death row inmates nationwide. He has accompanied eleven men to their executions, including the first and eighth nitrogen hypoxia executions. Widely regarded as the leading spiritual voice on the death penalty, his work has been profiled in outlets ranging from the New York Times to a Rolling Stone documentary, The Spiritual Advisor. For his service and scholarship, he was nominated for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.
Dr. Hood holds degrees from Auburn University (BA), Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (MDiv), Emory University's Candler School of Theology (ThM), the University of Alabama (MA), Creighton University (MS), Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University (DMin), and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from the American Institute of Metaphysics. His primary interest has always been the power of spirituality to bring about liberation.
Ordained to ministry in 2006, Dr. Hood was incardinated into the priesthood of the Old Catholic Church in 2022. The author of over 100 books - including The Courage to Be Queer, named one of the best religion books of 2016 at the Independent Publishers Book Awards - he regularly partners with men on death row to co-produce original works of theology.
On July 7, 2016, Dr. Hood organized and led a Dallas rally against police brutality that ended in the shooting deaths of five police officers. He saved lives by using the cross he was carrying to force people away from the gunfire. The Dallas Public Library honored his role in that event and his wider work by opening the Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood Collection in its archives.
In January 2024, Dr. Hood became the first spiritual advisor present in an execution chamber for a nitrogen hypoxia execution. Amid the international media attention that followed, he kept the memory of Kenneth Smith at the center of the story while demanding that such an execution never be repeated. No other spiritual advisor in the country has been present in the execution chamber for as many executions.
Believing that traditional theological education is increasingly inadequate, Dr. Hood founded The New Theology School, where he serves as Dean and as the Rev. Charles Moore Professor of Prophetic Theology.
With many arrests and assaults, he is not afraid to give his body to the struggle for justice."
