%0 Journal Article
%T The deaths of Moses: The death penalty and the division of sovereignty
%A Christopher Bracken
%J Critical Research on Religion
%@ 2050-3040
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/2050303218774894
%X Derrida insists that any effort to think theological¨Cpolitical power ¡°in its possibility¡± must begin with the death penalty. In this paper, I revisit the death of Moses Paul, ¡°an Indian,¡± executed in New Haven in 1772 for the murder of Moses Cook, a white man. The Mohegan minister Samson Occom delivered Paul¡¯s execution sermon and accompanied him to the gallows. Revised, Occom¡¯s sermon was one of the first works published by a Native American author in English. Occom suggests there can be a theological¨Cpolitical power that signals itself not by decreeing the death penalty, but by opposing it. Hence sovereignty can be thought, with and against Derrida, as the theologico-political power to restore life. By opposing death to grace, moreover, Occom achieves a division of sovereignties, creating an opening for Indigenous nations within the scaffolding of the settler state. Working in collaboration, then, Occom and Paul produce a political theology
%K Death penalty
%K Indigenous sovereignty
%K Paul
%K Samson Occom
%K Derrida
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2050303218774894