13 February 2025 :
FEBRUARY 9, 2025 - TEXAS. Arlington pastor stays silent on death penalty after Steven Nelson’s execution. First Baptist Arlington’s leader says his role is to support victims’ families, not engage in public discourse around capital punishment.
Returning to the pulpit after 2 weeks abroad, First Baptist Arlington Senior Pastor Dennis Wiles spoke publicly Sunday for the 1st time since the execution of a man convicted of killing one of the church’s pastors more than a decade ago.
Steven Nelson, 37, was executed by lethal injection Wednesday evening in Huntsville for killing Clint Dobson, a 28-year-old NorthPointe Baptist Church pastor, during a robbery in 2011. The church’s elderly secretary, Judy Elliott, was severely beaten and left for dead but survived.
NorthPointe had been associated with First Baptist Arlington but has since closed.
“I think many of you know, obviously, Clint Dobson’s story has been in the news once again,” Wiles said, measuring his words in the introductory remarks before his first Sunday sermon since returning from Rome.
“And I just want you all to know as a church,” he continued," that what we have been doing for the last 14 years is fulfilling our pastoral responsibility, and we have been pastoring Clint’s family and Judy’s family and even this past week, that’s what we were doing.”
Wiles stopped short of commenting on Nelson’s execution. During a 2nd livestreamed service in the morning, he said he had been invited to participate in a “conversation that became a referendum on the death penalty.”
“I refused to be a part of that conversation because my responsibility, in my opinion, was to continue to lead this church and shepherd those 2 families,” he said. “And that’s what I intend to continue to do, and I refuse to be drawn into a conversation that I don’t believe is mine to be a part of publicly.”
The brief remarks hint at the varied religious views on the death penalty in the U.S.
A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found the majority of evangelicals and mainline Protestants were in favor of capital punishment.
Though the survey found the majority of Catholics were in favor, the Catholic Church itself has condemned the death penalty as violating the sanctity of life. Pope Francis condemned executions as fueling revenge rather than justice, calling them “a dangerous poison for the body of our civil societies.”
In 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination and the parent organization of First Baptist Arlington, adopted a resolution endorsing the “fair and equitable” application of capital punishment.
One of Nelson’s most vocal advocates — his spiritual advisor — had said First Baptist Arlington was wrong to not speak out against Nelson’s death sentence.
First Baptist Arlington has not responded to multiple requests for comment, including on Sunday.
In his attempts to spotlight Nelson’s case ahead of the execution, the Rev. Jeff Hood — a Little Rock, Ark.-based pastor and anti-death penalty activist with ties to the Dallas-Fort Worth area — organized a protest in the church’s parking lot in November.
In his remarks, Hood critiqued the church, pointing to a statement it issued in 2012 after a jury convicted Nelson. The statement, signed by Wiles, said justice had been served.
Faith often plays a role in Texas death row cases, including that of Robert Roberson, the Anderson County father convicted in the death of his 2-year-old daughter.
Roberson faced execution in October, but an unprecedented legal intervention by a bipartisan group of lawmakers prevented the state from carrying out the death sentence and ignited a separation-of-powers dispute.
One of Roberson’s advocates is a former Palestine detective who once worked to convict him but has since come to believe in his innocence. Now retired from law enforcement, Brian Wharton has traded his badge for a clerical collar, serving as a pastor for First United Methodist Church in Onalaska.
Nelson’s execution was the state’s 1st this year and since Roberson’s was stayed. A new execution date has not yet been set for Roberson, according to court records.
Faith was a factor in the case of John Henry Ramirez, a 38-year-old man convicted in the 2004 murder of a Corpus Christi convenience store clerk. His execution was stayed after the state initially denied Ramirez’s request to have a pastor touch him and pray over him as the death sentence was carried out.
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state had violated Ramirez’s religious liberties. The execution was rescheduled and carried out in October of that year, with a pastor from Second Baptist Church in Corpus Christi fulfilling his request.
No members of Dobson’s immediate family attended Steven Nelson’s execution in Huntsville, but a son of Elliott, the church secretary, was present.
In separate statements provided to The Dallas Morning News, neither family voiced an opinion about capital punishment but expressed differing views on Nelson’s death sentence.
The statement from Elliott’s family said they had forgiven Nelson, expressing hope of meeting him in heaven. Elliott died last year.
Dobson’s family said they chose to focus Wednesday on the memories they have of Dobson “rather than giving time to his killer.”
“Steven Nelson forever changed our lives, but he has never occupied our minds,” their statement reads.
The Dobson family statement also thanked Wiles and the First Baptist Arlington congregation for “the tremendous support they offered us in the immediate aftermath of the crime and their continued support in the year since.”
