Executing Hope: The 2024 Writings is a powerful and unflinching collection from Jeff Hood, offering a rare, firsthand look into the realities of death row, execution chambers, and the moral struggle surrounding capital punishment in America. Written from the front lines of ministry and activism, these essays, reflections, and parables chronicle a year marked by historic executions, including the controversial use of nitrogen hypoxia, and the human lives caught in their wake.
Blending theology, social justice, and deeply personal narrative, Hood brings readers inside prison walls and into the final moments of those facing execution. As a spiritual advisor to condemned prisoners, he bears witness not only to death, but to faith, fear, resistance, and the enduring search for dignity. His writing challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths about justice, morality, and the value of human life.
Through prophetic voice and pastoral care, Executing Hope wrestles with some of the most urgent ethical questions of our time: Can killing ever be called justice? What does it mean to love in the face of violence? And where is God in the midst of state-sanctioned death?
Raw, urgent, and deeply human, this collection is essential reading for anyone concerned with the death penalty, human rights, faith, and the future of justice.
About the Author :
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.
