​Dead Man Walking

Confession: Opening Up Space for Creative Transformation

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In process theology, God is the spirit of creative transformation at work in the world. In "Christ in a Pluralistic Age," John Cobb identifies this spirit as the living Christ: the Logos through which the world has originated and continues to evolve. While it was indeed manifest in Jesus of Nazareth, it cannot be solely equated with him. The fundamental quest for human beings revolves around the process of becoming more receptive, more attuned to this spirit, considering the circumstances of one's life and the choices made in the past.

"Dead Man Walking" vividly illustrates the pressing nature of such receptivity. One gateway to embracing this openness, one path forward, is the act of confession. Notably, confession in itself is a demanding and creative endeavor, fostering a space in which the spirit can effect transformative change within an individual. This transformation does not lead to a flawless or utopian self; rather, it guides an individual towards their potential, given the prevailing circumstances. The individual may well be facing his or her own execution minutes later. This imperfect yet authentic person, inherently finite and fallible, is, like all of us, a child of God.

For all of us, the journey continues after death. A dead man walking can be resurrected after death in continuing journey. The child of God, in time, can become  son of God, a daughter of God, as can all who have been harmed by his or her sins. It is possible that they are reconciled to one another. But the process must begin, for the sinner, with confession: an opening out beyond the bondage of defensiveness, self-deception, illusion. The opening typically begins, not by a theological awakening to the love of God as such, but to a person who is a vessel for this love, and who channels its grace into the one confessing such that he knows, she knows, that they will never be abandoned.

- Jay McDaniel

Sister Helen Prejean

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun, started corresponding with a death row inmate in Angola Prison in Louisiana. The experience changed the direction of her ministry and propelled her into activism against the death penalty. Tim Robbins has taken material from her book Dead Man Walking and reshaped it into one of the most inspiring and positive portraits of Christian ministry ever put on film. Susan Saradon won an Academy Award for her luminous portrait of Sister Helen Prejean.
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Dead Man Walking (1995) presents a rounded and riveting look at the life and work of this nun who demonstrates the spiritual practices of listening, forgiveness, and compassion with a death row prisoner and with the parents of his victims. This unforgettable film exposes the cruelty of death by lethal injection and offers instead an alternate path based on love. It also shows that hate is the worst prison of all.

- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat in Spirituality and Practice

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Synopsis of Plot in Dead Man Walking

Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon) is a Catholic nun who exemplifies the compassion of Jesus in her work with death row prisoners. While teaching in a Louisiana ghetto, she begins corresponding with Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn), who has been sentenced to death for the brutal murders of two teenage lovers. It takes all of Sister Helen's patience to stomach this young man's anger, racial hatred, and callous disregard of the suffering he has brought into the lives of others. At the same time, she is shocked by the grim realities of prison life and the extent of Pocelet's isolation and loneliness.

When all his legal appeals fail, Sister Helen agrees to be his spiritual advisor during the remaining days of his life. Meeting the parents of the slain teenagers in court, she eventually visits them and listens to their accounts of grief, rage, and loss.
During her vigil with Poncelet during his last hours on earth, Sister Jean is taken aback by his torment and the chilly aloofness of prison officials who won't allow him to hug his mother or listen to music. She also is forced to listen to arguments on the moral rightness of capital punishment from a Catholic prison chaplain and several guards.

Meanwhile, Sister Helen has a salutary effect upon Matthew, helping him to take responsibility for his acts and to seek forgiveness. In the anguished minutes before this "dead man" walks to the execution chamber, she assures him that "Christ is here." In the powerful scene when he is killed by lethal injection, she never wavers in her role as the emissary of God's love.

Dead Man Walking presents a rounded and riveting look at the life and work of this extraordinary Catholic nun. Her experience of working with a death row inmate changed the direction of her vocation. Director Tim Robbins has taken the material from her book and reshaped it into one of the most inspiring and positive portraits of Christian ministry ever put on film. Susan Sarandon justifiably won an Academy Award for her luminous portrayal of this nun,.

This important and unforgettable film exposes the cruelty of death by lethal injection and offers instead an alternate path based on compassion and forgiveness. It also shows that hate is the worst prison of all.

- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat in Spirituality and Practice

Matthew's Confession Scene
in Dead Man Walking
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The Process of Confession

Daniel Day Williams
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"We are helped by confession to another when we are relieved of the false pride, the pretenses, the defensive shells which keep us from living our lives in freedom. But more important still, acceptance releases power to transform the self because it gives an assurance of a meaningful life no matter what evil or tragedy we face. It is the knowledge that we will not be let go which sustains our will to live.

A counselor who had rather unskillfully tried to help a person through a serious crisis by saying that he was "sure the person would come through all right" was long afterward told, "What I most needed to know was not that I would come through all right, but that you and the others upon whom I depend would love me no matter what happened." The counselor regards this as the most important lesson he has learned about therapy.

It is a lesson which tells something about the power which is released through the forgiveness of God. Forgiveness is the offer to stand by and to love no matter what happens. To be forgiven, to accept the divine acceptance, is always to venture into a new order of life which begins strangely and wonderfully enough just where we discover God bearing with us in our present life of fear and distrust."

- Daniel Day Williams

Creative Transformation
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​If we are Christians and attend worship services, we may find ourselves at a point in the service where we collectively confess our sins and are then invited, privately, to do the same. We are confessing before others and before God.

If we think of God in primarily judgmental terms, we may go through the motions but be glad when it's over. We do not want to luxuriate in guilt. But if we think of God in more nurturant terms, as do open and relational Christians, the process can be more healing. We trust that we will be loved by those upon whom we depend, including God, and that "a new order of life" might emerge from confession. The confession opens up space for that new order to emerge. The new order itself is not the product of our will alone or of God's spirit alone, but of the two working together. This divine love rarely if ever comes by itself. It comes through the love of another person who accepts us, who recognizes us as a son or daughter of God despite our sin. 

Confession helps us become us become, not an ideal self of our or anyone's imagination, but the the potential person we can become, if we are honest about who we have been and what we have done. The process of becoming this potential self is what process theologians mean by creative transformation at the personal level. It can happen even to a dead man walking.

- Jay McDaniel

Dead Man Walking Trailer
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