On September 30 this year the state of Georgia executed Kelly Gissendaner for planning the murder of her husband, Doug, in 1997. At some point during her incarceration, Ms Gissendaner had a remarkable religious transformation. She converted to Christianity, and became a counselor and support to other prisoners. Her guards have testified that she even talked several out of committing suicide. In 2010 she began work on a theology degree, awarded, on its completion, by Emory. She was reconciled to her three children, and they consequently pleaded with the authorities to quash her execution, although to no avail. Especially in the light of this last fact - the decision to inflict a second killing on the Gissendaner children, and in fact to orphan them - we view this act as pitiless and as fundamentally evil. 

Less than two months after this ghastly event, SBL and AAR will hold their annual conferences in the state of Georgia. We will attend erudite and stimulating academic discussions, frequent convivial social gatherings, and many of us will enjoy living for a few days in luxury hotels - an hour's drive up the road from the remorseless, judicially-effected killing of a student of religion.

It is too late for the executives of these bodies to break existing contracts with cities for this and future national conferences, running through 2021, and we have no desire to ask the leadership to do so. But we, the undersigned, do have a serious problem with any planning beyond this date that will take our national conferences to states that actively execute some of their citizens in the way that Georgia has just killed Ms Gissendaner. We do not need to hold our conferences in states that, in effect, slay deeply flawed but repentant students of religion, and we do not want to be seen to contribute our moral, social, and actual capital to these cities. We are sickened and appalled by this practice. Hence, we may well feel bound by conscience simply not to attend these conferences. Therefore we ask you, our executives, to plan to hold future national conferences in states that do not actively pursue the execution of their citizens. 

We appreciate the openness of our executives to this issue, and acknowledge the whole-hearted support we have received to organize advocacy against the death penalty at our national conferences from this November. We also acknowledge that not every conference can be relocated in this manner. Conferences planned for other countries, and regional conferences, require different treatment. Moreover, we understand that any response to our request cannot compromise the explicitly secular and impartial public stance of both SBL and AAR in relation to political issues. Nevertheless we do feel that it is reasonable for our executives to take into consideration during their future planning the strong feelings that many member-scholars have personally concerning the death penalty, along with all that it signifies. We, the undersigned, do not want in future, insofar as this is possible, to travel to, and then to celebrate our scholarship in states that kill.