Christian Attitudes Towards Death Penalty

The Death Penalty on Trial A Christian Case Against Capital Punishment While the US has more human beings on death row than any nation on earth, it's the death penalty itself which is on trial. There is something deeply wrong with a system of justice that essentially consists of returning "evil" for "evil."

The major problem with the death penalty has nothing to do with whether a particular individual who has committed a terrible crime deserves to die ... or to suffer in proportion as he or she has caused others to suffer. God is the only one capable of determining such things with utter fairness. The problem with the death penalty is the government's inability to use such a blunt and brutal instrument with justice or equity.

Today, in the name of a "war against crime," the United States executes more of its own citizens than any other democracy; in fact, the U.S. ranks fourth, behind only China, the Congo and Iraq, among all the nations on earth, for the number of those put to death by their own government. The USA is becoming a world leader in keeping its citizens in jail. Since 1980, the prison population in the U.S. has nearly quadrupled, constituting according to the National Criminal Justice Commission, "the largest and most frenetic correctional facility build-up of any country in the history of the world."

In 1999, the United States was executing its own citizens at the rate of nearly two per week, the highest rate in forty years. There are now over thirty-six hundred people on U.S. death rows. With new, harsher laws on the books, the number of executions is expected to escalate.

This is not merely a question of how many executions are carried out, but who is being executed.

Racism is clearly a factor in determining who gets executed. In 1998, the Harvard Law Review undertook a comprehensive study of racial bias throughout the U.S. criminal justice system. The conclusion: "There is evidence that discrimination exists against AfricanAmericans at almost every stage of the criminal justice process." And

it's not just the guilty who are being executed, we are also taking the lives of those who have been falsely convicted.

"The danger that innocent people will be executed because of errors in the criminal justice system is getting worse. A total of 69 people have been released from death row since 1973 after evidence of their innocence emerged. Twenty-one condemned inmates have been released since 1993, including seven from the state of Illinois alone. Many of these cases were discovered not because of the normal appeals process, but rather as a result of new scientific techniques, investigations by journalists, and the dedicated work of expert attorneys, not available to the typical death row inmate." - The Death Penalty Information Center "Perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent." - Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., 1994

In this context, I highly recommend a book by Mark Lewis Taylor, Professor of Theology and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary: The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America.

There are a number of compelling reasons for reading Professor Taylor's book.

First, he reminds us of how deeply implicated in the system of capital punishment Christianity has been from its very beginnings. Not only was Jesus executed in a most cruel and deliberate manner, but so was John the Baptist before him. Later both Paul and Peter were imprisoned and executed, the first, like John the Baptist was beheaded, the second, like Jesus, was crucified. These early Christians "suffered Rome's punitive regime, living at the edge of prison, in and out of jails, risking torture and execution. Isn't it odd," asks Taylor, "that Christians today are so accepting of the punitive regime that is lockdown America?"

The second reason for reading Taylor's book is his analysis of the proof-texts most commonly used to justify the capital punishment system. He places Paul's words in chapter 13 of Romans, which many Christians take as a mandate to “submit to the authority of the state�, within the larger context of a life led in defiance of the imperial power of Rome. Again, asks Taylor, isn't it ironic that Christians today lift a few words from St. Paul out of context to counsel blind obedience to the authority of the state, while Paul himself was executed for resisting that authority?

There are 16 main religious groups in the U.S. which have over 1 million adherents. This includes 12 Christian faith groups, Islam, Judaism, Atheism; and persons with no religious affiliation or identification.

Christian groups have taken opposite views on the death penalty: Fundamentalist and other Evangelical denominations tend to be supportive of the death penalty (a.k.a. the retentionist position).

Exceptions are the Mennonites and Amish. Some have pointed out an apparent contradiction here.

Conservative Protestants tend to be pro-life and opposed to abortion access. Yet they generally favour capital punishment, which involve the taking of lives. Conservatives generally defend their position by pointing out that they are opposed to the taking of innocent human life, like an embryo, fetus, newborn, child, etc. But a person sitting on death row awaiting execution is not innocent; they have been found guilty of murder -- often multiple murders.

The Roman Catholic Church and mainline & liberal denominations tend to be abolitionist (i.e. opposed to the death penalty).

Support for capital punishment among the general public is higher that one would expect from the positions of American religious groups.

Denomination Roman Catholic Church

Membership Position on the death penalty in millions 60

Near abolitionist 1 Southern Baptists are retentionist 2; American Baptists are abolitionist 3 Mixed.

United Methodist Church is abolitionist. 4 Mixed. The Assemblies of God have no official stance 22 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is abolitionist 5; the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod is retentionist. 6

Baptist Churches

36

Non-religious

23

Methodist Churches

13

Pentecostal Churches

10

Lutheran Churches

8

Eastern Orthodox Churches

5

Abolitionist. 7

Islam

5

The Qur'an supports the death penalty, but there is a strong tradition of mercy within the faith. 8,9

Latter-Day Saints/Mormons

5

No official stance. 22,23

Judaism

4

Presbyterian Churches Episcopal Church Reformed Church in America Jehovah's Witnesss United Church of Christ

4 2

Mixed; split along liberal and conservative lines.

Abolitionist. 11 Abolitionist. 12

2

Abolitionist. 13

1.2 1

No official stance 26 Abolitionist. 14

This point would stand even before considering Christ's mandate about the love of one's enemies. One need not go as far as Jesus was willing to go, namely, to the point of sacrificing one's own life rather than returning evil for evil by taking up arms against those who were bent upon destroying him.

One need not aspire to the higher calling of love, mercy, and forgiveness that Christ professed to see what is wrong with the capital punishment system. One only needs to accept the far more basic principles of fairness and equity to which the whole of humanity aspires in order to see the tragic faults of the death penalty as it is practiced in this country, and to put a stop to the killing, at the very least until serious reforms can be put into practice. And beyond that, for Christians who actually do profess to be imitators of the crucified one, supporting the death penalty is hypocritical at best, and possibly even an outright betrayal of Jesus himself.

You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also ...

Matthew 5, NRSV When another life is taken through capital punishment, the life of the victim is further devalued. Moreover, the church is convinced that the use of the death penalty would result in neither a net reduction of crime in general nor a lessening of the particular kinds of crime against which it was directed. The death penalty also falls unfairly and unequally upon an outcast minority. Recent methods for selecting the few persons sentenced to die from among the larger number who are convicted of comparable offenses have not cured the arbitrariness and discrimination that have historically marked the administration of capital punishment in this country.