Westminster College hosts a lecture by Sister Helen Prejean, “Dead Man Walking: the Journey Continues,” as part of the Tanner-McMurrin lecture serie son March 24, 2015, at 7:00 p.m. in the Behnken Field House in the Dolores Doré Eccles Health, Wellness and Athletic Center.
Sister Helen Prejean is known around the world for her tireless work against the death penalty. She has been instrumental in sparking national dialogue on capital punishment and in shaping the Catholic Church’s opposition to all executions. When it was first published in 1993, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States sparked a national debate that focused on the details of how human choices and consequences are interwoven in our system of capital punishment. Twenty years later—and with capital punishment still practiced in 32 states—Sister Helen devotes her time to campaigning against the death penalty, counseling individual death row prisoners and working with murder victims’ family members. She has accompanied six men to their deaths and has written about two of them in her second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions.
Sister Helen Prejean is a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph. She has received honorary degrees from universities all over the world and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times. She is currently at work on her autobiography, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey.
The event is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow the lecture. Sister Helen Prejean’s books Dead Man Walking and Death of Innocents will be available for $15 each or $25 for any two books. Cash or check only.
The Westminster Tanner-McMurrin Lectures on the History and Philosophy of Religion were established at Westminster College in 1987 as a means of bringing major scholars in the fields of history and philosophy of religion to deliver public lectures and conduct seminars on basic issues in religious thought and practice. The lecturers are appointed for the national and international recognition of their scholarly achievements without regard to ethnic, national, religious, or ideological considerations.
