religion and the death penalty essay

Religious Perspectives on the Death Penalty

Pro Death Penalty

Southern Baptist Association

Con Death Penalty

Catholic Church

Conservative Judaism

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Episcopal Church

Orthodox Judaism

Presbyterian Church USA

Reconstructionist Judaism

Reform Judaism

Unitarian Universalist Association

United Church of Christ

United Methodist Church

Not Clearly Pro or Con

Assemblies of God

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

“God’s attitude toward the killing of innocents is clear. No one is guiltless who takes the life of another, with the possible scriptural exceptions of capital punishment administered by a system of justice (Genesis 9:6; Numbers 35:12), unintended killing in self-defense (Exodus 22:2), or deaths occasioned by duly constituted police and war powers (Romans 13:4,5)…

The Bible does provide precedents for justly administered death sentences for capital crimes as well as for the exercise of self defense and duly constituted police and war powers (Genesis 9:6; Exodus 22:2; Numbers 35:12; Romans 13:4,5). “

Source: Assemblies of God, “Sanctity of Human Life: Abortion and Reproductive Issues,” ag.org, Aug. 9-11, 2010

“There is no common position among Buddhists on capital punishment, but many emphasize nonviolence and appreciation for life. As a result, in countries with large Buddhist populations, such as Thailand, capital punishment is rare.”

Source: Pew Research Center, “Religious Groups’ Official Positions on Capital Punishment,” pewforum.org, Nov. 4, 2009

“There are two extreme situations that may come to be seen as solutions in especially dramatic circumstances, without realizing that they are false answers that do not resolve the problems they are meant to solve and ultimately do no more than introduce new elements of destruction in the fabric of national and global society. These are war and the death penalty…

Saint John Paul II stated clearly and firmly that the death penalty is inadequate from a moral standpoint and no longer necessary from that of penal justice. There can be no stepping back from this position. Today we state clearly that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible’ and the Church is firmly committed to calling for its abolition worldwide.”

Source: Pope Francis, “Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti of the Holy Father Francis on Fraternity and Social Friendship,” vatican.va, Oct. 3, 2020

“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regards the question of whether and in what circumstances the state should impose capital punishment as a matter to be decided solely by the prescribed processes of civil law. We neither promote nor oppose capital punishment.”

Source: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, “Capital Punishment,” newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org (accessed Aug. 26, 2021)

“In 1960, the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards approved a paper by Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser that advocated abolition of the death penalty.”

Source: Lewis Warshauer, “The Death Penalty and Conservative Judaism,” myjewishlearning.com (accessed Aug. 26, 2021)

“The Death Penalty stands in the Lutheran tradition recognizing that God entrusts the state with the power to take human life when failure to do so constitutes a clear danger to the common good. Never-the-less, it expresses ELCA opposition to the use of the death penalty, one that grows out of ministry with and to people affected by violent crime.

The statement acknowledges the existence of different points of view within the church and society on this question and the need for continued deliberation, but it objects to the use of the death penalty because it is not used fairly and has failed to make society safer. The practice of using the death penalty in contemporary society undermines any possible alternate moral message since the primary message conveyed by an execution is one of brutality and violence. This social statement was adopted by the 1991 ELCA Churchwide Assembly.”

Source: Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, “Death Penalty,” elca.org (accessed Aug. 26, 2021)

“Resolved, That the 79th General Convention of The Episcopal Church reaffirms the longstanding principle espoused by The Episcopal Church that the Death Penalty in the United States of America should be repealed; and be it further Resolved, That all persons who have been sentenced to Death in the United States of America have their Death Sentences reduced to a lesser Sentence or, if innocent, granted exoneration…

Source: Episcopal Church, “Reaffirm Opposition to the Death Penalty,” edtn.org, 2018

“There is no official position on capital punishment among Hindus, and Hindu theologians fall on both sides of the issue.”

“In the United States, where Islamic law – Shariah – is not legally enforced, there is no official Muslim position on the issue of the death penalty. In Islamic countries, however, capital punishment is sanctioned in only two instances: cases involving intentional murder or physical harm of another; and intentional harm or threat against the state, including the spread of terror.”

“The Orthodox Union supports efforts to place a moratorium on executions in the United States and the creation of a commission to review the death penalty procedures within the American judicial system.”

Source: Orthodox Union, “The Orthodox Union’s 108th Anniversary Convention Resolutions,” advocacy.ou.org, Nov. 22-26, 2006

“Despite the government’s constantly changing position on the death penalty, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has been strong and consistent in its call for a moratorium on capital punishment. We believe that the death penalty challenges the redemptive power of the cross. God’s grace is sufficient for all humans regardless of their sin. As Christians, we must ‘seek the redemption of evildoers and not their death.’

For the past 60 years, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has been advocating for an end to the death penalty.”

Source: Presbyterian Church USA Presbyterian Office of Public Witness, “Statement on the Federal Death Penalty,” presbyterianmission.org, Aug. 5, 2019

“Whereas the Jewish scriptural tradition teaches that all human beings are created B’tzelem Elohim (in the image of God) and upholds the sanctity of all life;

Whereas both in concept and in practice, Jewish leaders throughout over the past 2000 plus years have refused, with rare exception, to punish criminals by depriving them of their lives;

And whereas current evidence and technological advances have shown that as many as three hundred people (disproportionately from minority and poor populations) have been wrongly convicted of capital crimes in America in the last century, which underscores the Jewish concern over capital punishment since all human systems of justice are inherently fallible and imperfect –

Therefore, we resolve that the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association go on record opposing the death penalty under all circumstances, opposing the adoption of death penalty laws, and urging their abolition in states that already have adopted them.”

Source: Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, “Resolution: Death Penalty 2003,” therra.org, 2003

“The Bible prescribes the death penalty for at least 36 transgressions, from intentional murder to cursing one’s parents, but the practice essentially ended when the rabbinic sages of the Talmud imposed preconditions and evidence requirements so rigorous as to make capital punishment a rarity. Jewish tradition essentially follows the position of Rabbis Tarfon and Akiba: never to impose capital punishment (Mishna Makkot 1:10).

The Reform Movement has formally opposed the death penalty since 1959, when the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now the Union for Reform Judaism) resolved ‘that in the light of modern scientific knowledge and concepts of humanity, the resort to or continuation of capital punishment either by a state or by the national government is no longer morally justifiable.’ The resolution goes on to say that the death penalty ‘lies as a stain upon civilization and our religious conscience.’

In 1979, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the professional arm of the Reform rabbinate, resolved that ‘both in concept and in practice, Jewish tradition found capital punishment repugnant’ and there is no persuasive evidence ‘that capital punishment serves as a deterrent to crime.'”

Source: Aron Hirt-Manheimer, “Why Reform Judaism Opposes the Death Penalty,” reformjudaism.org (accessed Aug. 26, 2021)

Southern Baptist Convention

“WHEREAS, The Bible teaches that every human life has sacred value (Genesis 1:27) and forbids the taking of innocent human life (Exodus 20:13); and

WHEREAS, God has vested in the civil magistrate the responsibility of protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty (Romans 13:1-3); and

WHEREAS, We recognize that fallen human nature has made impossible a perfect judicial system; and

WHEREAS, God authorized capital punishment for murder after the Noahic Flood, validating its legitimacy in human society (Genesis 9:6); and

WHEREAS, God forbids personal revenge (Romans 12:19) and has established capital punishment as a just and appropriate means by which the civil magistrate may punish those guilty of capital crimes (Romans 13:4); and

WHEREAS, God requires proof of guilt before any punishment is administered (Deuteronomy 19:15-19); and

WHEREAS, God’s instructions require a civil magistrate to judge all people equally under the law, regardless of class or status (Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 1:17); and

WHEREAS, All people, including those guilty of capital crimes, are created in the image of God and should be treated with dignity (Genesis 1:27).

Therefore, be it RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention, meeting in Orlando, Florida, June 13-14, 2000, support the fair and equitable use of capital punishment by civil magistrates as a legitimate form of punishment for those guilty of murder or treasonous acts that result in death”

Source: Southern Baptist Convention, “On Capital Punishment,” sbc.net, June 1, 2000

“WHEREAS, at this time, even though there has been no execution in the United States for the past seven years, twenty-eight states have already passed legislation seeking to re-establish capital punishment; and

WHEREAS, the act of execution of the death penalty by government sets an example of violence;

BE IT RESOLVED: That the 1974 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association continues to oppose the death penalty in the United States and Canada, and urges all Unitarian Universalists and their local churches and fellowships to oppose any attempts to restore or continue it in any form.”

Source: Unitarian Universalist Association, “Death Penalty 1974 General Resolution,” uua.org, June 1, 1974

“The United Church of Christ historically has opposed capital punishment. We first formalized this position in 1969 and we have reaffirmed it many times in the years since. In 2005 our General Synod passed a resolution calling for the common good as a foundational idea in the United States. We simply believe that murder is wrong, whether committed by individuals or the state. Currently our churches are working for abolition of the death penalty.”

Source: United Church of Christ, “Capital Punishment,” ucc.org (accessed Aug. 26, 2021)

“The United Methodist Church says, ‘The death penalty denies the power of Christ to redeem, restore, and transform all human beings.’ (Social Principles ¶164.G) As Wesleyans, we believe that God’s grace is ever reaching out to restore our relationship with God and with each other. The death penalty denies the possibility of new life and reconciliation.

The United Methodist Church also recognizes the unjust and flawed implementation of the death penalty, pointing out the example of Texas, where executions reveal racism, bias against mentally handicapped persons and the likely execution of at least one innocent person. (Book of Resolutions, 5037)

‘We oppose the death penalty (capital punishment) and urge its elimination from all criminal codes.’ (Social Principles ¶164.G)”

Source: United Methodist Church, “Death Penalty,” umcjustice.org (accessed Aug. 26, 2021)

Icon credits:

cancel by Braja Omar Justico from the Noun Project

help by Braja Omar Justico from the Noun Project

success by Braja Omar Justico from the Noun Project

ProCon/Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. 325 N. LaSalle Street, Suite 200 Chicago, Illinois 60654 USA

Natalie Leppard Managing Editor [email protected]

© 2023 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved

• History of the Death Penalty
• Top Pro & Con Quotes
• Historical Timeline
• Did You Know?
• States with the Death Penalty, Death Penalty Bans, and Death Penalty Moratoriums
• The ESPY List: US Executions 1608-2002
• Federal Capital Offenses
• Death Row Inmates
• Critical Thinking Video Series: Thomas Edison Electrocutes Topsy the Elephant, Jan. 4, 1903

Cite This Page

• Artificial Intelligence
• Private Prisons
• Space Colonization
• Social Media
• Death Penalty
• School Uniforms
• Video Games
• Animal Testing
• Gun Control
• Banned Books
• Teachers’ Corner

ProCon.org is the institutional or organization author for all ProCon.org pages. Proper citation depends on your preferred or required style manual. Below are the proper citations for this page according to four style manuals (in alphabetical order): the Modern Language Association Style Manual (MLA), the Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago), the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), and Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (Turabian). Here are the proper bibliographic citations for this page according to four style manuals (in alphabetical order):

[Editor's Note: The APA citation style requires double spacing within entries.]

[Editor’s Note: The MLA citation style requires double spacing within entries.]

Featured Topics

Featured series.

A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.

Explore the Gazette

Read the latest.

Toll of QAnon on families of followers

The urgent message coming from boys

Your kid can’t name three branches of government? He’s not alone. 

Francis X. Clooney: “If we quote a verse out of Genesis or another verse out of the Letter to the Romans without due attention to context, we run the risk of ‘proof texting’: finding a verse in the Bible that justifies what you feel you should do today.”

File photo by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

The death penalty and Christianity

Paul Massari

Harvard Divinity School Communications

A Q&A with Francis X. Clooney examines how both sides in an endless debate seek biblical backing

The botched execution of Oklahoma death row inmate Clayton Lockett in April ignited a national discussion about capital punishment that was followed by fresh debate over the executions of three felons last week in Missouri, Georgia, and Florida.

Christians on both sides of the issue have been weighing in on capital punishment, saying that Scripture supports their position.

R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has argued that “ the Bible clearly calls for capital punishment in the case of intentional murder .” But Christian activist and author Shane Claiborne has countered that the teachings of Jesus provide no support for the death penalty .

To add context and nuance to the conversation, Paul Massari of Harvard Divinity School Communications turned to Francis X. Clooney, Parkman Professor of Divinity and professor of comparative theology and director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at the School.

Clooney questions the reasoning of those who say Christians should support the death penalty, but also suggests that opponents who quote Jesus may not be comfortable with the logical extension of the teachings they cite. Absolute opposition to the death penalty may seem out of touch with a realistic view of the world; tolerance of it may seem far removed from the teachings of Jesus.

HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL (HDS): How do you understand the assertion, articulated by Christians like Dr. Mohler, that “God affirmed the death penalty for murder as he made his affirmation of human dignity clear” in the Bible?

CLOONEY: It strikes me as not unexpected, since Christians have often enough argued for such punishments, reconciling them with a view of God’s plan as set out in the Bible. But what Jesus would say is often treated differently. A few years ago, I went to Mass one Sunday at a local parish. The Gospel was the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, “Turn the other cheek. Do not resist evil.” The homilist said, “The teaching of Jesus is radical nonviolence. But that’s not the teaching of the church, so let me now tell you about the teaching of the church.” He went on for another 20 minutes about just-war theory and the legitimate use of force by the state, and so on. The views of Jesus were not mentioned again.

This is a typical situation. On the one hand there’s Jesus, and we’ll never criticize Jesus. On the other hand there’s the way we do things — and the way most Christians have done things for a long time. It is not surprising that in Christian arguments for the death penalty, Jesus doesn’t really come up at all. Many of us find him too radical for everyday life.

HDS: But are they saying, “This is the way we do things,” or, “The Bible calls for capital punishment in the name of human dignity”?

CLOONEY: Many Christians — Southern Baptists, Protestants, and Catholics, too — will say both. They look at the Bible and say, “Clearly the death penalty can be found in the Bible,” and find guidance there for what the states should do in 2014. Most are not reckless in their calls for capital punishment. Leaders such as Dr. Mohler recognize the continuing need to respect human nature, the possibility of the abuse of government power, the dangers of state-sponsored violence, and the miscarriages of justice that not infrequently have taken place. They’re not saying, “Kill people without hesitation, or because they merely deserve to be killed.”

They’re also saying that the death penalty doesn’t permit individuals or lynch mobs to take the law into their own hands and go out and kill those they think should be killed. They recognize human dignity, but also legitimacy of the death penalty, and they try to make the case that these go together. In this way of thinking, such power is given over to the state, in accord with the theory of the legitimate role of state power, which goes back to the Middle Ages and before.

HDS: So, in this view, capital punishment and respect for human dignity are separate commandments from God, but not necessarily tied to one another?

CLOONEY: They’re interrelated in the sense that they both come from the plan of God. For Dr. Mohler, these commands are not contradictory either. Rather, respect human nature, and, in some rare cases, take the life of fellow human beings, particularly those who kill other humans. It is as if to say, “Because we respect life, we take life.” By this view, neither value replaces the other. They’re not saying, “We kill people because they don’t deserve human respect,” but they also refuse to say, “Respect for human beings means that you can never kill anyone.” Rather, the thinking goes, respect for human life and capital punishment are distinct issues, and a Christian can hold both.

HDS: What about the Biblical passages cited by Christians who support capital punishment? Is there a larger context to these that adds some complexity?

CLOONEY: Passages can be found that sanction putting someone to death, and many a text reports the killing of individuals and groups. But the path from one or another Bible verse to state policy today is very complicated. If we quote a verse out of Genesis or another verse out of the Letter to the Romans without due attention to context, we run the risk of “proof texting”: finding a verse in the Bible that justifies what you feel you should do today. Centuries of modern Biblical scholarship have shown us that these texts don’t float free of their contexts. You have to read them according to the intentions of the author, the options of the time, and so on. Rarely can they be applied without modification to the world in which we live.

Take the Genesis text, where after the great flood God is bringing the world back to life. In that context, God stresses the sacredness of human life, and therefore predicts and warns: “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed;for in his own image God made humankind” [Genesis 9:6]. This saying could be taken a number of ways. It could sanction the death penalty, or it could simply remind us that violence leads to more violence. If you kill, your blood will be taken in turn.

Human life is always sacred. By elaborate reasoning, I suppose, it could be taken to justify killing those who kill, and thus to support the death penalty in 21st-century America. But it could more easily be argued as having very little to do with the death penalty in today’s America.

All of this is difficult. It is a problem to take any verse out of context. It is also a problem to think that in 2014 we can apply verses from the Bible directly to the policies of Texas or Oklahoma or the federal government, and thus justify the death penalty. Yet, to be honest, it would also be a problem to end up in a position where no Biblical verse ever provides guidance in 2014. So some balance of verse and context is needed. On the whole, I am not at all convinced that any biblical verses support the modern world’s use of the death penalty.

HDS: Is it ever possible for capital punishment to be applied in a way that makes moral sense?

CLOONEY: Since we live in a world tainted by sin, and since things that aren’t desirable or ideal are still part of what it takes to live in this imperfect world, then hard and realistic compromises are often necessary. Most of us most of the time do not live out the example of Jesus without compromise. Some believe that in a hard and violent world, the death penalty is a necessary evil. On a larger social scale, some Christians defend going to war and killing people either in direct combat or by bombing armies or cities. If we lived in an ideal world, there wouldn’t be any wars, or a death penalty. But the world is not ideal, and so we kill. Such is the logic.

HDS: So is the Christian view to say, “No more war. No more fighting. Conscientious objection. Never the death penalty,” and so on? Or is it to say, “In the world in which we live, let’s talk about the death penalty. What are the rationale and the evidence that the death penalty serves a useful social function?”

CLOONEY: This is exactly what each of us needs to decide. Even if we wish to follow the radical example of Jesus, we still need to use the intelligence God has given us.

Even aside from how we use the Bible in this debate, the death penalty is subject to doubt, and it’s quite possible to give a hard time to its proponents. Is there evidence that it does any good? Isn’t it rather often a matter of revenge? It is supposed to be a matter of warning people: “Don’t do that because you’ll get killed if you do”? But do such warnings work as a deterrent? And what are the collateral effects of trivializing human life by killing people for any reason? Where’s the evidence that the death penalty is applied fairly and that there’s no systemic bias involved?

In the end, I think a lot of people — maybe even a majority of people who think seriously about these issues — would say that the evidence is just not there that the death penalty achieves a good commensurate with the evil of giving the state permission to take life. Accordingly, arguments about all these points are quite common today, of course, and that is for the better. Quoting the Bible or any sacred text does not excuse us from debating the evidence for and against the death penalty.

HDS: So where do you draw the line in the discussion between morality and the real world? For instance, supporters might say that the death penalty would be a deterrent if cases weren’t tied up in court and we executed sentences more efficiently. If that were true, would capital punishment be OK?

CLOONEY: Good point. Certainly one can say, “Neither this nor that is absolute, so we just have to make a prudential judgment based on effectiveness.” Does the state have a right to control handguns, or enforce traffic laws, or to arrest someone who’s robbing a bank, abusing a child, running a corrupt Wall Street firm, or polluting the environment on a massive scale? Of course it does. And of course we have to try to be fair in the application of the law, improving an imperfect system.

In an ideal justice system, the death penalty might conceivably be carried out fairly and without bias. But since our justice system is not ideal, that hope is not very plausible. And so, in today’s society, we still have to debate whether the death penalty serves any good purpose, just as we can debate whether life imprisonment without the possibility of parole serves any legitimate purpose that does anyone any good.

HDS: Death penalty supporters say that the Bible doesn’t say that human life is an absolute value. People get killed in the Bible all the time. Other values have to come in.

CLOONEY: Yes, but we need to be very cautious in then making a list of values that are superior to human life. Moreover, values are interconnected, woven together. In the Catholic Church, for instance, there’s the ideal of the “seamless garment of life.” From conception to a natural death not hastened by poverty or injustice, life is an absolute value that must always be respected. You can’t sacrifice a human life for the sake of another good you have decided to be of greater value. You can’t say that human life is worth respecting only some of the time. If you do, where do you draw the line? Best to say, from conception to old age, all human life is to be respected, protected, and enabled to flourish. Neither abortion nor the death penalty is tolerable; neither is the ruining of lives by systemic poverty and the violence that makes so many suffer their whole lives long. In fact we tolerate many things that demean human flourishing, particularly when others, far away, are affected rather than ourselves. But in our better moments we can hardly condone such callousness.

HDS: Most Biblical citations of Christians who support the death penalty draw from the Old Testament. So where does Jesus come in?

CLOONEY: The worldly view, even among Christians, is that you can’t run society based on the principles of Jesus. If everybody turned the other cheek, then all the “bad” people would win. If everyone gave up his or her wealth, society would collapse. So you need to seek out other references in the Bible.

Opponents to the death penalty are surely right in holding that Jesus wouldn’t allow it. The incidents we see in the Gospels — the woman caught in adultery, for instance — reject killing, and reject the self-righteousness and anger that lead us to kill. Jesus clearly says, “Turn the other cheek.”

If Christian death penalty supporters want to adhere to the Bible, they need to face up to the exemplar of Jesus, too, and not leave him out of the picture when defending the death penalty. Every word of the Bible then needs to be reread in light of the teachings of Jesus.

To be fair, those of us defending the radical nonviolence of Jesus similarly need to read the whole of the Bible as well, not merely ignoring the parts we’d rather not think about.

HDS: Is it a matter of Christianity with Jesus or without Jesus? Every church wants to have Jesus at the center, but also wants to put in other principles, as well as accommodating moral and political issues. But is the example in the Gospels the only one for being a good Christian?

CLOONEY: No Christian will want to promote Christianity without Jesus at its center. A Christianity grounded in the Gospels and thus in the life and death of Jesus will end up being radical Christianity.  It will hold to standards that resist merely coming to terms with any given political situation, catering to the whims of the state and the majority, and so on. But accommodation to political realities will still take place. Think of St. Paul’s “real world” accommodation of cultural conditions, the fact of empire, etc.

HDS: You mention St. Paul. Why do death penalty supporters often cite his writings?

CLOONEY: Paul lived in the Roman Empire and had to make space for the Christian community amidst Roman power. He had to show that Christians were not the enemy of the state, and that Christianity was not opposed to all civil power. And so Paul had to talk about respecting authority, paying taxes, the power that kings have, etc. In his Letter to the Romans, he writes: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God” [Romans 13:1].

The radical alternative would have been to be a fringe group that the Romans would have sought to destroy — and that might well have died out, like many others. The history of how the church came to be amidst the empire is a well-known topic, and many scholars have written on how Christianity learned to live with — and benefit from — imperial power. That’s our history, right down to the death penalty, and there is much to be ashamed of.

And yet, to be fair, even Jesus seems to admit some accommodation. There’s the scene where he’s asked whether or not the Jews should pay the Roman tax, and he says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” [Matthew 22:21]. He doesn’t say that it’s all God’s, as if Caesar has no power or realm of authority.

But still, there is no direct path from giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s to the death penalty in one or another American state today. Much exegesis and many prudential arguments must occur in between, before we might get anywhere near justifying the death penalty simply because Jesus spoke those words in Matthew 22.

HDS: So, are Christians like Dr. Mohler arguing for a position that is actually “worldly,” but portraying it as wisdom received from God?

CLOONEY: Again, this requires a difficult balance. On the one hand, he’s employing a certain kind of Biblical literalism, where we take the words at face value as assertive of truths that can be directly applied in 2014. God says it’s OK to kill people under certain circumstances, so the states have the authority to execute prisoners now.

Others among us remain very skeptical, and do not believe we honor God’s word by such direct and seemingly simplistic applications.

On the other hand, Dr. Mohler seems to be assuming that the death penalty is justified because it’s good for American society today. But the evidence for that opinion is open to dispute, as I mentioned above. Quoting some passages from the Bible does not end the debate. But in the end, perhaps the burden is still greater for those who oppose the death penalty because it is not in keeping with the teachings and life of Jesus. If we really believe that, then we need to act like Jesus all the time, not just when it is the death penalty that is up for debate.

Share this article

You might like.

New book by Nieman Fellow explores pain, frustration in efforts to help loved ones break free of hold of conspiracy theorists

When we don’t listen, we all suffer, says psychologist whose new book is ‘Rebels with a Cause’

Efforts launched to turn around plummeting student scores in U.S. history, civics, amid declining citizen engagement across nation

You want to be boss. You probably won’t be good at it.

Study pinpoints two measures that predict effective managers

Good genes are nice, but joy is better

Harvard study, almost 80 years old, has proved that embracing community helps us live longer, and be happier

God and the Executioner: The Influence of Western Religion on the Use of the Death Penalty By Davison M. Douglas / William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, on 1 January 2000

In this essay, Professor Douglas conducts an historical review of religious attitudes toward capital punishment and the influence of those attitudes on the state’s use of the death penalty. He surveys the Christian Church’s strong support for capital punishment throughout most of its history, along with recent expressions of opposition from many Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish groups. Despite this recent abolitionist sentiment from an array of religious institutions, Professor Douglas notes a divergence of opinion between the “pulpit and the pew” as the laity continues to support the death penalty in large numbers. Professor Douglas accounts for this divergence by noting the declining influence of religious organizations over the social policy choices of their members. He concludes that the fate of the death penalty in America will therefore “most likely be resolved in the realm of the secular rather than the sacred.

United States

Retentionist Death penalty legal status

22nd World Day Against the Death Penalty – The death penalty protects no one.

Observed every 10 October, the World Day Against the Death Penalty unifies the global abolitionist movement and mobilizes civil society, political leaders, lawyers, public opinion and more to support the call for the universal abolition of capital punishment.

Helping the World Achieve a Moratorium on Executions

In 2007, the World Coalition made one of the most important decisions in its young history: to support the Resolution of the United Nations General Assembly for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty as a step towards universal abolition. A moratorium is temporary suspension of executions and, more rarely, of death sentences. […]

Can you be Christian and support the death penalty?

Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross

Disclosure statement

Mathew Schmalz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

College of the Holy Cross provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

View all partners

Pope Francis has declared the death penalty “ inadmissible .” This means that the death penalty should not be used in any circumstance. It also alters the Catholic Catechism , a compendium of Catholic doctrine, and is now binding on Roman Catholics throughout the world.

But in spite of his definitive statement, Pope Francis’ act will probably only deepen the debate about whether Christians can support capital punishment.

As a Catholic scholar who writes about religion, politics and policy, I understand how Christians struggle with the death penalty – some cannot endure the idea and others support it as a way to deter and punish terrible crimes. Some Christian theologians have also observed that capital punishment could actually lead to a change of heart among criminals who might repent when faced with the finality of death.

Is the death penalty un-Christian?

The two sides

In its early centuries, Christianity was seen with suspicion by authorities. Writing in defense of Christians who were unfairly charged with crimes in second-century Rome, philosopher Anthenagoras of Athens condemned the death penalty and wrote that Christians “cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly.”

But as Christianity became more connected with state power, European Christian monarchs and governments regularly carried out the death penalty until its abolition in the 1950s through the European Convention on Human Rights. In the Western world, today, only the United States and Belarus retain capital punishment for crimes not committed during wartime. But China, and many nations in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa still apply the death penalty.

According to a 2015 Pew Research Center Survey , support for the death penalty is falling worldwide . However, in the United States a majority of white Protestants and Catholics continue to be in favor of it.

Critics of the American justice system argue that the deterrence value of capital punishment is debatable. There are also studies showing that, in the United States, capital punishment is unfairly applied , especially to African-Americans.

Christian views

In the Hebrew Bible, Exodus 21:12 states that “whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death.” In Matthew’s Gospel , Jesus, however, rejects the notion of retribution when he says “if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

While it is true that the Hebrew Bible prescribes capital punishment for a variety of offenses, it is also true that later Jewish jurists set out rigorous standards for the death penalty so that it could be used only in rare circumstances.

At issue in Christian considerations of the death penalty is whether the state has the obligation to punish criminals and defend its citizens.

St. Paul, an early Christian evangelist, wrote in his letter to the Romans that a ruler acts as “an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” The Middle Ages in Europe saw thousands of murderers, witches and heretics put to death. While church courts of this period generally did not carry out capital punishment , they did turn criminals over to secular authorities for execution.

Thirteenth-century Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas argued that the death penalty could be justified for the greater welfare of society. Later Protestant reformers also supported the right of the state to impose capital punishment. John Calvin , a Protestant theologian and reformer, argued that Christian forgiveness did not mean overturning established laws.

The position of Pope Francis

Among Christian leaders, Pope Francis has been at the forefront of arguing against the death penalty.

The letter accompanying the Pope’s declaration makes several points. First, it acknowledges that the Catholic Church has previously taught that the death penalty is appropriate in certain instances. Second, the letter argues that modern methods of imprisonment effectively protect society from criminals. Third, the letter states that this development of Catholic doctrine is consistent with the thought of the two previous popes: St. Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

St. John Paul II maintained that capital punishment should be reserved only for “absolute necessity.” Benedict XVI also supported efforts to eliminate the death penalty.

Most important, however, is that Pope Francis is emphasizing an ethic of forgiveness. The Pope has argued that social justice applies to all citizens. He also believes that those who harm society should make amends through acts that affirm life, not death.

For Pope Francis, the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of life are the core values of Christianity, regardless of the circumstances.

This article, published originally in 20-18, is an updated version of an article first published in 2017.

• Human rights
• Christianity
• Death penalty
• Pope Francis
• African Americans
• Capital punishment
• Thomas Aquinas
• John Paul II
• Global perspectives
• Protestants

Admissions Officer

Director of STEM

Community member - Training Delivery and Development Committee (Volunteer part-time)

Chief Executive Officer

Head of Evidence to Action

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Religion and the Death Penalty: a call for Reckoning – Edited by Erik C. Owens, John D. Carlson, and Eric P. Elshtain

2006, Religious Studies Review

Related Papers

Theology and Sexuality

Fiona Bowie

Religion, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 327-329

Carole Cusack

Jeannette Mulherin

The purpose of this paper is to identify and examine the ways in which traditional characteristics ascribed to Mary are used to justify women’s oppression in the Catholic Church. By isolating standard Marian attributes, I hope to clarify the differences between the Marian fantasy of what women are, what they should be and what they should aspire to, with a realistic understanding of flesh and blood human females.

Ken Ebacher

Antonia Lacey

Question Journal

Scottish Journal of Theology

Cynthia Rigby

Journal for the scientific study of religion

Anthony Stevens-Arroyo

Journal of English and Germanic Philology

Annemarie Carr

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Marian Library studies

Sr. Danielle Peters

Marian Studies

Gilbert Romero

Landas 19:1 (2005) 57-91

Antonio F . B . de Castro

Journal of Women's History

Amy Remensnyder

Journal of Global Catholicism

Ozan Can Yılmaz

Raffaello Manacorda

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

Carina Prestes

Leonie Westenberg

Anna-Karina Hermkens

Myrto Theocharous

Katarzyna Zielinska

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Cleo Kearns

Centre for Research on Women Jordanstown

Mary T Condren

Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies

Scandinavian Journal of History

Mette M. Ahlefeldt-Laurvig

Sage Handbook of Feminist Theory

Sian Melvill Hawthorne

Jacqueline Broad

Shanaka Mendis

Church History

Salvador Ryan

Alana Harris

Thomas Joseph White

Marian studies

Gloria Dodd

James V Spickard

Virginia Langum

Wiley-Blackwell eBooks

Mathew Schmalz

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Guided History

History Research Guides by Boston University Students

• About Guided History
• For Students
• Jewish History
• European History
• Russian History
• Law and Religion
• Other Topics
• Digital Archives
• Digital History Tools
• Other Resources

Religion and the Death Penalty

A bibliography focusing on religion, the death penalty, and the tsarnaev trial compiled collectively by hi/rn 295 religious controversies and the law  , capital punishment and religion assignment.

Bedau, Hugo Adam.  The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies . New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Blecker, Robert.  The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice Among the Worst of the Worst . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Blesser, John D.  Cruel And Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founder’s Eighth Amendment . Hanover, NH: Northeastern University Press, 2012.

Lester, David. The Death Penalty: Issues And Answers (Second Edition). Springfield, IL: C.C. Thomas, 1998.

Ogletree, Charles J., and Sarat, Austin, eds. 2012. Life Without Parole : America’s New Death Penalty? New York, NY, USA: New York University Press. (available on ProQuest ebrary)

Santoro, Anthony.  Exile and Embrace: Contemporary Religious Discourse on the Death Penalty . Hanover , NH: Northeastern University Press, 2013.

Journal Articles

Bias, Thomas K., Abraham Goldberg, and Tara Hannum. “Catholics and the Death Penalty: Religion as a Filter for Political Beliefs.”  Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion  7 (2011) .  (available on ProQuest)

Berg, Thomas C. “Religious Conservatives and the Death Penalty.”  The William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal  9, no. 1 (2000): 31-60.

Chavez, Lyssette H. and Monica K. Miller. “Religious References In Death Sentence Phases Of Trials: Two Psychological Theories That Suggest Judicial Rulings And Assumptions May Affect Jurors.” Lewis & Clark Law Review 13 (2003): 1027-83.

Chester, Britt. “Race, Religion, and Support for the Death Penalty: A Research Note.” Justice Quarterly 15:175-91. (available on HeinOnline)

Cooey, Paula M.  “Women’s Religious Conversions on Death Row: Theorizing Religion and State.”  Journal of the American Academy of Religion 70 (Dec. 2002): 699-717. (available on Jstor)

Davison, Douglas. “God and the Executioner: The Influence of Western Religion on the Use of the Death Penalty.”  William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal  9, no. 1 (2001): 137-70.

Drinan, Robert F. “Religious Organizations and the Death Penalty.”  William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal  9, no. 1 (2000): 171-78. (available on HeinOnline)

Echols, Micah. “Is the courtroom the right place for religion? Difficulties in restricting religious arguments during the sentencing phase of Pennsylvania death penalty cases: Commonwealth v. Spotz.” University of West Los Angeles Law Review 36 (2005):254-273. (available on Lexis-nexis)

Eisenberg, Theodore , Stephen P. Garvey, and Martin T. Wells. “Forecasting Life and Death: Juror Race, Religion, and Attitude toward the Death Penalty,” The Journal of Legal Studies , Vol. 30, No. 2 (June 2001), pp. 277-311. (available on Jstor)

Erskine, Hazel. “The Polls: Capital Punishment.”  The Public Opinion Quarterly vol. 34, no. 2 (Summer 1970): 290-307. (available on Jstor)

Garnett, Richard. “Christian Witness, Moral Anthropology, and the Death Penalty (Symposium on Religion in the Public Square).” Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy 17(2) (2003): 541-59. (available on HeinOnline)

Grasmick, Harold G., John K. Cochran, Robert J. Bursik Jr., and M’Lou Kimpel. “Religion, Punitive Justice, and Support for the Death Penalty.” Justice Quarterly 10.2 (1993): 289-314. 

Hiers, Richard H. “The death penalty and due process in biblical law.”  University of Detroit Mercy Law Review,   81 (5) (2004): 751-843.

Levine, Samuel. “Capital Punishments and Religious Arguments: An Intermediate Approach.”  William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 9 , no. 1 (2000).

Loewy, Arnold H. “Religious Neutrality and the Death Penalty (mitigating circumstances) (Symposium: Religion’s Role in the Administration of the Death Penalty).”  The William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal  9, no. 1 (2000): 191-200. (available on HeinOnline)

Megivern, James J. “Capital Punishment: The Curious History of Its Privileged Place in Christendom.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 147 (2003): 3-12. (available on Jstor)

Mathias, Matthew D.  “The Sacralization of the Individual: Human Rights and the Abolition of the Death Penalty.”  American Journal of Sociology 118 (March 2013): 1246-1283. (available on Jstor)

Miller, Monica K. and Brian H. Bornstein. “The Use of Religion in Death Penalty Sentencing Trials.”  Law and Human Behavior  30, no. 6 (2006): 675-684.

Miller, Monica K., and R. David Hayward. “Religious Characteristics and the Death Penalty.” Law and Human Behavior 32, no. 2 (2007): 113-23. (available on Jstor)

Schabas, William A. “Islam and the Death Penalty.” The William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 9, no. 1 (2000): 223-36.

Simpson, Gary J and Stephen P. Garvey. “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door: Rethinking the Role of Religion in Death Penalty Cases.”  Cornell Law Review vol. 86 (2000-2001): 1090-1130. (available on HeinOnline)

Jeffery T. Ulmer, Christopher Bader and Martha Gault “Do Moral Communities Play a Role in Criminal Sentencing? Evidence from Pennsylvania.” The Sociological Quarterly , Vol. 49, No. 4 (Fall, 2008): 737-768. (available on Jstor)

Young, Robert L. “Religious Orientation, Race and Support for the Death Penalty ,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion Vol. 31, No. 1 (Mar., 1992): 76-87. (available on Jstor)

Berns, Walter. “Religion and the Death Penalty: Can’t have one without the other?” The Weekly Standard. February 8, 2008.

“Bishops say Tsarnaev should not receive death penalty.” Washington Times (AP). April 6, 2015.

Basu, Moni. “‘Dead Man Walking’ Nun: ‘Botched’ Executions Unmask a Botched System.” CNN: Fighting Death: At 75, Nuns Soul Still Stirs For Cause. August 6, 2014.

Berman, Mark. “Why the Death Penalty Is So Crucial to the Boston Marathon Bombing Trial.” Washington Post. January 6, 2015.

Biale, Rachel. “Judaism Casts Doubt on Lethal Injection.” JWeekly , January 18, 2008.

Cullen, Kevin. “Tsarnaev Trial Not about Guilt, but about Punishment.” The Boston Globe. April 8, 2015.

O’Neill, Ann. “The 13th Juror: Showdown in Watertown” CNN.com. March 21, 2015.

Rodriguez, Samuel. “Botched Oklahoma Execution Should Prompt Moral Outcry Among Evangelicals.”  Time Magazine , May 5, 2014.

Shetty, Salil. “Humans Do Not Deserve Executions (Opinion)” CNN.com. April 1, 2015.

Santoro, Anthony. “If not Him, then Whom? Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and the Death Penalty. The Marginalia Review of Books. April 15, 2014.

Santoro, Anthony. “The ‘Religious Freedom’ Issue that May Cost the Accused Boston Bomber his Life.” Religion Dispatches. January 15, 2015.

Serrano, Richard A. . “Defense’s goal in Boston Marathon bombing trial: Save Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s life.” Los Angeles Times. March 19, 2015.

Shimron, Yonat. “N.C. Muslims Pleased with Death Penalty Option but Want Focus on Hate Crimes Probe.” Washington Post. March 4, 2015.

Other Sources

“Capital Punishment and Christianity.” BBC.co.uk. August 3, 2009.

“Capital Punishment and Islam.” BBC.co.uk. September 16, 2009.

“Capital Punishment and Judaism.” BBC.co.uk. July 21, 2009.

Carroll, Joseph. “Who Supports the Death Penalty?” Gallup, Inc., 16 Nov. 2004.

“The Death Penalty in Jewish Teachings.” Bend the Arc a Jewish Partnership for Justice. October 4, 2012.

Weinstein, Jack B. “Death Penalty: The Torah and Today.” deathpenaltyinfo.org. August 23, 2000.

Religious Perspectives

Christian Citizenship – The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod .

Mohler Jr., R. Albert. “Why Christians Should Support the Death Penalty.” CNN Belief Blog RSS. May 1, 2014.

Olasky, Marvin.  “Five Religious Views of Capital Punishment.”  World Magazine , October 15, 2013.

Search Guided History

BU Blogs | Guided History | Disclaimer | Contact Author

God and the Executioner: The Influence of Western Religion on the Use of the Death Penalty

William & Mary Bill of Rights, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2000

William & Mary Law School Research Paper No. 09-73

35 Pages Posted: 15 Feb 2011

Davison M. Douglas

William & Mary Law School

Date Written: 2001

The attitude of religious groups towards the use of capital punishment has ebbed and flowed throughout history. This essay contains an historical review of religious attitudes towards capital punishment and the influence of those attitudes on the state’s use of the death penalty. The Christian Church has expressed strong support for capital punishment throughout most of its history, but in recent decades, opposition to the death penalty within the Catholic Church and many Protestant groups has emerged. The same is true with Judaism. Despite this recent abolitionist sentiment from an array of religious institutions, there has been a divergence of opinion between the "pulpit and the pew" as the laity in the United States continues to support the death penalty in large numbers. This divergence is due in part to the declining influence of religious organizations over the social policy choices of their members. Consequently, the fate of the death penalty in the United States will most likely be resolved in the realm of the secular rather than the sacred.

Keywords: death penalty, capital punishment, religion and death penalty, Catholic Church and death penalty, Judaism and death penalty, support for death penalty, religious attitudes towards the death penalty

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Davison M. Douglas (Contact Author)

William & mary law school ( email ).

South Henry Street P.O. Box 8795 Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795 United States 757-221-3853 (Phone) 757-221-3775 (Fax)

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics, related ejournals, william & mary law school legal studies research paper series.

Subscribe to this free journal for more curated articles on this topic

Law & Society: Public Law - Crime, Criminal Law, & Punishment eJournal

Subscribe to this fee journal for more curated articles on this topic

Law & Religion eJournal

Home > Journals > WMBORJ > Vol. 9 (2000-2001) > Iss. 1 (2000)

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Davison M. Douglas , William & Mary Law School Follow

God and the Executioner: The Influence of Western Religion on the Use of the Death Penalty

In this Essay, Professor Douglas conducts an historical review of religious attitudes toward capital punishment and the influence of those attitudes on the state's use of the death penalty. He surveys the Christian Church's strong support for capital punishment throughout most of its history, along with recent expressions of opposition from many Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish groups. Despite this recent abolitionist sentiment from an array of religious institutions, Professor Douglas notes a divergence of opinion between the "pulpit and the pew" as the laity continues to support the death penalty in large numbers. Professor Douglas accounts for this divergence by noting the declining influence of religious organizations over the social policy choices of their members. He concludes that the fate of the death penalty in America will therefore "most likely be resolved in the realm of the secular rather than the sacred"

Repository Citation

Publication information.

9 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 137-170 (2000)

Since October 11, 2010

Included in

Criminal Law Commons , Religion Commons

ISSN: 1065-8254 (print); 1943-135X (online)

Search the Site

Advanced Search

Journal Information

• Journal Home
• BORJ website

W&M Law Links

• Our Faculty
• The Wolf Law Library
• Receive Email Notices or RSS

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

The Death Penalty Can Ensure ‘Justice Is Being Done’

A top Justice Department official says for many Americans the death penalty is a difficult issue on moral, religious and policy grounds. But as a legal issue, it is straightforward.

By Jeffrey A. Rosen

Mr. Rosen is the deputy attorney general.

This month, for the first time in 17 years , the United States resumed carrying out death sentences for federal crimes.

On July 14, Daniel Lewis Lee was executed for the 1996 murder of a family, including an 8-year-old girl, by suffocating and drowning them in the Illinois Bayou after robbing them to fund a white-supremacist organization. On July 16, Wesley Purkey was executed for the 1998 murder of a teenage girl, whom he kidnapped, raped, killed, dismembered and discarded in a septic pond. The next day, Dustin Honken was executed for five murders committed in 1993, including the execution-style shooting of two young girls, their mother, and two prospective witnesses against him in a federal prosecution for methamphetamine trafficking.

The death penalty is a difficult issue for many Americans on moral, religious and policy grounds. But as a legal issue, it is straightforward. The United States Constitution expressly contemplates “capital” crimes, and Congress has authorized the death penalty for serious federal offenses since President George Washington signed the Crimes Act of 1790. The American people have repeatedly ratified that decision, including through the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 signed by President Bill Clinton, the federal execution of Timothy McVeigh under President George W. Bush and the decision by President Barack Obama’s Justice Department to seek the death penalty against the Boston Marathon bomber and Dylann Roof .

The recent executions reflect that consensus, as the Justice Department has an obligation to carry out the law. The decision to seek the death penalty against Mr. Lee was made by Attorney General Janet Reno (who said she personally opposed the death penalty but was bound by the law) and reaffirmed by Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder.

Mr. Purkey was prosecuted during the George W. Bush administration, and his conviction and sentence were vigorously defended throughout the Obama administration. The judge who imposed the death sentence on Mr. Honken, Mark Bennett, said that while he generally opposed the death penalty, he would not lose any sleep over Mr. Honken’s execution.

In a New York Times Op-Ed essay published on July 17 , two of Mr. Lee’s lawyers criticized the execution of their client, which they contend was carried out in a “shameful rush.” That objection overlooks that Mr. Lee was sentenced more than 20 years ago, and his appeals and other permissible challenges failed, up to and including the day of his execution.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

Death Penalty From the Point of Religion Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Even though several governments are still currently practicing death penalties, globally it is viewed as an abuse of human rights. It is also evident that death sentence is not in any way correlated with stoppage of murder.

This implies that, the cases of murder have continued to increase in a very alarming rate even in those countries where death penalties are constantly applied. A very typical example is Iran where death penalties are so frequent even amongst juvenile offenders and yet the capital offences are common events in the country.

It is also very true that the real healing con not be fully granted by mere cruel killing of the offenders. This is because the key motive of undertaking death penalty is basically revenge which is not an aspect of healing. The true healing is only realized through repentance and forgiveness and not through acts of revenge.

The methods on which the killing of the alleged offender is undertaken are inhuman and ungodly and all government should undertake moratorium on the application of death penalties. A very good example is the lethal injection method which is practiced in United States of America. This method has proven beyond reasonable doubts that there is evidence of cruel and lengthy death in its usage.

This is a big mockery to human rights and dignity of human life. In this case we are going to look at various reasons against the death penalty practice. The views of various religious groups will also be visited (Stephen, 2009, p. 1). Finally the enormous contributions of international organizations in fight against the practice of death penalties by various governments globally will also be seen.

There are various reasons against the death penalty practices. One among these reasons is the mere fact that the costs of the death penalty are too huge. This is because of the sensitivity and weight which death sentence carries.

Thus this calls for adequate lengthy procedures of law to be followed which are too costly from the time of arrest to the point of execution. These costs are compared to an alternative form of administering justice which is life imprisonment. It is a documented fact that administering life sentence is far much cheaper compared to death penalty.

Thus, this has led to public outcry to replace death penalty with life sentence with no possibility of the victims being granted parole. Secondly, the mentorship services offered by inmates on life sentence who could have otherwise been hanged are very vital.

This has been quite evident in the correctional institutes commonly known as prisons. Most of these inmates who could have been removed from death rows to life sentence are quite instrumental in mentorship especially after undergoing spiritual re-formation. These inmates usually involve themselves with helping the young men and women to undergo a successful process of rehabilitation.

This mentorship services are usually most effective if the correctional institutions are undertaking vital programs such as drug treatment, education programs, spiritual and moral programs. Thus, life imprisonment leads to positive utilisation of the inmates who could have be killed under the practice of death penalty.

The other reasons may also include the observance of the logical ethics of life .in this case every person has a basic right which is right to life. This basic right must be universal to all people.

Also it should be noted that the right to life should be treated sacred as much as possible. The basic right to life should not be subject to forfeiture. Secondly, the impacts of the death penalty are too severe on the lives of the victims’ families and close kinsmen and on the settlement of the case. It is also evident that death penalty only continues the cycle of violence by killing another person.

The truth of the matter is that the needs of the affected family cannot be adequately addressed to the errors of judicially. Thirdly, there is sufficient and adequate evidence that the courts have continued to rely on the discretion of the judges. Thus, such decisions from some judges are biased. This is because the alleged person may emerge to be innocent after through scrutiny of the evidence.

There are several cases where by after undertaking DNA evidences many people have been found to have faced death penalty innocently. Thus, it is argued that it is far much better to acquit thousands of people on life sentence than to kill an innocent person due of these judges can be biased due to personal interests vested on specific cases. It is also true that some people are unfairly in prison.

Thus, implementing death penalty on such unfair grounds will mean gross abuse of human rights and disrespect to human dignity and sanctity of human life. It is also feared that several governments have continued to use death penalty to silence their opponents. This is evident in Iraq whereby political rivals have been subjected to death penalty by the government of the day.

The list of reasons why we should totally abolish the death penalty in all countries globally is endless. First, it is a proven evidence that death sentence does not stop the perpetuation of crime. This is clearly seen in Iran where death penalties are frequently administered but no impact is felt on crime reduction.

Thus, an alternative method is highly effective and recommended. This is because an alternative method such as life imprisonment can create an opportunity of rehabilitation. In this case the inmates who are on life sentence can offer mentorship to other inmates.

This makes people to co-exist with others well when out of prison for fear of going back in prison for good. Thus, the cases of crime will definitely go down due to successful rehabilitation of inmates. Secondly, the methods of execution are wild. For example the lethal injection method is proven to amount to cruel and delayed death which is inhuman (Browne, 2002, p. 1).

The practice of death penalty is unbiblical and immoral. Even though some people may try to justify death penalty from scriptures in the Old Testament it still remains unbiblical. This is because it is a common knowledge from the teachings of Jesus Christ that everybody is given a chance to understand the value attached to human life. Thus, need to preserve and respect life under all situations.

In Christianity, several affiliate religious groups have varying opinions on the issue of death penalty. Despite all this, it is very clear from the teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament that human life must be respected. This is seen when Jesus confronted the people who wanted to stone the adulterous women.

Also the action of Jesus in forgiving the thief whom he was crucified with on the cross clearly shows that shows Christianity does not condone death penalty. The Roman Catholic Church has a very controversial opinion as it regards to death penalty.

This church strongly believes that the Jesus’ teachings on doctrine of peace relates only to personal ethics. The Roman Catholic Church believes that the civil government has a duty to punish the crimes perpetuated by any person in the best way it opts. This is contrary to the commandment which stipulates that one should not kill another person or help in the deliberate termination of human life (Robinson, 2010, p. 1).

In the Buddhism religion it is very clear that death penalty is condemned. This is well demonstrated by chapter ten on the dhammapada. It is shown that everyone fears suffering, punishment and above all everyone has extreme fear for death. This chapter goes ahead and states that one should not kill or cause death of another person.

The love for life is highly emphasized in this chapter. Also the first five precepts of Buddhism teach their own followers the need to abstain from deliberate attempt on destruction of life. The chapter twenty six of the dhammapada goes ahead and declares a person who is abrahimin. It says that abrahimin is a person who has dropped weapons and condemned violence against all human beings. This emphasizes the need for not killing or helping to kill under all circumstances.

It is now clear that majority of religious group are built on foundations which strongly condemn death penalty. An exception is Islam which advocate for death penalty most especially on cases of adultery. But this practice is drastically losing popularity amongst Muslim community because it is unfairly administered (Brandon, 2009, p. 37). Evidence shows that it is only women who are affected by adultery in which they are mercilessly stoned to death in front of large crowd.

The international organisations have continued in their efforts to get rid of death penalty. For example the United Nations has established various resolutions in its assembly in view of establishing moratorium. The moratorium on the usage of death penalty by various governments is aimed at stopping the death sentence. The European Union has put some entry conditions on its members on issues of the death penalty. Thus, the countries who are members of European Union are not expected to practice death penalty.

The miscarriage of justice has been evident in the process of implementing the death penalty. In this case several innocent people have been put to a miserable end by capital punishment. The death penalty is noted to have completely been administered unfairly upon the disadvantaged groups in the society. It is a common argument that death penalty falls on those without good lawyers to represent them.

This evidently puts the marginalised groups to be victims of this death sentences. Examples of these groups of people include the poor, mentally challenged, illiterate and religious minorities. It is for this grave concern that all governments should abolish death penalty. Also, this calls for an alternative method of administering justice. The life imprisonment is highly preferred under these circumstances.

This is for the reason of preserving the divine dignity of human life and also at the same time to punish the offenders accordingly. In this case we have addressed reasons against death penalty. The various views from religious groups and international organisations pertaining death penalty have also been discussed.

Bibliography

Brandon, C. (2009). The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History . California. Wadsworth Publishers.

Browne, A. (2002). Death penalty abolished on all British territory . Web.

Robinson, B. (2010). Capital Punishment: All viewpoints on the death penalty . Web.

Stephen, M. (2009). History of UK Capital Punishment . Web.

• Daniel Valerio Child Abuse
• Violent Crime: Rape and Sexual Assault
• Facets of the Death Penalty
• Administering a UNIX User Environment
• Development Theories Applied to Ted Kaczynski and Alice Walker
• The Practice of Death Penalty
• Simpson ‘S Criminal Case
• Prevention of Date Rapes With the SARA Model
• Rewards and Punishments based on Relative Deserts: A Critical Analysis of Pojman’s Proposition
• The Aurora Gun Issue Overview
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, July 4). Death Penalty From the Point of Religion. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-penalty/

"Death Penalty From the Point of Religion." IvyPanda , 4 July 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/death-penalty/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Death Penalty From the Point of Religion'. 4 July.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Death Penalty From the Point of Religion." July 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-penalty/.

1. IvyPanda . "Death Penalty From the Point of Religion." July 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-penalty/.

IvyPanda . "Death Penalty From the Point of Religion." July 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-penalty/.

Religious Values and Death Penalty

This essay will explore the relationship between religious values and the death penalty. It will discuss various religious perspectives on capital punishment and how these beliefs influence the ethical debate on this issue. PapersOwl offers a variety of free essay examples on the topic of Crime.

How it works

Religious and moral values tell us that killing is wrong. Thou shall not kill. To me, the death penalty is inhumane. Killing people makes us like the murderers that most of us despise. No imperfect system should have the right to decide who lives and who dies. The government is made up of imperfect humans, who make mistakes. The only person that should be able to take life, is god.

“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind”. (Gandhi) Two wrongs do not make a right.

You simply can’t justify a wrong by doing something equally as wrong. I believe everyone deserves a second chance. I think many people are on death row and in our prisons because they never got any first chances. The death penalty doesn’t seem to recognize that guilty people have the possibility to change, and it rejects their chance to ever rejoin and contribute to society.

Anyone can change and be rehabilitated. We live in troubling times and the easiest path would be to get rid of criminals altogether but imagine a world where we can change lives instead of taking them. You cannot introduce new ideas into someone’s head by chopping it off.

The risk of executing innocent people exists in any imperfect justice system. Since 1973, 123 people in 25 states have been released from death row with evidence of innocence. Innocent people are imprisoned and executed all the time. As in ‘Just Mercy, police officers and prosecutors, whether they are under pressure from the public, or trying to further their careers, seem to make quick arrests and completely ignore evidence that might point to innocence. There have been and always will be cases of executions of innocent people. No matter how developed a justice system seems to be, it will always remain at risk for human failure. Unlike prison sentences, where people can be released upon new evidence, the death penalty is permanent and non-reparable.

The death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. I read that In April 2005, in (The Lancet) a team of medical researchers found flaws in how lethal injections were being given, which caused extreme suffering to the person being executed. The report found “that in 43 of the 49 executed prisoners studied the anesthetic administered during lethal injection was lower than required for surgery. In 43 percent of cases, drug levels were consistent with awareness.”

Here is an article I read on botched executions. “On December 13, 2006, a man named Angel Nieves Diaz was the victim of a botched execution so terrible that it led Florida’s Republican Governor and death penalty enthusiast Jeb Bush to issue an executive order halting executions in the state. Technicians wrongly inserted the needles carrying the poisons that were to kill Diaz. The chemicals poured into his soft tissues instead of his veins. This left Diaz struggling and mouthing words in pain for over 34 minutes, when a second set of needles were inserted. The county medical examiner found 12-inch chemical burns inside both of his arms after the execution”. I also watched a video at home of a prisoner with a botched execution and it was horrific to watch, and it actually brought tears to my eyes.

Cite this page

Religious values and Death penalty. (2020, Mar 23). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/religious-values-and-death-penalty/

"Religious values and Death penalty." PapersOwl.com , 23 Mar 2020, https://papersowl.com/examples/religious-values-and-death-penalty/

PapersOwl.com. (2020). Religious values and Death penalty . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/religious-values-and-death-penalty/ [Accessed: 4 Sep. 2024]

"Religious values and Death penalty." PapersOwl.com, Mar 23, 2020. Accessed September 4, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/religious-values-and-death-penalty/

"Religious values and Death penalty," PapersOwl.com , 23-Mar-2020. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/religious-values-and-death-penalty/. [Accessed: 4-Sep-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2020). Religious values and Death penalty . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/religious-values-and-death-penalty/ [Accessed: 4-Sep-2024]

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Hire a writer to get a unique paper crafted to your needs.

Our writers will help you fix any mistakes and get an A+!

Please check your inbox.

You can order an original essay written according to your instructions.

Trusted by over 1 million students worldwide

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

Opinion Polls: Death Penalty Support and Religious Views

• Facebook Share
• Tweet Tweet
• Email Email

Pew Research Center: Atheists and Agnostics Tend to Support Death Penalty Less Than Other Religious Groups

According to a Pew Research Center survey from April 2021, a majority of adults in the United States support the use of the death penalty for individuals convicted of murder, but these views tend to vary by religion. Approximately two-thirds of atheists and six-in-ten agnostics are at least ‘somewhat’ opposed to the use of capital punishment for those convicted of murder, while 60% of U.S. adults favors the death penalty. For particular religious groups, this support is even higher: roughly 75% of white Evangelicals and Protestants favor capital punishment, as well as 61% of Hispanic Catholics. For Black Protestants, capital punishment is a divisive issue, with 50% supporting its use and 47% opposing its use. This division reflects the overall lower support for the death penalty among Black Americans, regardless of religiosity. 

The survey also addresses moral qualms about the use of the death penalty, whether capital punishment has a deterrent effect, whether sentencing for the same crime varies by race, and whether there are adequate protections to prevent against the execution of an innocent person. Amongst this set of answers, approximately half of the atheists and agnostics believe the death penalty is morally unjustifiable, while less than a quarter of the white Protestants and evangelicals shared the same sentiment. According to Sarah Kramer, “generally speaking, people with any religious affiliation are more likely than those without one to say that the threat of the death penalty deters serious crime.” The survey revealed a large difference in whether each group thinks the death penalty is applied equally by race. Nearly 90% of Black Protestants believe that Black people are more likely than White people to be sentenced to death for crimes with similar circumstances, while almost 70% of white evangelicals believe the death penalty is equally applied to white and Black people. This number was lesser among white non-evangelicals (53%) and Catholics (47%). Every religious group that participated in the survey agreed, with large majorities, that there is some risk associated with an innocent person being put to death in the United States.

S. Kramer, Unlike other U.S. religious groups, most atheists and agnostics oppose the death penalty (June 15, 2021)

2014 Public Religion Research Institute Poll Finds That Most Religious Affiliations in the United States Prefer Life in Prison Without Parole to the Death Penalty

The September 2014 “American Values Survey” by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRPI) showed that 48% of Americans said they preferred life without parole as the punishment for murder, as compared to 44% who said they preferred the death penalty. The poll found what PRPI commentators described as “significant religious divides on this issue.” Support for the death penalty was lowest among Hispanic and Black Protestants, at 24% and 25%, respectively. 68% of each preferred life without parole. Catholics, Jews, other non-Christian religions, and the religiously unaffiliated all preferred life without parole to the death penalty. Only White evangelical (59 percent) and White mainline Protestants (52 percent) expressed majority support for the death penalty, with 34% and 40% from these groups, respectively, preferring life without parole.

(J. Piacenza, Support for Death Penalty by Religious Affiliation (Apr. 9, 2015))

Gallup Poll: Who Supports the Death Penalty?   

The combined aggregate results from the nine surveys conducted from 2001 through 2004 show some interesting, albeit subtle, differences in death penalty support by religious affiliation.

Church Attendance

Americans who attend religious services on a regular basis are slightly less likely to support the death penalty than those who attend less frequently. Although a majority of frequent and infrequent churchgoers support the death penalty, the data show that 65% of those who attend services weekly or nearly weekly favor capital punishment, compared with 69% of those who attend services monthly and 71% of those who seldom or never attend.

Religious Preference

Individuals who self-identify as Protestants are somewhat more likely to endorse capital punishment than are Catholics and far more likely than those with no religious preference. More than 7 in 10 Protestants (71%) support the death penalty, while 66% of Catholics support it. Fifty-seven percent of those with no religious preference favor the death penalty for murder.

*Results are based on telephone interviews with 6,498 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Feb. 19-21, 2001; May 10-14, 2001; Oct. 11-14, 2001; May 6-9, 2002; Oct. 14-17, 2002; May 5-7, 2003; Oct 6-9, 2003; May 2-4, 2004; and Oct. 11-14, 2004. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ± 2 percentage points. (Press Release “ Who Supports the Death Penalty? ” by Joseph Carroll, Gallup Poll (November 16, 2004)).

Zogby Polls Finds Dramatic Decline in Catholic Support For the Death Penalty

A national poll of Roman Catholic adults conducted by Zogby International found that Catholic support for capital punishment has declined dramatically in recent years. The Zogby Poll was released on March 21, 2005 at a press conference of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops as it announced a new Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty. The poll revealed that only 48% of Catholics now support the death penalty. Comparable polls by other organizations had registered a 68% support among Catholics in 2001. In addition, the percentage of Catholics who are strongly supportive of capital punishment hs halved, from a high of 40% to 20% in the most recent survey. The poll also found that:

• Regular churchgoers are less likely to support the death penalty than those who attend infrequently.
• Younger Catholics are among those least likely to support the death penalty.
• A third of Catholics who once supported the use of the death penalty now oppose it.

Among the major reasons Catholics gave for their opposition to capital punishment was “respect for life,” and 63% voiced concerns about what the use of the death penalty “does to us as a people and a country.” Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, was joined at the press conference by John Zogby, President of Zogby International, Bud Welch, whose daughter was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, and Kirk Bloodsworth, who was freed from death row after DNA evidence led to his exoneration. ( United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Press Release , March 21, 2005)

Public Religion Research Poll Finds That Mainline Protestant Clergy are Strongly Opposed to the Death Penalty

A national poll of Mainline Protestant clergy conducted in 2008 by Public Religion Research, LLC, revealed that 66% of mainline clergy oppose the death penalty while only 27% support it. The level of opposition to capital punishment varies significantly based on denomination. Eighty-two percent of ministers from the Universal Church of Christ (UCC) and 81% of Episcopal ministers oppose capital punishment. However, only 53% of American Baptist ministers oppose the death penalty. The survey also found that Mainline Protestant ministers are less likely to speak out on controversial social issues. Twenty-six percent of Mainline Protestant clergy state that they often discuss the issue of capital punishment.

The seven largest Mainline Protestant denominations in the United States include the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church USA, American Baptist Churches USA, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). (“ Clergy Voices: Findings from the 2008 Mainline Protestant Clergy Voices Survey, ” Public Religion Research, March 6, 2009)

• Internships
• For Students
• AEI Archive
• AEI Housing Center
• Survey Center on American Life
• Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility
• Center for Technology, Science, and Energy
• Agricultural Policy Studies
• Open Source Policy Center
• Critical Threats
• President's Page
• National Affairs
• Foreign and Defense Policy
• Society and Culture
• Health Care
• Politics and Public Opinion
• Opportunity & Social Mobility
• Workforce Development
• Legal and Constitutional Studies
• Technology and Innovation
• Science, Energy, and Environment
• Articles & Op-Eds
• President's Message

Religion and the Death Penalty

By Walter Berns

The Weekly Standard

February 04, 2008

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether the Constitution allows the death penalty for the rape of a child. — New York Times , January 5, 2008

The best case for the death penalty–or, at least, the best explanation of it–was made, paradoxically, by one of the most famous of its opponents, Albert Camus, the French novelist. Others complained of the alleged unusual cruelty of the death penalty, or insisted that it was not, as claimed, a better deterrent of murder than, say, life imprisonment, and Americans especially complained of the manner in which it was imposed by judge or jury (discriminatorily or capriciously, for example), and sometimes on the innocent.

Camus said all this and more, and what he said in addition is instructive. The death penalty, he said, “can be legitimized only by a truth or a principle that is superior to man,” or, as he then made clearer, it may rightly be imposed only by a religious society or community; specifically, one that believes in “eternal life.” Only in such a place can it be said that the death sentence provides the guilty person with the opportunity (and reminds him of the reason) to make amends, thus to prepare himself for the final judgment which will be made in the world to come. For this reason, he said, the Catholic church “has always accepted the necessity of the death penalty.” This may no longer be the case. And it may no longer be the case that death is, as Camus said it has always been, a religious penalty. But it can be said that the death penalty is more likely to be imposed by a religious people.

The reasons for this are not obvious. It may be that the religious know what evil is or, at least, that it is, and, unlike the irreligious, are not so ready to believe that evil can be explained, and thereby excused, by a history of child abuse or, say, a “post-traumatic stress disorder” or a “temporal lobe seizure.” Or, again unlike the irreligious, and probably without having read so much as a word of his argument, they may be morally disposed (or better, predisposed) to agree with the philosopher Immanuel Kant–that greatest of the moralists–who said it was a “categorical imperative” that a convicted murderer “must die.” Or perhaps the religious are simply quicker to anger and, while instructed to do otherwise, slower, even unwilling, to forgive. In a word, they are more likely to demand that justice be done. Whatever the reason, there is surely a connection between the death penalty and religious belief.

European politicians and journalists recognize or acknowledge the connection, if only inadvertently, when they simultaneously despise us Americans for supporting the death penalty and ridicule us for going to church. We might draw a conclusion from the fact that they do neither. Consider the facts on the ground (so to speak): In this country, 60 convicted murderers were executed in 2005 (and 53 in 2006), almost all of them in southern or southwestern and church-going states–Virginia and Georgia, for example, Texas and Oklahoma–states whose residents are among the most seriously religious Americans. Whereas in Europe, or “old Europe,” no one was executed and, according to one survey, almost no one–and certainly no soi-disant intellectual–goes to church. In Germany, for example, leaving aside the Muslims and few remaining Jews, only 4 percent of the people regularly attend church services, in Britain and Denmark 3 percent, and in Sweden not much more than 1; in France there are more practicing Muslims than there are baptized Catholics, and a third of the Dutch do not know the “why” of Christmas. Hence, the empty or abandoned churches, or in Shakespeare’s words, the “bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.”

As for the death penalty, it is not enough to say that they (or their officials) are opposed to it. They want it abolished everywhere. They are not satisfied that it was abolished in France (in 1981, and over the opposition at the time of some 70 percent of the population), as well as in Britain, Germany, and the other countries of Old Europe, or that–according to a protocol attached to the European Convention on Human Rights–it will have to be abolished in any country seeking membership in the European Union; and its abolition in Samoa was greeted by an official declaration expressing Europe’s satisfaction. (To paraphrase Hamlet, “what is Samoa to them or they to Samoa that they should judge for it?”) In fact, their concern, if not their authority, extends far beyond the countries for which they are legally responsible.

Thus, the European Union adopted a charter confirming everyone’s right to life and stating that “no one may be removed, expelled, or extradited to a State where there is a serious risk that he or she would be subjected to the death penalty.” They even organized a World Congress Against the Death Penalty which, in turn, organized the first World Day Against the Death Penalty. They go so far as to intervene in our business, filing amicus curiae briefs in Supreme Court capital cases.

What explains this obsession with the death penalty? Hard to say, but probably the fact that abolishing it is one of the few things Europeans can do that make them feel righteous; in fact, very few. Nowhere in the new European constitution–some 300 pages long, not counting the appendages–is there any mention of religion, of Christian Europe, or of God. God is dead in Europe and, of course, something died with Him.

This “something” is the subject of Camus’s famous novel The Stranger , first published in 1942, 60 years after Nietzsche first announced God’s death, and another 60 before the truth of what he said became apparent, at least with respect to Europe and its intellectuals. The novel has been called a modern masterpiece–there was a time, and not so long ago, when students of a certain age were required to read it–and Meursault, its hero (actually, its antihero), is a murderer, but a different kind of murderer. What is different about him is that he murdered for no reason–he did it because the sun got in his eyes, à cause du soleil –and because he neither loves nor hates, and unlike the other people who inhabit his world, does not pretend to love or hate. He has no friends; indeed, he lives in a world in which there is no basis for friendship and no moral law; therefore, no one, not even a murderer, can violate the terms of friendship or break that law. As he said, the universe “is benignly indifferent” to how he lives.

It is a bleak picture, and Camus was criticized for painting it, but as he wrote in reply, “there is no other life possible for a man deprived of God, and all men are [now] in that position.” But Camus was not the first European to draw this picture; he was preceded by Nietzsche who (see Zarathustra ‘s “Prologue”) provided us with an account of human life in that godless and “brave new world.” It will be a comfortable world–rather like that promised by the European Union–where men will “have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night,” but no love, no longing, no striving, no hope, no gods or ideals, no politics (“too burdensome”), no passions (especially no anger), only “a regard for health.” To this list, Camus rightly added, no death penalty.

This makes sense. A world so lacking in passion lacks the necessary components of punishment. Punishment has its origins in the demand for justice, and justice is demanded by angry, morally indignant men, men who are angry when someone else is robbed, raped, or murdered, men utterly unlike Camus’s Meursault. This anger is an expression of their caring, and the just society needs citizens who care for each other, and for the community of which they are parts. One of the purposes of punishment, particularly capital punishment, is to recognize the legitimacy of that righteous anger and to satisfy and thereby to reward it. In this way, the death penalty, when duly or deliberately imposed, serves to strengthen the moral sentiments required by a self-governing community.

Walter Berns is a resident scholar at AEI. An earlier version of this essay appeared in Democracy and the Constitution (AEI Press, 2006).

• TOP CATEGORIES
• AS and A Level
• University Degree
• International Baccalaureate
• Uncategorised
• 5 Star Essays
• Study Tools
• Study Guides
• Meet the Team
• Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)
• Themes and Issues
• Capital Punishment

Capital punishment essay

‘Christians would agree with Capital Punishment’

Do You agree?

Murder is a crime whether you look at the Bible - Thou shalt not kill The Sixth Commandment - or at a book of English law - Murder: an indictable crime punishable in a court of law. Since the early 1800,s, most executions have resulted from convictions for murder. The death penalty has also been imposed for other serious crimes such as armed robbery, kidnapping rape and treason. The State of Florida, America supports capital punishment and carries it out by electric chair execution.

There are advantages to Capital Punishment and the threat of the death penalty. It is a deterrent and a clear warning that says, if you commit this crime and take a person's life your life will also be taken from you. This is echoed in Christian teachings from the Old Testament Exodus 21:24 - "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" and in   the book of Genesis, which states ‘whoever sheds the blood of a man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man his own image. But this is not forgiving or promoting peace, which is what Jesus taught and it is he, above all others that Christianity is all about. Another thing that Jesus taught was to 'love your neighbour as yourself' and therefore protect him, as you would want to be protected. If protecting another means removing a murderer from society permanently then it cannot be wrong to do so. But then there is the question of the murderer's right to protection and if every man is your neighbour then the murderer is as-well and therefore you cannot hurt him because you would not want to be hurt. This could form a complex argument but basically where Christian beliefs are concerned these advantages are meaningless but where human rights are concerned they must be taken into account.

This is a preview of the whole essay

The disadvantages of Capital Punishment are shown most prominently in Jesus and what he stood for, i.e. forgiveness and sanctity of life, also in the Sermon on the Mount and many other parts of the New Testament. This does give the argument against capital punishment a head start but there are also other factors to consider. By letting a murderer be put to death you will be legalising murder for the executioner. Who is then to say who can and cannot kill? If a government decides this, there is sure to be religious opposition, and if for example the Pope decides who can kill another then he would be going against his own religion. When death is made legal in any way, even in cases of war, it is encouraging violence. War should and is frequently only a last resort 'Just War'. The death penalty for murder would not be a last resort as there are alternatives and as again who is to decide which murder and in what circumstances it would warrant another death. In any case and in any trial mistakes could be made. There will always be the risk that an innocent person will be put to death because of another's mistake. (the case of Derrick Bentley).

 According to Christian beliefs no one should be killed especially because God, the creator, is the only one who can give and take life, this is called the ‘sanctity of life’ . There are other ways of dealing with criminals, even murderers and many people believe that these ways should be explored instead of using the death penalty. Again many examples could be used: Sermon on the Mount - Love your enemies. Matthew 5 - Don't seek revenge " If anyone slaps you on your right cheek, let them slap you on your left cheek too", but one question could sum up the argument without using religious references. Do two wrongs make a right?

So can the death penalty be justified? In religious terms, no. But why wouldn’t Christians want the criminals who have done such a crime to be abolished. It would stop them from committing the crime again and it would deter others away from committing such offences. This is because their are simply too many teachings against it. It is true to say that there are exceptions to every rule, for example to the rule thou shalt not kill, the church will condone fighting in wars. But killing is different to murder and although the murderer has violated the sanctity of life it is still forgivable. God is the judge and to violate the sanctity of life for revenge against the murderer is as bad a crime as the initial murder itself.                                                                      

In non-religious terms the answer is still no. Two wrongs don't make a right. The wrong message is being taught and not the precious lesson of forgiveness. One human characteristic that cannot be relied on in this situation is opinion. Every person has an opinion whether it is voiced or not and that opinion will be influenced by the circumstances and personal involvement.

Document Details

• Word Count 852
• Page Count 2
• Subject Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

Related Essays

Persuasive Essay Against Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment.

Capital punishment

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

Religion, Justice and the Death Penalty

Thank you to all who attended and participated in the “Call for Reckoning” conference on January 25, 2002. Over 500 people from around the country filled the Divinity School’s lecture hall and several overflow rooms to hear the speakers reflect on religion and the death penalty. Provocative questions and profound reflections were offered by attendees and speakers alike throughout the day.

At a time of heightened controversy surrounding the death penalty, most discourse relies upon the political, philosophical, and legal dimensions of the practice, and its racial and social implications. Quite often in this debate, religious traditions and theological perspectives are not fully explored beyond an occasional reference to “an eye for an eye” or calls for mercy and forgiveness. Religious voices, however, provide unique standpoints and important reflective dimensions that illuminate these political and other accounts of capital punishment.

This conference brought together scholars of various faiths and religious backgrounds from the fields of politics, religion, and law to take up a broad range of views on the death penalty. Special attention was given to the following guiding questions:

What resources does religion-including religious beliefs, traditions, and institutions-provide in shaping current views about the death penalty?

In what ways do faith traditions and theological ideas shape how justice is conceived of and meted out? How do positions both for and against the death penalty draw upon various theological understandings of justice? Are these political and religious accounts of justice ultimately reconcilable?

What role ought religious beliefs play in a pluralistic democratic society that often presumes strict boundaries between matters of private faith and political life? How might citizens, jurors, neighbors and people of faith draw upon religious ideas in carrying out their civic responsibilities?

With a discussion of these questions in hand, this symposium grappled with the relationship between religion and public life as it pertains to what is often called the “ultimate punishment.”

SESSION TWO: Religion, Justice and the Death Penalty

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: The Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life Conference now turns to the theme: Religion, Justice and the Death Penalty. As you’ve already heard at moments today, including the fascinating session we just had with the governor, whenever the death penalty comes up for discussion the question of justice is not far behind. And a question that always occurs is: How does the death penalty square with our understandings of justice and which understandings of justice might those be?

To help us sort out this and related matters we have three distinguished scholars. We’re going to begin with J. Budziszewski, a political theory colleague, who comments frequently on questions of justice, natural law and political life. He will speak to the following: Sending Souls to God; Can the Death Penalty be Justified.

(Applause.)

J. BUDZISZEWSKI: I’m glad to speak to all of you about this important subject today. Justice is giving to each what is due to him, praise to the doers of good, harm to the doers of wrong, and so fundamental is the duty of public authority to requite good and evil that natural law philosophers have always made it the paramount function of the state. The New Testament declares that the role is delegated to magistrates by God himself.

“Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution,” Saint Peter says, “whether it be to the emperor supreme or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and praise those who do right.” Saint Paul agrees. You have heard other speakers quote this morning that he calls the magistrate “a servant of God for our good to execute God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”

I think that bears reading again because when we hear that phrase, “to execute God’s wrath on the wrongdoer,” we think that that somehow excludes his being a servant for our good or even for the wrongdoer’s good, but Paul makes that point very clear.

So weighty is this duty of justice that it raises the question of whether mercy is permissible at all.

By definition, mercy is punishing the criminal less than he deserves. And it seems no more clear at first why not going far enough is better than going too far. We say that both cowardice and rashness miss the mark of courage though in opposite directions. We say that both stinginess and prodigality miss the mark of the virtue of generosity. Why don’t we say that both mercy and harshness miss the mark of justice?

Making matters yet more difficult, the argument to abolish capital punishment is an argument to categorically extend mercy or clemency to all those who deserve death for their crimes, because to abolish capital punishment is to give all of them less than they deserve.

Now, the question of mercy arises only on the assumption that there is some crime, which does, in fact, deserve death. It might be objected that this isn’t true, that no crime deserves death, and if that objection is valid then abolition is not a question of mercy, it’s a question of justice proper and my whole approach to the question of capital punishment is wrong.

But I don’t think that the objection is valid. Suffice it to say that at least death deserves death. Nothing less is proportionate. And scripture agrees. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his image.” The observation has been made, and I think rightly, that it is not only the victim who bears God’s image but also the perpetrator. That fact does not make the gravity of what he has done less serious; it makes it more. It is because he’s made in the image of God that he knows better, that he is accountable for what he does. He is not like the animals who cannot bear praise or blame.

If simple murder warrants death, how much more does multiple and compounded murder warrant it, the murder of many people in series, the murder of many people at once, the compounding of murder with torture? Some criminals seem to deserve death more than once. If we’re considering not taking their lives at all, the motive cannot be justice; it must be mercy.

The questions that we have to address are therefore three: First, is it ever permissible for public authority to give the wrongdoer less than he deserves? Second, if it is permissible, then when is it permissible? And third, is it permissible to grant such mercy categorically?

In these brief oral remarks I would like to try to summarize. I spoke three questions. The first question was whether it is ever permissible for public authority to give the wrongdoer less than he deserves, and briefly I think the answer is yes. Yes, it is sometimes permissible for public authority to give the wrongdoer less than he deserves.

There are two cases now, human and divine. In the Christian view, which is my view, God can grant mercy with no impairment of justice. There is no question here of tempering mercy with justice or balancing mercy and justice; they are both perfectly fulfilled, because in Jesus Christ He took upon himself the burden of human sin. He took the heat for our sins. Divine mercy then means both the divine atonement, which makes His forgiveness possible, and it also means the divine patience with which God waits for us to ask for that forgiveness.

Now, the human case is somewhat different. We are not God. We can’t play God. We should not assume God’s role or pretend that we are God. And yet for our good, not even divine forgiveness means that the consequences of sin in this life are fully remitted, and among these consequences is punishment by human magistrates, who act as God’s agents, whether they know it or not. They have that role according to Christian revelation; that is a fact. It doesn’t require their assent. They are in that role, whether they know it or not.

The sentences of human magistrates cannot be and are not meant to be a final requital of unrepentant evil. That awaits the great day when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead. But human sentences, human decrees, do foreshadow that final justice so that something of the retributive purpose is preserved even in human law. And in the meantime human sentences promote restraint and repentance.

Thus I think that although human magistrates are forbidden to let crimes go unrequited, they don’t carry the impossible burden of requiting them to the final degree. Retribution can be moderated. It can be moderated by considerations of rehabilitation, protection and deterrence, even though retribution remains its primary purpose. The only purpose of punishment, which cannot be moderated, is the purpose not of retribution per se but of symbolizing that purer retribution, which human magistrates themselves do not achieve, because human punishment is only a sign of wrath to come.

Now, the second of the three questions that I mentioned is when it is permissible for public authority to give the wrongdoer less than he deserves. Briefly, the answer is that the wrongdoer may receive mercy when the four purposes of punishment that I’ve mentioned are satisfied better by bloodless means than by bloody ones.

To summarize the argument that I’d like to make, the death penalty fares differently under each of the four purposes. So let’s consider them in turn. As to rehabilitation, the prospect of execution may contribute in a way that no other punishment can to at least one aspect of rehabilitation and that is the criminal’s change of heart. “Depend on it, sir,” Samuel Johnson famously said. “When a man knows that he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates the mind wonderfully.”

Let’s speak to the other aspect of rehabilitation, his readmission to society. For that reason people often thoughtlessly say that capital punishment cuts off the possibility of rehabilitation, but they’re thinking of only one aspect of rehabilitation, and I should like to say that the alternative, which the proponents of abolition usually mention, the alternative to capital punishment, life in prison, that does not contribute to the second aspect of his rehabilitation either, because he’s not readmitted to society in that case either.

As to the protection of society from the criminal, despite modern developments in penology, despite the fact that we now put people in prisons instead of throwing them in holes in the ground, capital punishment is still often necessary for the protection of society. Governor Keating made this point very strongly. The problem is not I think so much that dangerous men may escape from prison, but part of it is that we can’t bring ourselves to keep them in. There is a general aversion to punishment of any sort spreading across our society and it has been a long time since a life sentence meant that a criminal would remain in prison for the rest of his natural life.

In some ways, as Governor Keating also mentioned, imprisonment can even increase the danger of criminals to others. They can be a danger to other criminals while they’re imprisoned. And I’d like to add to that that if we do release them they are often more dangerous after they’re released than before they went into prison, because while they have been in prison they were exposed almost exclusively to the corrupting society of other criminals. So we should not think that capital punishment is no longer necessary for the protection of society now that we have prisons.

I agree that there is no unambiguous and conclusive evidence that capital punishment deters crime in general. I don’t know whether there ever will be any. I don’t think that it’s safe to base any arguments, at least for the time being, on the assumption of a deterrent effect, but neither is there evidence that capital punishment incites crime and a deterrent effect is not necessary to justify deserved punishment in any case.

As to retribution, or at least as to the residual symbolic function of retribution, the cynicism that Cardinal Dulles describes – an observation to which Professor Meilaender responded – the cynicism of people in our society who no longer believe in a transcendent order of justice, this is a real and a grave difficulty. Our rulers no longer believe in those divine decrees of which human decrees are at best a hint or a shadow, our intellectual elite does not. But this fact does not make it less important to appeal to justice; it makes it more.

There is a difference between saying that popular ideology no longer expresses the law written on the heart and saying that the law is, in fact, no longer written on the heart. Even now, even in a society like ours people still retain a dim idea of dessert, that proposition A deserves B for doing C has not simply become meaningless to them.

So I think the symbolic purpose of punishment must never be abandoned. It does not depend on whether the magistrates themselves believe in it. The Roman judges of the first century were no less cynical than the American judges, present company excepted — (laughter) — of the 21st, and yet Saint Paul, knowing this, calls the magistrate the “servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.”

If we say that because many people no longer believe in a transcendent order of justice, then we in making and executing the laws must act as though we do not believe in it either, then we speak as do men who have no hope, and I am sure that if we act like this, as though we don’t believe it, then no one else will believe it either.

In order for the system of justice to signify the gravity of crimes that merit death, it is probably not necessary that they always be punished with death; as I said earlier, mercy is possible in individual cases, yet it hardly seems possible to signify their gravity if they never are.

Consider the deviant who tortures small children to death for his pleasure or the ideologue who meditates the demise of innocent thousands for the sake of greater terror, for whom the very fact that they are innocent is a reason for killing them because it increases the terror and therefore the effect of his dramatic display.

Genesis says murderers deserve death because life is precious; man is made in the image of God. How convincing is our reverence for life if its mockers are suffered to live?

Question three was whether it is possible to grant such mercy categorically. Taking all four purposes of punishment into account, it seems to be certainly true that clemency remains a moral possibility in particular cases. Even when the crime as such deserves death, the penalty might nevertheless be replaced by life imprisonment for those criminals who are least dangerous, who are likeliest to repent – so far as we can judge this, and of course we’re very poor judges of that matter – and whose guilt is least compounded, provided that the punishment is not so weak in comparison to the crime that the symbolism of retribution is impaired.

And yet the propriety of clemency in particular cases does not seem to be a warrant for its categorical extension to all capital criminals, regardless of their danger to society, heedless of their hardness of heart, irrespective of the heinousness of their deeds.

Now, objections are made to this conclusion. The most interesting and judicious argument for qualified abolitionism – not against abolition in principle as though it could never be justified but at least for its qualified abolition for societies and such conditions as ours – is due I think to Avery Cardinal Dulles, from whom we heard this morning. It’s a very fine argument. It’s painstaking. It covers all the bases. And so I’d like to frame this next part of my remarks with reference to his argument.

Now, to be sure, the Cardinal finds less to commend capital punishment in his own review of the purposes of punishment than I do, and yet even he does not think that a review of the purposes of punishment is sufficient in itself to justify abolishing the death penalty, so perhaps he would agree with all that I’ve said so far.

The crux of his published argument, which is in your conference readers, is found not just in the review of the purposes of punishment, but in four other common objections to the penalty of death, which he also reviews. These objections are: Number one, sometimes innocent people are sentenced to death. Number two, capital punishment whets the lust for revenge rather than satisfying the zeal for true justice. Moreover, number three, it cheapens the value of life. And number four, it contradicts Christ’s teaching to forgive. We’ve touched on some of these already today.

The Cardinal, in his published writing, calls the first objection relatively strong. To the second and third he concedes some probable force, and the fourth he considers relatively weak. So his argument is not a simple endorsement of all four objections, yet he concludes that taken together the four may suffice to tip the scale against the death penalty.

Well, I’d like to revisit these four objections. As to the first one – erroneous convictions – courts sometimes do mistakenly condemn the innocent. That is certainly true. Although erroneous conviction is possible in any case, such as someone on trial for simple burglary, the severity of the error increases with the severity and the irreversibility of the penalty.

It would seem then that the proper remedy is to simply require a higher quality of evidence, a greater sureness of some sort, in capital cases than in ordinary cases, and also to root out the sources of corruption, of systematic bias in our system of justice. Indeed the Cardinal himself acknowledges that point; he approves of the suggestion for which he cites John Stuart Mill that if capital punishment would perhaps be justified, if the trial were held in an honest court and the accused were found guilty beyond all shadow of doubt. His point is that this criterion cannot be satisfied; despite all precautions, errors do sometimes occur and that seems to be true.

The difficulty with the argument lies in the notion of guilt beyond all shadow of doubt. When we say this, do we mean “beyond all shadow of any sort of doubt” or do we mean “beyond all shadow of reasonable doubt,” doubts that a rational person could seriously entertain. In law, it’s the latter standard that rules, not the former and I think that surely this is as it ought to be. Anything might be doubted. We might doubt that we are here in this room together. We might doubt whether we’re awake or whether we’re dreaming. We may suffer the doubt of thinking that the phenomenal world is merely an illusion produced by the character of our minds or perhaps by some evil demon, as Descartes famously suggested.

Now, the Cardinal holds that because even honest courts can err we must not trust any verdict, irrespective of the weight of evidence that supports that particular verdict, but a doubt that cannot be affected by any possible evidence is not a reasonable ground I suggest for letting a convict off the hook.

As to the objection concerning the lust for revenge, of course it’s true that the death penalty might whet the appetite for revenge. Again, I think in all of these objections there is something to be taken seriously. That’s why we need to have a real conversation.

It’s hard to see though why this should be more true of the death penalty than of locking them up for life. Have you ever heard people use that expression and say it with an attitude suggested by their voice of vindictiveness, “Just throw them in prison, lock them up, throw away the key.” There is certainly a lust for revenge expressed there too. Indeed, it’s hard to see why the danger of whetting a lust for revenge should be more true of any sort of punishment than it is true of the other aspects of criminal justice. It may whet the lust for revenge among some people after a violent crime has been committed on the street to see the policeman sailing down the street in their cars. It may whet the lust for revenge to hear the testimony of witnesses in court and hear some of the terrible details, which may be recounted. It may whet the lust for revenge to hear the judge’s solemn charge to the jury.

All of these things might whet the appetite for revenge and no doubt they often do. I don’t think that this is just something imaginary. Should we then abolish policeman testimony and solemn charges to juries?

Moreover, not only can the love of justice be twisted to wrong, but every good impulse can be twisted to wrong. That’s how wrong comes about. Evil has no creative power. The only way that you can get a bad thing is by taking a good thing and ruining it. Love of country, love of family, compassion for those who suffer; all these things can be distorted. The first may be distorted into fanaticism, the second into jingoism, the third into sentimentality. And, you know, even the love of God can be perverted, and when it is it is a terrible thing indeed. Yet the fact that something right can be perverted doesn’t stop it from being right.

As to the objection concerning the cheapening of life, this strikes a spot in my heart. I’m gravely concerned about the casualness with which life is held in our society, about the lightness with which one-third of the generation of the students that I teach has been destroyed by abortion and the lightness with which we are now considering extending this to infanticide and euthanasia and so forth.

So I think that this needs serious consideration, but let’s consider it seriously. The concern that the death penalty may cheapen respect for life in this society as a whole is, as Cardinal Dulles points out, most closely associated with Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, as he paraphrases it, by giving the impression that human beings sometimes have a right to kill, capital punishment fosters a casual attitude toward evil such as abortion, suicide and euthanasia.

Now, not even Cardinal Dulles considers this argument strong, he says, and in particular he observes that many earnest opponents of these other deeds are earnest supporters of capital punishment, because they realize that the rights of the guilty and of the innocent are not the same. From the perspective of moral philosophy I think that that’s a very strong point and we can pair that observation with another. Many fervent supporters of these other deeds — abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, even infanticide now — many fervent supporters of these other deeds are also fervent opponents of capital punishment. Isn’t that true too? The phenomenon is as common as it is strange. Perhaps it’s a form of compensation; conscience demands its pay. Having approved the private execution of the weak and blameless, one now seeks absolution by denouncing the official execution of the strong and ruthless.

Whether or not that explains it, and perhaps it doesn’t, at least two things are plain. The first thing is that it is psychologically possible to hold either of the following combinations of positions: That it’s wrong to kill the innocent but may be right to kill the guilty and also that it’s wrong to kill the guilty but may be right to kill the innocent.

The second thing, which I think ought to be pretty certain here, is that the normal moral reason for upholding capital punishment is reverence for life itself. Indeed, this is the reason why scripture and Christian tradition have upheld it, a fact, which suggests that if anything it may be the abolition of capital punishment, which threatens to cheapen life not its retention.

Finally, as to Christ’s teaching on forgiveness, it is true that Jesus taught to love those who hate us, to forgive those who wrong us and to abstain from hypocritical comparisons between ourselves and those who offend us. These things we should do, however difficult they may be, but let us remember that the same Lord and God who commands his people to pardon their debtors also gave them Torah, which commands magistrates to call them to account.

Cardinal Dulles speaks rightly when he says that personal pardon doesn’t absolve offenders from their obligations in justice and indeed he considers this fourth objection relatively weak and complex at best. My only objection to these words is that they are too polite. (Laughter.) Because the supposition that personal forgiveness implies a requirement for universal official amnesty is not merely weak but absurd. Taken seriously it would destroy all public authority because if punishment as such is the problem, if punishment as such is incompatible with forgiveness then why stop with capital punishment? Must we not abolish prisons, fines and even reprimands as well?

I’ve heard it asked by fellow Christians, “How dare we play God? How dare we wrest into our hands the divine prerogative of life and death,” and that’s a good question. My own answer is that we dare not — we dare not. We dare not wrest into our own hands any of the divine prerogatives of justice, whether the deprivation of life, of liberty or of property. It’s a dreadful matter to kill a man but it is dreadful also to lock him in a whole away from wife, children, parents, friends and all that he held dear in life. It’s a fearsome matter to imprison a man, but it’s also fearsome to use fines and impoundments to confiscate his worldly goods, treasure, which he, for all we know, may have accumulated by honest means and counted on for the succor of his family and the support of his declining years.

I don’t think that we dare to wrest into our hands any powers over our fellow man, but if God puts such powers into the hands of those who hold public authority, what then? Doesn’t that alter the picture? How dare we jerk our hands away, hold them behind our backs, refuse the charge, because the teaching of scripture is just as clear about public justice as it is about personal forgiveness and the teaching of Christ himself is that “scripture cannot be broken.” The magistrate is sent, whether he knows it or not. He’s the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. Yes, we’ve seen that he’s the servant of God’s patience too, but the one charge doesn’t cancel the other. Public authority remains an auger or a portent of the wrath, which will one day fall upon the unrepentant.

The story has another side as well. If you remit deserved punishment too easily, that’s not only a miscarriage of justice but of mercy. When a heart is very hard it may sometimes be the case I think that deserved punishment is the only knock, which is strong enough to break the husk and spill out the seeds of repentance. God himself is said to use this method, those whom he loves he chastens, perhaps even with the prospect of death. And if we’re to imitate his love, I wonder whether sometimes we must imitate his chastening too.

Classically, the church has held that the state has the authority to inflict capital punishment and has also classically held that in certain cases a deserved punishment of death may be remitted but the grounds for possible clemency are particular not universal. I believe that categorical remission of the penalty for all who deserve death contradicts revealed teaching on the duty of the magistrate, has no warrant in Christian tradition. It would weaken three of the four purposes of punishment, confuse the good counsels of compassion and bring about more harm than good. Some say that because there is a risk of error in those directions we should prefer to err on the side of mercy and we should indeed prefer to err on the side of mercy in individual cases, but to err categorically is no longer simply to err. Though I should be greatly happy to be shown that I’m wrong, I greatly fear that it’s to abdicate from justice and to forsake our bounden duty.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: Thank you very much. I think that you can readily see that we’re going to have a number of controversies put on the table this afternoon and we’ll count on our next speaker to continue this trend. Our next speaker is a former colleague of mine from Vanderbilt University, Victor Anderson, whose work revolves around the intersection of religion and African American public theology. Professor Anderson will speak to us on responsibility, vengeance and the death penalty.

VICTOR ANDERSON: Thank you. Thank you, Jean.

While most of my work is in philosophical, social and political ethics, Jean has asked me to think more seriously about theology since I am the professor of Christian ethics. I’m going to try to do that today. But I do so with a bit of embarrassment and amusement. I have spent more than 15 years trying to throw off the ghosts of Karl Barth or H. Richard Niebuhr from my ethical thinking and I find myself coming back to them as I reflected on this topic.

And one of the reasons is that I was so immersed in Barth – particularly Barth at Calvin Theological Seminary, where it was just the bashing of Barthianism – and so when I went to graduate school at Princeton University it was a breath of fresh air to read such heretics as Warner Kaufman and James Gustafson and a few others. But I still found myself coming back to some old ghosts for some good reasons and for some good insights. I want to really talk a little bit about what those insights are and particularly from a Christian perspective — I have to emphasize this — is that the position I give any number of Christians can hold a very different point of view about it, but I want to at least lay forward a case or at least my perspective on how I try to balance and look at these situations.

Why Barth and Niebuhr? In some sense, one of the reasons I tried to throw off Barth was because I didn’t like this idea of the God who commands. It seemed too commanding. (Laughter.) And, in fact, as I read the God who commands I was more impressed with the God who said no than the God who says yes. But the more I stayed with Barth, the more I realized that I had the wrong reading of Barth at least with regard to his ethics. As I read Barth, I began to understand that Barth did insist that God’s yes was greater than God’s no. In other words, Barth was saying that the Christian moral life is not lived out of simple obedience to a written rule, however inscribed in the Bible because Barth did not see the Bible as the word of God but as you know who have read Barth a witness to the word of God. So I take that very seriously. The word of scripture is a witness to the God who commands, and I think that’s a very important point and argument that I want to make.

But what is the command of God? The command of God is the command to be. It is a simple command. It is one command. It is not a multiplicity of commands. It is one command. It is the command to be, to live. It is not predicated on a negative injunction. No, folks, you may not dance. No, folks, you may not laugh. No, folks, you may not have sex with people outside your gender. It’s not predicated on a negative injunction. Rather, as I read Barth on it, God’s yes is the yes to life. Live. Be. Flourish. That is the ethical command of God, the one command, the command to be. It is a command that finds its fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

So the Christian ethical question is not how can I be a good man or woman, nor is it simply a philosophical question about what does right justice mean, absolute justice mean. And it’s not a question about being philosophically framed between the public and the private. Rather, it is a theological question. It is the question of how has God acted towards us, how has God acted upon us in all our relationships and encounters with the one God.

As I read Barth on this question, God has acted upon us in all things as the gracious God, the gracious God who commands being, life, flourishing, human fulfillment in the human encounter.

But it’s not just a personal relationship that Barth is inscribing for the Christian consciousness. As I read Barth again on it, God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to God’s self. In other words, the claim, the command of God is not simply a claim that is imprinted on Christian consciousness. Rather, it has a universality that extends to all because Barth was indeed a radical theocentric thinker.

Now, I go from that point of view to H. Richard Niebuhr. I’m not saying that Niebuhr and Barth are saying the same things, but I do think they fit within the same framework of the argument. For Niebuhr, the Christian life is lived out as a life of responsibility. But what does responsibility mean here for Niebuhr? For Niebuhr it means this, that we don’t simply relate to each other in terms of propositions. No, our encounter with each other is, in fact, an encounter with the inter-human other. That is, we encounter each other in the same way that God has encountered us, not as discrete individuals, but God’s action in the world was the action for all.

I think one way I was just recently fascinated by going back to Barth’s “Epistles of Romans,” in how many passages in the “Epistle of Romans” that Barth does not insist that what God did once and for all he did for all?

Our life together, it’s a life of a human interchange. We are bound together by the proposition of being, living, flourishing. Fulfilling the life of each other is the one command of God. Now, how do we do that? Niebuhr gives a very fine answer to it. We do it as a life of responsibility. That is, he frames the question of responsibility not in terms of obedience to a command; rather, he defines it in terms of relationality. We stand before the command, the claim of God, as if the claim was, in fact, a question posed to us. In other words, the form of the Christian life is lived as a life in dialogue, in conversation, in responsive action to the action upon us by God or by each other. In other words, in our encounters with each other we encounter each other as making claims on each other.

But what are the claims we make on each other? We make a mutual claim on each other: Let me live. That’s at least the basic claim that even if I were to talk about the social contract, it is at least eminently present in the social contract, let me live. I want to live. I want to be. I want to live and you must be in a relationship with me in order for that to be a possibility. In other words the Christian moral life is lived out in a relational encounter with each other, making claims on each other. But from Niebuhr’s point of view, the claims we make on each other are also related to the one claim that God has made upon us in Jesus Christ. But what is the claim that God has made upon us in Jesus Christ? According to Niebuhr, it is to live in a fitting relationship with the God who has acted upon us in all things as a God of grace and mercy. Grace and mercy define the divine human encounter for both Barth and for Niebuhr. It is therefore a claim of reciprocity by which we ourselves as Christians take up that claim as our own. That’s what Niebuhr means then by the responsible self.

I want to read a passage by him: “We think of all our actions as having the paradigm of what we do, when we answer another who addresses us, to be engaged in dialogue, to answer questions addressed to us, to defend ourselves against attack, to reply to injunctions, to meet challenges; this is common experience. And now we try to think of all our actions as having this character of being responses, answers to actions upon us.”

So grace and mercy define the Christian attitude toward the inter-human encounter with each other – but that sounds so hopeful. It sounds so naïve. Of course, folks, we know we’re supposed to be forgiving as Christians, love one another as I have loved you, but, my goodness, there is another human condition that we meet — we’re humans. And as humans, there are encounters and experiences we have with each other that drive us to the point that we want to kill each other, literally. We are making all kinds of claims upon us.

In a small book by Edward Farley, called “Deep Symbols,” he said our social life is often defined and organized around symbols that are so deep, so sentimented that we fail to even think about it and sometimes we fail to remember them. Among the deep symbols he wants to think about is the symbol of love, really nice in a post-modern, post-Christian age. He wants to think about justice. How can we renew our interest in justice, education and beauty? These are just so naïve. Who wants to talk about beauty when I have children to feed? How elite these symbols sound. I asked Ed one day, “Why in your book are there no symbols such as race, ethnocentrism, hatred and violence? Aren’t these the deep symbols that also frame the inter-human encounter with each other?” Ed’s reply was a simple reply: “Victor, you’re absolutely correct, but I have to regard them as poisonous symbols. They poison. They poisoned when they made the ultimate basis on how we organize the inter-human encounter. They poisoned the deeply inter-human encounter. They poison our abilities to recognize, to respect each other. They poison even the human subject himself and herself.” Poisonous symbols, and among those symbols is vengeance. If you ask can we rationalize vengeance, I’d say no we’re really not after vengeance. What we really want is exact retribution. That’s a nice way of rationalizing a fundamental human possibility. But vengeance has deeply rooted human possibilities in the inter-human exchange. It raises its head all the time in all shapes and forms.

I don’t want to dismiss that possibility. It’s just too real, too deep in the organization of our human interchange.

And, folks, I feel so ambiguous. I can imagine this possibility even for me, professor of Christian ethics, who wants to talk about love, forgiveness and mercy. I’m not exempt from that deeply human possibility of vengeance. My God, when I think of the murder of James Bird, Jr., an innocent man coming home from a niece’s wedding shower, picked up by three white men, beaten unconscious, dragged by a chain until his head was snapped from his body, his skin was stripped from his knees, his arm was torn from his body, left for dead. When I see that picture of what we can do, the possibilities of what we can do to each other, yes, I want the same thing for those men. When I think of Matthew Shepherd, what crime did he commit? What did he do to deserve his death? All he did was live out a possibility that even Barth denies to him, the possibility of living out a sexual life free to himself, free to express, denied because he was gay, left on a fence to die.

When I think of the World Trade massacre, yes, forgiveness, love and mercy seem to difficult and my Christian conscience when I think of the thousands and thousands who were deprived of life in the disaster, the pain, the irreparable pain, pain to families and the like, my heart cries out for — I want to say justice but I think in a deep moment when I think forget about it, get those bastards. That’s what it cries out for.

Kenneth Anthony Weary, the young black man minding his own business, picked up by two youths, taken in a station wagon, beaten unconscious. They left him on the road for dead. They ran over his face or his body and it would not be recognizable.

The things we can inflict on each other do arise, give the possibility for vengeance in my Christian soul, but then there is justice. I cannot go out and take the lives of those three men who took James Bird’s life.

We have a necessity for justice and we have a necessity for committing justice into the hands of those who are responsible for meting justice and punishment in a just and fitting manner.

This brings me back to Niebuhr again. The Christian moral life is not finalized because Christians are supposed to live a life that’s filled by the possibility of mercy; rather the Christian moral life is filled with the possibility for transcendence, filled with the possibility of irreparable pain.

There is one other reason that I feared coming back to Barth – Barth still preaches. For in the possibility where we’ve been wronged, where there is hate we are met with love, where there is dread we are met with hope, where we seem fated we are met with the possibility of transcendence, where we are wronged we are met with forgiveness and justice and where we are guilty we are met also with the possibility of mercy.

Now, I wish I made that up because it sounds so good, but it really is, from my point of view, an inference from the God who commands and from a life of Christian responsibility lived in relationship to the gracious acts of God upon us.

Whether this is translatable outside the Christian community, that’s something we have to talk about, but at least from my perspective it is a Christian morality that is at least viable in connection with this topic of exact retribution.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: Thanks, Victor.

And now our third and final speaker for this panel comes to us from the University of Notre Dame Law School, Richard Garnett. He’s going to speak to the intriguing question of how not to think about the death penalty, punishment and human dignity if religious witness and the public square is one’s concern. He teaches courses on the death penalty at the Notre Dame Law School.

RICHARD GARNETT: Well, those are certainly two inspiring and difficult acts to follow. I’m tempted to sit down and let them go at it a little more. Let me throw out a caveat to begin: I had a late night last night with two very sick babies, so if I start muttering about veggie tales or singing Old Macdonald to you I hope you understand.

Thank you very much, colleagues and Professor Elshtain. It’s an honor to be here. A lot of my fellow panelists are people who over the years have taught me a great deal about things like the role of the lawyer and the rule of law and the gift and the content and the challenge of my Christian faith. I’ve learned a lot about the Constitution and the function of this thing we call civil society, and I’ve learned a lot about the crucial contributions that religious believers and religious expression and religious activities in communities make to the health of our public square. I expect to continue to learn from them and from you all today.

Let me begin on maybe sort of a personal note. The focus of our conference today is a cluster of topics that’s pretty close to my interests and to my heart. I’ve been blessed, and I use that word advisedly, with a wonderful vocation. As Professor Elshtain said, I teach and I write about death penalty law, criminal justice, church/state issues, freedom of speech, things like that, the good stuff, at Notre Dame Law School. And I’ve been given the chance to work at and to speak from a place that has a still very real sense of mission. I get to do this in a community of colleagues and students who understand that part of our mission is to inspire and challenge, if we can, young lawyers to carry their faith with them from this community into the public square. Now, on top of all this I represent a young man in Arizona who was sentenced to death 14 years ago now for his involvement in the murder of a police officer.

So this conference in a way is a welcome opportunity for me personally to reflect on the challenge, and it’s one that I try to pose to my students, some of whom are here today, of integrating these aspects of my professional, intellectual and religious lives.

It strikes me that a central aspect of the Pew Forum’s mission and of our purpose here today, as one of the earlier questions indicated, is to encourage precisely this kind of integration, to resist all efforts — and there are efforts afoot — to banish religion and religious faith and religious witness, prophetic witness from the public and professional arenas.

But enough of that. The claim that I want to propose for your consideration today is that there is a crying need, a hole perhaps in the contemporary death penalty debate, and it’s a need to which religious believers and communities can and should respond, in my view.

Now, this need is not so much – and I hope this isn’t presumptuous – for our views on empirical questions about deterrence or nice points of constitutional law or the relative merits of certain crime control techniques, those these are all important questions, all worthy subjects. Instead, and this is sort of a thought I’m wrestling with myself in the context of the First Amendment, it seems to me that the need in the debate is for a coherent and compelling and counter-cultural moral anthropology for what Maritain once called a true humanism.

What we need is an account of what it means to be human, to be a person, and an account of why it matters that that’s what we are. It is my view that the dominant account today, and Professor Budziszewski made this point, is really just not up to the task that’s required.

One of the questioners reminded us earlier this morning that the dominant anthropology today is really reeling from the effects of this eclipse of transcendence. It fails to capture the richness of what it means to be a human person, and by using that phrase I’m sort of self consciously drawing from a lot of what the Holy Father has written about personalism and moral anthropology. My point is that dominant anthropology today can’t serve in the end as the firm foundation for a compelling argument about why it might be that persons ought not to be executed, even if they have committed horrible crimes.

Now, those of you who are familiar with the conventions of the academy and particularly with the peculiar habits of law professors were probably not surprised to see that I gave my remarks this cryptic and ponderous title. I just hope you noticed though that there was a colon in there. That is essential to the success of any law publication effort.

All kidding aside though, my hope for the talk is to add some value to the discussion by asking what it is that a distinctively religious understanding of this phrase “human dignity” can, may and should contribute to our public conversations about the death penalty. In other words, if, as I believe, we are called as religious believers to bear witness to the truth and to this thing called the dignity of the human person, then what exactly is it that we should be saying in the context of the capital punishment debate?

The talk has three parts and I hope they tie together. First, I want to talk briefly about what I take to be the premise of the conference and indeed of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life itself, namely the proposition that arguments and expressions of religious believers and communities have a place and should be welcome in the public square of civil society.

I realize it’s a bit late in the day to sort of justify why we’re here, but I think it’s still worth doing. (Laughter.)

Given the nature of a gathering like this, it’s tempting to take the premise for granted, to treat it as a given, and I don’t think that we can or that we should. After all, many intelligent and influential people believe that it’s in quite bad taste to bring religion into discussions of public policy. Still others might say not only is it in bad taste, it’s undemocratic, unconstitutional, maybe even immoral to inject these kinds of arguments into the pristine arena of public reason. These arguments are, in my view, misplaced but they require a response.

Next, having convinced you I hope that we have something to say, that religion has a contribution to make, I want to offer for your consideration my thoughts about what that contribution might be. Again, what I think the discussion might need from us is a distinctive moral anthropology, not a faith-based echo of what’s already being said, but a more radical message, an argument and a story that can explain exactly what it is about the human person, not just the condemned, not just the murder and not this thing called the individual but the person that can do the heavy lifting that’s required and moral arguments about how we ought to treat each other. My sense is that such an account is too often missing from the capital punishment debate and that the debate suffers from its absence.

Finally, and although I have to admit this part of the talk has been preempted in a sense by some of the wonderful talks that have gone before, I want to try to connect these admittedly somewhat general observations about religious freedom and anthropology to the question of the death penalty and particularly this notion of retribution.

Those of my students who are here will not be surprised that I’ve taken up half my time introducing my talk — (laughter) — but pressing on.

The front burner debate and one of the areas in which I teach and write, this law and religion, for lack of a better term, concerns the extent to which the contemporary liberal state can, should or must allow religiously grounded arguments into the public square, and this is a debate obviously in which many of my fellow conference speakers are prominent participants.

Given that we’re gathered here today at least in part because of our shared belief that religion does have something to say and something to say to public life, we might be tempted to dismiss the debate as kind of an academic sideshow, but it isn’t. I don’t think we can dismiss it. Not only that, though, I think the debate about religion and public life can serve as a useful point of entry into this broader discussion we’re having about the death penalty.

A lot of you probably remember almost ten years ago now Professor Carter wrote a book, provocative, well-received book, called “The Culture of Disbelief.” And among his many points was the claim that while our nation prides itself with much justification on its tolerance of religion, at the same time American law and culture often exacts from religious believers a high price for that tolerance. As he put it, religion is accepted; just don’t take it too seriously. Just don’t unduly challenge or upset the secular order.

Now, thankfully the constitutional law dealing with religious freedom and expression has, in my view anyway, come a long way in the ten years since Carter wrote this book. There is in the courts – and maybe even in the culture – a greater appreciation for the fact that the separation of church and state does not entail, does not require the banishment of faith from civil society. There’s an increased realization, in other words, that freedom of religion doesn’t require freedom from religion. I wish I’d come up with that phrase; that’s such a great little phrase. I use it anyway.

Still, even a cursory survey of the law reviews and the latest academic press releases confirms that there remain those who insist in the tradition of Rawls and Bruce Ackerman and others that a tolerant and liberal democracy requires a naked public square. People who insist that one of the demands of good citizenship is that we check faith at the door of public debate, that believers translate their arguments into more accessible terms, into the jargon of public reason, that all policy proposals and enactments have a strictly secular rationale and are not justified with respect to any comprehensive world view, and that religious conviction is kept in the purely private arena.

Indeed, there are those who argue that these kinds of exclusionary decrees are not just a matter of taste, good taste but a matter of constitutional law. Dean Kathleen Sullivan of Stanford has argued quite forcibly that — this is an intriguing interpretation — the Establishment Clause not only got the government out of the business of running churches, it got the government into the business of affirmatively maintaining the secular character of our public debate. The Establishment Clause in a way is sort of a rule of discussion rather than a structural rule of government. In her view, it sets the ground rules and one of those rules is that faith is a matter for home and hearth alone.

On the United States Supreme Court as well, Justice Scalia’s colleague Justice Stevens seems to have a similar view. It seems, not wanting to be uncharitable, that for him religion is a divisive and dangerous thing, a force that while I suppose it has to be tolerated, should certainly be feared and restrained.

Just by way of example, in his opinion in the Court’s latest religions expression decision, a case called Good News Bible Club, Justice Stevens appeared to argue that government could and should distinguish between disinterested speech about religion, which is okay in the public square, and religion based arguments to change people’s hearts and minds, which were to be kept out.

Now, any number of scholars and writers, including Professor Elshtain and some of my colleagues at Notre Dame, have demonstrated that the demands made by people like Dean Sullivan and Justice Stevens are unreasonable and they’re unfair and they’re illiberal.

As Professor Carter has put it, “Given the ability of religion to fire the human imagination, religious people shouldn’t be forced to disguise or remake themselves before we can legitimately contribute to the public debate.”

And as Professor Elshtain has pointed out, persons of faith can’t bracket their belief when they enter the public square, nor should they. If we push too far the notion that in order to be acceptable public fare every religious claim must be secularized, we simply wind up depluralizing our polity. We end up eradicating the pluralism that we in other contexts celebrate.

So these illiberal demands that religious believers retreat from civil society are thankfully increasingly rejected in the courts as well. Justice Scalia’s colleague on the bench, Justice Thomas, recently observed that it’s quite a bizarre reading of the First Amendment that would “reserve special hostility for those who take their religion seriously and who think that their religion should affect the whole of their lives.” I think that’s a great point.

I remain cautiously optimistic that this course will continue with the Cleveland School Voucher case, which is before the Court next month. My hope is that that case will give the Court and the justices a chance to bury for good this idea that religious schools and religious communities are somehow unworthy participants in the public enterprise of education.

You might be thinking that’s all well and good, I’m so relieved to learn that my participation in this conference does not make me ill mannered, but what does all this have to do with the death penalty?

Well, my claim is that the misguided assertion that religion and faith-based argument have no place in public deliberation reflects not only a misunderstanding about liberal democracy and it reflects not only a misunderstanding about religion itself, but it also reflects at the most basic level an anthropological mistake, a mistake about human freedom and the human person and about what it means to be a person.

This misguided view depends on a particular picture of the person in which the person is this kind of autonomous, self-governing, decontextualized monad kind of bouncing around in the universe. In this picture, to be fulfilled is simply to choose to be free and simply to be unconstrained, and religion therefore like any other hobby can be tolerated but because it’s the self that is supreme – the demands and challenges of religious faith have to be muted, its practices have to be kept in check. I think there is a better account of religious freedom that’s available, one that rests on a richer explanation of what it means to be human. On this account we don’t protect religion just because it’s a hobby or because it’s an object of choice, but because it’s a comprehensive, lifelong effort to be what it is that we were made to be. This richer account is grounded not on the lonely sovereignty of the individual as autonomous self but on the dignity and the transcendent destiny of the person as child and creature of God. And it’s because the dignity of the human person consists not in this capacity for indifference to truth but precisely in the person’s desire and duty to pursue it and find it and cling to it that it’s appropriate that the Second Vatican Council gave the title of “Human Dignity” to the letter on religious freedom.

So here’s the connection that I’m sure you’re all eagerly awaiting for: It seems to me that by challenging the culture’s dominant anthropology, religious believers and communities appear to be succeeding in shifting the terms of the debate about the place of religion in public life. There seems to be an increased recognition that, as John Paul II the put it, a society or culture that wishes to survive cannot declare the spiritual dimension of the human person to be irrelevant to public life. My hope is that we can make a similar contribution as religious believers in communities and with similar effect when it comes to capital punishment.

I asked earlier about the distinctive contribution that we could make. We’ve been admitted to the public square. We’ve sort of fought our way in. We’ve refused to pay the price of admission that we check our sort of radicalness, our propheticness at the door. So what should we say once we’re in?

It seems to me that it can’t be — I’m sort of repeating what I said earlier — that we’re just called to chime in with our views about certain empirical problems or certain administrative problems, for instance, what’s the appropriate level of funding for capital defense counsel. I happen to think it should be much higher. Is that something I can speak to as a religious believer? I’m not sure. It seems to me we’re not called to offer our views on the hyper-technical constitutional questions that seem to clutter the court’s death penalty docket these days. When does the Constitution require an instruction that the alternative to a death sentence is life without parole? It’s a very important question. I love teaching that stuff. I’m not sure that that’s what, having fought my way into the public square in this question, I’m called to offer.

It seems to me instead we’re called to give something a little more unsettling perhaps, something again more counter-cultural, a moral anthropology that does justice to who and what we are. In other words, our message should be again, in John Paul’s words, “the moral truth about the human person.” There’s a vacuum in the discussion. I think our goal should be to fill it.

You might be wondering, what is this notion of moral anthropology? It sounds like a buzzword that this guy keeps talking about. And why does he think it matters? Is it just a snippet of high-sounding academic jargon or does it mean something? I think it does. Let me try to say what that is.

It seems to me that every moral claim and every moral argument ultimately depends on certain bedrock foundational premises about what it means to be a person. In other words, as Professor Elshtain has put it, every moral claim is built on certain anthropological presuppositions.

Well, I believe that our nation’s public morality – and increasingly its constitutional law – rests on some unsteady foundations of a flawed moral anthropology. This misguided – and, in my view, unworthy – account was captured pretty well in the somewhat narcissistic rhetoric of the joint opinion in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision. I think we’re all familiar with the famous mystery passage where we’re told that at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.

Now, make no mistake: It sounds like a sophomore philosophy paper. It’s really an important anthropological claim. (Laughter.) It’s a claim about radical moral self-sufficiency and unbounded autonomy. It’s an incomplete account of the human good, which is all the more dangerous, because it purports to be a complete account.

Unfortunately, while it’s impoverished, it is, as Professor Elshtain has put it, simply part of the cultural air that we breathe.

Our culture’s foundational premise then, it seems to me, is that the person is and should be treated as untethered and alone. As my colleague Tom Schaeffer puts it, “every person in this vision is her own tyrant.” Sure in this vision there’s plenty of talk about human dignity but it’s empty, there’s plenty of pleasant sounding language about human rights, but the anthropological premises really can’t do the work of supporting those important claims about human rights.

As Richard Neuhaus has put it, the problem with the current account is not so much that it gets it wrong about the awesome dignity of the person; it just can’t explain why the person possesses this awesome dignity and it cuts the person off from the source of that dignity.

So, returning to the issue of capital punishment, I do not believe that the anthropology of the mystery passage, which again is simply part of the cultural air that we breathe, is capable of sustaining a convincing argument against the death penalty.

In fact, as John Paul warned in Evangelium Vitae, it seems to me that it’s precisely this flawed set of premises that’s fueling the steady deadening of our conscious and fueling the expansion of this thing he calls the culture of death. It seems increasingly clear to me anyway that our public morality is simply not up to the task of explaining why it is that a murderer should not be executed, assuming for now that this is a claim we might want to defend.

It’s politically effective and therefore possibly worth doing, for death penalty opponents to argue that capital punishment doesn’t deter crime or that capital punishment costs too much. After all, death penalty supporters can simply say deterrence isn’t the only game in town, cost isn’t the only game in town.

Nor is it enough to point out, although it is important to point out, that our system of capital punishment is administered unfairly, that the poor and minorities don’t receive adequate representation, that there seems to be racial discrimination in terms of the selection of those who are sentenced to death, and that mistakes sometimes occur. These are all points worth making, but again these observations don’t tell me what I’m really wanting to know, which is why is it that we shouldn’t execute Timothy McVeigh. Why is it that we shouldn’t execute a white guilty well-represented defendant?

So if the cultural air that we breathe can’t sustain the moral case against the death penalty, then perhaps we’re presented with an opportunity to rebuild the debate on a steadier anthropological foundation. This could be our contribution I think as religious believers and communities to the conversation, the contribution that I think the Pew Forum is inviting us to make.

We do, after all, have a counter-cultural alternative to propose, one that in a way turns the received anthropology on its head. I can’t possibly do justice to the account here, but it should be enough to point out that this alternative account emphasizes not so much our autonomy and our self-sufficiency as it does our dependence and our incompleteness.

This alternative account acknowledges our limits and it recognizes, as my colleague Professor Meilaender put it in a recent essay, that we occupy a kind of in between place between the beast and god. This alternative account grounds our dignity not so much in claims of self-sovereignty but — and this is the counter-cultural part I think — it grounds our dignity and our status as creatures; that is, as John Paul has proposed, “the greatness of human beings is founded precisely in their being creatures of a loving god,” not the “authors of their own destiny,” as the mystery passage would have it.

The fundamental proposition of this alternative account, I think, is that the person is a good, towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love and whose proper due is to be treated as an object of love.

Finally, I think this alternative account directs our attention to the questions that in the end need to be the focus of the continuing struggle with the issue of capital punishment, namely is this sanction in conformity with the dignity of the human person. My fellow conference participants are leading the way in trying to answer that question in a faithful way within the context of various teaching traditions. I have to concede that for all this huffing and puffing about moral anthropology, it could well be that in the end the answer is yes, sometimes perhaps the execution of a murderer is consistent with this vision, is consistent with our obligation to treat people as an object of love.

I’m not convinced of that yet, but it has to be a possibility. Still, it’s worth the effort, it seems to me, even if that ends up being the answer, to change the terms of the debate.

I said at the outset I wanted to try to suggest a connection between these general ideas about religious freedom and the courts and moral anthropology on the one hand and this notion of retribution that’s been explored in such depth today.

My title indicated, as you might still remember, that I have a view not only about what our contribution should be to the death penalty debate but also about what it shouldn’t be. That is, I have an idea not only about what’s missing from and needs to be added to the public conversation but I also have an idea about what might be better left unsaid. And I recognize that might be somewhat presumptuous.

Fortunately, my colleagues, particularly Professor Meilaender, have already and quite eloquently captured some of my concerns, but here it is in a nutshell. I’m concerned that framing the issues in the death penalty discussion in terms of human dignity and in building the discussion on this alternative moral anthropology, that we’re going to enable, maybe even encourage sloppy, squishy, maybe even dangerous thinking about the purposes and justifications of punishment.

This danger was realized, I’m afraid, and I say this with respect, in my bishop’s recent pastoral letter, “Responsibility, Rehabilitation and Restoration.” In that letter the bishops, in my opinion, seemed to move too quickly from what struck me as fairly superficial invocations of the dignity of the human person to what I believe is a mistaken equation of retribution and revenge, although I don’t dispute the point that was made by my colleague that retribution often can serve as a fig leaf for what really is revenge. I just don’t think the two necessarily need to be equated.

In the letter, retribution is simply equated with this thing called punishment for its own sake, which is never defined, although it’s repeatedly invoked, and then it’s contrasted with the good stuff — restoration. But, of course, retribution properly understood is about restoration and it remains even when the person is properly understood the primary justification and purpose of punishment I believe.

What’s more, that retribution does retain this place is not only in the best interest of the common good, it’s also I think in the best interest of the criminal. This is kind of a counterintuitive claim that I beat my first year Criminal Law students over the head with time and again because it’s so easy to equate retribution sounds bad, it sounds like vengeance. I propose the idea that retribution, if correctly conceived, protects the defendant from the overreaching ambitions of the state. It sets a limit on punishment: This far may you go and no further. You can’t punish somebody in order to achieve some side benefit like deterrence. You can’t punish somebody in order to make them a better person. You may punish them because they deserve it and only to the extent that they deserve it and only for the purpose of restoring the moral order in society.

That is, it is precisely the idea of retribution in its protective and restorative sense and not in this assaultive variety that I think was associated with Judge Stevens, who said it’s virtuous to hate criminals, that is most in keeping with the anthropological premises I’ve tried to articulate.

As I see it, retribution serves not as a license for vengeance but as a restraint and a check. On the other hand, what C.S. Lewis once called in an essay that he had a really hard time getting published, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” that theory makes all too easy the sort of creepy prospect of punishment as therapy, a point made earlier by Rabbi Novak. It’s retribution properly understood and not therapy and not deconstruction, not sociology, that accords us I think, in Lewis’ words, “the respect that we’re due as human persons made in God’s image.”

And so my view is that if it’s true that the death penalty is unjustifiable, it’s not because the death penalty is retributive; it’s because it’s not.

So in conclusion, another C.S. Lewis essay, a wonderful piece called “The Weight of Glory,” he wrote, “There are no ordinary people. You’ve never met a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations; these are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat, but it is immortals that we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit. Everlasting splendors or immortal horrors.”

Our challenge is to propose a vision of the human person and to propose it in the public square, as religious believers, and to demand that the question of the death penalty stand or fall on whether it’s consistent with the fact that there are no ordinary people.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: Thank you.

In case I forget to say this later, I just want to say that the quality of the presentations we’ve heard today has been quite extraordinary. I go to lots of academic conferences and I can assure you that sometimes these meetings over a period of three and a half days you’re lucky if you hear one or two things that are worth taking notes at. But today I’ve been busy taking notes on every presentation, not just because it’s my job but because so much richness has been presented to us. So on behalf of the whole company, I want to thank all of you and those of you in the morning.

We have come to our second 45-minute period of public conversation. The same draconian rule against speeches and jeremiads pertains. With that, we will begin the questioning. Let’s turn to our first question. Remember, you can direct it either to a specific person or to the panel in its entirety. So please go ahead.

QUESTION: Thank you. I guess this question is directed in general to the panel but maybe most specifically to Dr. Budziszewski. In ethics, we often have to work with intuitions. Even the Protestants are often regarded as especially wary of doing that sort of thing. We often find that we’re forced to work with intuitions in trying to come up with general guidelines on these hard questions. And I recognize the difficulty of coming up with the principles that will guide us on these questions, but at any rate I want to raise a question about the logic of a kind of defense that I’ve been hearing today for the death penalty.

On the one hand a lot of people have appealed today to a sense of a kind of fittingness between murder and the death penalty or a comment about retributive justice. But all of our speakers this morning also thought that the death penalty should be very rarely used, and correspondingly they gave examples of especially bad people who they thought they would invoke our intuitions that the death penalty was deserved — Nazis, mass murderers and terrorists.

Now, the fittingness notion to me suggests a stronger view and I wonder whether Budziszewski might support this view that the death penalty actually ought to be applied more often. Reluctance to do so could be grounded in epistemic reservations about how certain we can be about whether a crime was actually committed by the accused person, but I suspect that we can have confidence in more than 1/12th of 1 percent of the cases of homicide that the actual accused person has, in fact, perpetrated this homicide in question.

If so, it seems to me that the choice we have is between the following: We have to either follow the logic of the principle of fittingness and argue that the death penalty should be applied less rarely, something that most of our panelists have been reluctant to do, or I think we may have to find another principle to fit the intuitions that are being offered.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: So you would like a comment on that?

QUESTION: Yes.

J. BUDZISZEWSKI: I think that there are two considerations that we have to take into account, and that’s why I began my talk the way I did. Yes, there is a principle of fittingness, a principle of dessert that is the retributive principle, that is the foundation of the idea of justice, giving each person what is due to him.

Now, if it is true, as I would claim at any rate, that at least for the crime of death, death is proportional, and if that were the only consideration, then it would certainly be true that we would be putting an awful lot of people to death because there are an awful lot of people who kill.

I don’t, in fact, think that we should put an awful lot of people to death, because I don’t think that fittingness is the only consideration here. That was why I went through all of that time-consuming hullabaloo about whether considering the gravity of the duty of justice, mercy is possible at all, and I think that it is. It’s possible for God for one set of reasons. It’s possible for us for another set of reasons, principally because although something of the retributive purpose is still important of human justice, we are not required to requite evil to the last degree and our actions should bear witness not only to God’s justice but to his mercy, his patience.

So in other words I don’t see not killing lots and lots of people as an issue of justice as it would be if uncertainty of guilt were the only reason. I see it as an issue of mercy and I think mercy is sometimes proper.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: The next question, please.

QUESTION: We’ve heard a number of references to retribution and revenge, and the distinction is held out as being crucial in a lot of the thinking on this subject. I wonder whether the panel would reflect on whether there is any real working difference between retribution and revenge and whether retribution is really just measured revenge.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: I think that issue has been joined a number of times today, but, Professor Anderson, would you like to start and then we’ll have Professor Garnett weigh in.

VICTOR ANDERSON: Sure. I want to make at least one qualifier here with regard to the ultimate punishment. It’s predicated on the principle of exact retribution.

Now, that sounds like retribution itself is such a bad thing. I don’t think you can have a proper theory of justice without some theory of retribution. The real question is whether exact retribution ought to be the best way to construe a justice of retribution; that is to retribute to someone the harm, that is to make good the harm that has been done to another. And I do think you’re right about that: It does involve or entail some theory of restoration.

Now, with that in mind, it does make problematic the idea of exact retribution, where the exactness is a matter of death to death. It’s very hard to see that as an issue of how restoration applies then.

Revenge, as I construe it, is a deeply human possibility, deeply human condition that all of us are capable of, given certain kinds of conditions that may allow our morals, the morals that restrain us from this, because none of us want to commend revenge as a normal and proper way of our life together. And so we have ways of symbolically organizing and repressing this deeply human capacity for revenge and we call it ethics and morals. And so revenge nevertheless is kept in check by the moral constraint we place on each other.

Without those constraints, the harm that we are capable of doing to each other is beyond measure, so revenge remains a deeply human condition; retribution is one way in which we answer the problems and the harms that arise out of the claims and harms that we inflict on each other.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: Professor Garnett?

RICHARD GARNETT: I think it’s a very hard question. Let me suggest just three possible distinctions and see if you think they work. The first one is just kind of a formal one. Maybe it’s cheating, but it seems to me that there is a meaningful distinction to be drawn between pain inflicted by a private party, which I think we can call revenge, and pain inflicted by a legitimate public authority, which we might call retribution.

Less formally, maybe there’s something in the motives; that is, it seems to me that when I think of revenge I think of the motive as being to humiliate the offender and to sort of aggrandize myself, as I’m the one who’s exacting vengeance. Whereas with retribution I tend to think of the motive as being more about restoring this equilibrium that we read about a lot.

And then a third possibility might just be what’s the nature of the thing to which we view ourselves as responding. I’m sorry, that’s an awkward way to put it, but when I think of revenge I think of the person exacting revenge as trying to redress the pain done to him, the wrong done to him or her. When I think about retribution it seems to me it’s more of a community effort to redress this kind of unjust grab of liberty. What’s happened? The criminal has taken more freedom than he or she is due and society is restoring the balance that the defendant has upset.

So those all strike me as sort of plausible working distinctions and I’m sure there are fault lines in all of them.

QUESTION: My question is for Dr. Budziszewski. I was interested in your reference to rehabilitation. You talked about how the death penalty or life without parole, how neither really allows the rehabilitation with society and then you made this reference to the possibility that we sort of collapse rehabilitation to that societal dimension and that there’s a spiritual dimension too. And you said that even with the death penalty there’s this possibility of rehabilitation, that nothing so concentrates the mind, that there’s this time where the person who is condemned has to either connect with their maker or however he or she conceives that.

And it seemed to me that you cut short this possibility for spiritual rehabilitation within prison. I know that our prison system has many, many problems, so I don’t want to sound naïve either, but I’m just thinking of how hard we work at religious freedom in the prisons and I think that one of the reasons for that is because we do see that there is some possibility for this kind of spiritual rehabilitation to happen in a life without parole as well. So I just wondered if you could speak to that.

J. BUDZISZEWSKI: Yes. I think that it’s a good question.

Sometimes when we think of rehabilitation we forget what the word means. We make a mistake about the root of the word. We think it means returning the criminal to his habitation or to his habitat, because it sounds like it — rehabilitation. But if you look at the Latin roots of the word, it really means restoring him to his former condition, and that includes to his former moral condition. So there are really two elements here. There is the moral healing of the criminal — that is one part of rehabilitation. And there is his reintegration into society.

Killing him obviously does not promote his reintegration into earthly society, although it may promote his moral healing before his death because of the prospect of death looming on him, and it may in that way promote his reintegration with the eternal society of all redeemed creatures, which I think that we want to look forward to.

Now, the questioner raises the very good point of whether living in prison without the prospect of death may also contribute to his moral healing, and I think that that is true; it might. And I don’t claim to know when one contributes better and when another does, but I’m only making a negative argument here that we should not assume that it’s impossible for the prospect of death to make its own contribution to moral healing, to restoration.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: The next question.

QUESTION: I’m a physician and physicians help with executions, by law in most states where they do executions. I know that the execution has an incredible psychological and moral impact upon those people who actually do the killing for the state when they’re doing this retribution. Would you mind from your moral position to discuss a little bit how I, for example, might talk with a medical colleague of mine about his participation in doing the killing for the state?

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: So you’re thinking of a physician who participates in a lethal injection, for example.

QUESTION: I’m an anesthesiologist. I give injections.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: Okay. Does anyone want to speak to that? We don’t have any physicians or counselors here, but we certainly have moral philosophers. So, Richard, why don’t you start?

RICHARD GARNETT: There’s a wonderful book, and the questioner might have seen it, by a man named Don Cabana, who was the warden for years in Mississippi, called “Witness to the Execution.” And it’s a really provocative and sensitive and kind of heartfelt account of what it did do to him to participate in the process. I haven’t participated and I can’t presume to judge whether he’s got it right or not, but I was struck not only by the effect that it did have on him but how seriously he and everybody in the prison seemed to take their involvement. There wasn’t any sort of frivolousness that one fears might happen in a context like this. People seemed to take it very seriously and in a way the death house was the most sort of respectful place in the Parchment Farm Prison in Mississippi.

As opposed when you get to the issue of sort of moral philosophy and advice, I imagine a lot hinges on whether we think that it’s evil to execute somebody. If it is evil to execute somebody, then there’s a whole rich debate about what constitutes cooperation with evil and I take it that one can’t cooperate with evil, so that would sort of resolve the matter. If it’s not evil, then it’s a question of private conscience I guess.

VICTOR ANDERSON: I think one of the reasons we went to lethal injection is because we had a threshold criteria of unusual punishment, a debate over the electric chair, the gas chamber, our precedents and cases of cruelty. So whether execution under those circumstances constitutes cruelty we move to a more humane way of terminating another’s life, one that many doctors felt more agreeable with that they could participate if the process of execution were more humane than other means that they witnessed.

And what happened is that we took our precedents from how we treat ill and damaged animals. The irony of the injection is that it wasn’t predicated on human rights or any human dignity; it came from the humane way we treat our pets and the way we treat other animals when they are ill, when they’re dying and when they’re dangerous. We’ve extended that form of execution as a fitting response to the question of cruelty.

So the question would be whether a physician can participate in that practice when the practice is no longer seen as cruel but the most humane way of terminating another person’s life.

That also has crossover effects when you look more broadly at the question of euthanasia. Is the physician in this context producing an effect that in effect brings about a good death? If that’s true, it may mean some harm to other physicians about injection as a punishment. If, in the end, this is the fact a physician assisting in a good death, it raises other questions about how reasonable execution is if that deters its purpose. If the purpose is a punishment and exact retribution, to render such a process, the issue of a good death raises some other issues, but I think a physician would have to look in those terms from the point of view of a good death and contributing to the most humane of ways of terminating a person’s life under those peculiar conditions.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: And certainly there have been victims’ family members who have said this is too humane and too kind a way to do it and you’ve got the Hippocratic Oath, do no harm, so there are all kinds of issues.

J. BUDZISZEWSKI: I think first it should be separated from the question of justice of whether this is necessary to do. There are a lot of things, which are necessary to do that are also difficult to do, as with soldiers. But I think there’s also the question of who should take such a job. Obviously, people of unusual sensitivity should not take such a job. Obviously, people whose personal moral views are opposed to capital punishment should not take jobs as executioners.

I also think that the involvement of doctors in this, I think that the state has made a mistake here, because just as centuries ago it began to be taught that the vocation of a priest is inconsistent with taking life, with serving, for instance, as a soldier, even though what a soldier does in a just cause is not necessarily wrong but that it’s just inconsistent with the priest’s vocation, I think it is also inconsistent with a doctor’s vocation. He is pledged not to do harm. He’s not pledged not to do harm unless it’s just to do harm; he’s pledged not to do harm. There are vocational differences, and I think that we should respect them.

Next, please.

QUESTION: Good afternoon. My name is Laura Horton. I’m a Unitarian Universalist Seminary student. And my question is for Dr. Budziszewski. I heard you say that you believe that someone who is truly repentant should still be executed if they have been sentenced to that. I think Karla Faye Tucker is probably the obvious example. I find that shocking and I would be grateful to hear more about your theological grounding of that position to help me, who does not believe in a vengeful God who punishes, just to help understand where you’re coming from.

J. BUDZISZEWSKI: Well, if you don’t believe in a god who renders final judgment and if you believe that human justice is absolutely final, I think that it may be that you can’t find a logical justification for this, although I would think that it would also be difficult for you to find a logical justification in that case for the very existence of the moral order or for the responsibility of the state to uphold justice too. So I think that by opening that can, one gets involved with an awful lot of worms.

From my own point of view, should a repentant person ever be executed? This is like the question of deterrence and nuclear policy. Some have tried to take the position that although it would be wrong ever to use a nuclear weapon, it may be okay to use it for purposes of deterrence, but the problem is it isn’t going to serve the purpose of deterrence unless the other side thinks you may use it, and if you never will then they know you won’t. It’s something like that here. If you abolish the death penalty, if you never execute a repentant person, then the person loses the incentive provided by the imminence of death to repent. And I don’t know how to deal with that, but I think it’s a real paradox.

There is a second problem. There is also the fact that just as it’s difficult to determine guilt and mistakes can be made, there can be miscarriages of justice, it’s also very difficult to determine repentance. God can see that; we cannot with very much skill see that and there are miscarriages in diagnoses of repentance I think sometimes just as there are miscarriages in diagnosis of guilt for deeds committed.

RICHARD GARNETT: As everybody probably knows, it’s common in the criminal justice system for people’s punishments or sentences to be reduced if they accept responsibility, if they cooperate, if they repent. And the federal guidelines, if any of you have any familiarity with those, you get a couple steps knocked down in the grid if you accept responsibility.

So I think the sort of insight of the question that repentance is relevant to the punishment is an important one. I don’t know whether it has to preclude the death penalty, but I think we see all the time that repentance is taken into account when meting out punishment.

QUESTION: Professor Garnett, this is directed towards your closing statement, that it should be religious believers who form this new idea of human dignity, which obviously leaves out those citizens who do not use religious beliefs in the public sphere.

How would a secularist, assuming his or her right to participate, enter in a conversation about the death penalty if this exclusively religious consensus was found?

RICHARD GARNETT: Well, it’s a great question. I guess I think the question has the same premise that a lot of the objections to religious participation in the public square have, namely that you can’t really have this kind of public deliberation or conversation if people are talking past each other and if one party is sort of invoking premises or principles that are just inaccessible to the other one.

I’ll concede, I suppose, that religious believers, if they’re not able to frame their witness in ways that are going to be received by their hearers, are not going to be particularly effective. I guess what I reject is the idea that there’s something illegitimate about them trying.

Why should it be a one-way street? Why is the burden on the religious person to censor his views to make them more accessible to the person you call the secularist rather than vice versa? A different point is that I don’t concede the point that religious arguments are inaccessible to people who are sort of just trying to reason together. I think that objection has been overstated in a lot of the arguments. But I do take your point that there would be a risk if one’s contributions to the public square were just sort of too overtly sectarian, that you really wouldn’t move the ball much and I would want to avoid that.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: Presumably would you agree with this? Your call for a richer moral anthropology is not in principle inaccessible to nonbelievers. Now, the nonbeliever might say I reject the source of this human dignity but it’s not a notion that is simply isolated off and exclusively reserved only to religious believers.

RICHARD GARNETT: I would agree, although I might still stand on the idea that in the end it’s a religious world view that’s best able to account for why this moral anthropology is true.

VICTOR ANDERSON: Because also it does matter how we construe the table. You can construe it in such a way as Jeffrey Stout does in which you have all these secular intellectuals and people who care about stuff sitting at this table and then you bring in the voice of theology because we need a theological voice there, and then every time we say something theological then the secularists say, “Oh, see, these people are trying to take over the table with their rhetoric.”

And so that’s one way of construing the table, but what if the table conversation is really not about my faith as such, but I come here as a believer. But the concern is about something that we share already. What if what’s on the table is really about hunger or poverty? That’s neither a particular point of view of a person who has a faith position, nor is that a particular domain or concern of a secularist. What if what is on the table really is about how we treat the dignity and respect of teenagers in crises?

In other words, the more concrete the issue is that it’s publicly shared, we at least have a possibility of binding our voices around them. So it’s not as if you start off saying, “Well, I’m the religionist and this is what I’ve got to say.” I bring a religious point of view to a set of problems that are publicly shared, and that’s what we have to be concerned about.

J. BUDZISZEWSKI: The other two speakers have said almost everything that I would say. It’s just that I’m a religious believer in an overwhelmingly secular environment, a secular public university, and I have to find ways to explain myself in ways that they can understand. It seems to me that if a secular person should find himself in a society where everybody holds a religious view he has to do the same thing.

I find it hard. He would find it hard. But that doesn’t mean that either the secularists or the religious folks should shut up.

QUESTION: This is going to sound something of a follow-up now for Professor Garnett. Did you view your definition of retribution that you gave us towards the end as being something specifically theological or beyond that even specifically Christian?

My underlying question comes to perhaps if we can all agree on a secular environment, I suppose that would be a good reason to exclude different believers, but not trying to do that and which ways can just not believers and non-believers but people of many various religions work together towards not just outcomes that we agree on, but just definitions if a definition of something like retribution is highly steeped in faith? How do we work with it to work with one another?

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: In a kind of a commitment to a dialogue venue?

RICHARD GARNETT: Well, actually I appreciate you bringing that up. What I intended to do was to say that there is this alternative moral anthropology, which for me is grounded in religious premises and I think it’s accessible to non-religious people, although I think it’s best explained by religious premises. Then I wanted to say and I believe that a retributive theory of punishment is consistent with that moral anthropology.

My take on retribution itself is not a religious take; that is, I don’t think it’s religion that gives content to what I think of as retribution, if you just think of those three distinctions I tried to draw a little earlier.

The claim, for instance, that retribution is a check on the ability of the state to punish is just sort of a standard observation in the criminal law literature. The distinctions that people draw between assaultive retribution and protective retribution are ones that there’s a great deal of rich discussion on with people who are coming at it from religious backgrounds and non-religious backgrounds.

So in a way I think your question actually is a great follow-up because the question of what is retribution and what purpose does it serve is one that religious people and non-religious people alike, having put that on the table, can really kind of see it from all sides and give a better explanation of it.

That’s a long-winded way of saying I don’t think that one has to share my religious premises to agree with me about the purpose and function of the punishment. If one does share my religious premises and maybe this moral anthropology maybe you’ll also come along with me and see that retribution is consistent with that.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: Okay. Next.

QUESTION: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for your presentations. I have another retribution comment or question. Several times today, the idea of a kind of intuitive persuasiveness to a symmetrical vision of retribution, one life for another, has been invoked in a way that was presented as self-evident or somehow to be accepted without too much argument. I think the governor was representative in this respect when he said, “It’s my values, it’s where I’m coming from. I don’t cut off your hand if you rob a bank but I think one life deserves another.”

I’m fishing for some more argument there, theological argument or moral argument. Why should we accept the idea that one death deserves another or that I should be robbed if I rob? It just doesn’t seem that that is, even though it has kind of a playground plausibility, it doesn’t seem that that’s necessarily right or that we should believe.

It certainly seems that an appeal to Genesis 9 just won’t do, because Genesis 9 is in this society heavily interpreted. We don’t kill everybody who takes a life here. And so it isn’t clear ahead of time what kind of interpretation we should give to that text. And then there are New Testament texts that we could certainly appeal to Jesus who was present at the attempted capital punishment of a particular woman. He, according to the story, stopped that punishment. He also mentioned this symmetrical idea of retribution and seemed to cast some doubt on it or at least put a question mark beside it in the famous comment on the eye for an eye.

So I just wonder if there is really a real controversial question here that’s being asserted as opposed to argued.

J. BUDZISZEWSKI: First of all, has a symmetrical vision of fittingness been accepted here without question? Well, no, I don’t think a symmetrical view of fittingness has been accepted precisely with or without question. A view has been accepted that there is some kind of proportionality, that the more grave the crime the more grave the punishment should be, but we don’t, in fact, and I don’t believe that we should always do exactly the same thing to the criminal that he’s done. I don’t think that we should torture him if he’s tortured, for instance.

As to the idea that an appeal to Genesis 9 just won’t do, I think that we have discussed these interpretations. The mere fact that different people hold different opinions about the teachings of the New Testament doesn’t mean that you can’t base your theology on a view of what the New Testament does teach. What it means is that you’ve got to back up that opinion with argument. I don’t think it is a good argument, in other words, to say, “We disagree; therefore you can have no view on this question.” It comes down to the merits of the case, and I think those things have been discussed here.

Now, could we quote Genesis 9 out in the public square? This is a religious forum. Generally speaking, out in the public square I don’t quote the Bible. I try to express biblical principles in non-biblical language.

VICTOR ANDERSON: I think that one reason the scriptures get invoked in such a context is because we’re asked to give a theological or religious point of view on a topic that is deeply public. I really don’t believe that you could look at a single passage of scripture or a constellation of scriptures and come out with a moral decision on what’s the fitting response with regard to retributive justice.

The real question has to be how does scripture provide us more insight as we deliberate within our whole range of other concerns. In other words, the scripture doesn’t trump moral deliberation; it adds to moral deliberation. It is a source of moral insight but it doesn’t determine the outcome of it.

So in a theological argument, such as what I tried to give, I tried to ask how does scripture inform the theological, moral insight of thinkers like Barth and Niebuhr. They certainly — Barthians and Niebuhrians certainly can give a different argument than I gave with regard to the death penalty, but to me the weight of the overall theological interpretation of God’s action, now that’s a theological interpretation, that’s not necessarily a scriptural one. It is a theological inference from the witness of scripture, according to the theologians, but nevertheless it’s the theological interpretation.

The way that interpretation seems to me very compelling is that if the question is how has God acted towards us, how has God’s actions been toward us consistently in terms of character, then I think we can have a conversation about whether God truly is the gracious God who has acted toward us, and if that’s the case what is our response, end response to the action of God upon us. That is the theological reading predicated on the whole range of moral insight gained from scriptures but also from tradition but also from other moral insights from the philosophical tradition as well. But I don’t think scripture trumps this question of retributive justice at all.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: So it would be a very different process to do what you’re doing; that is to say to take these rich and complex scriptural passages and make them part of a whole constellation and to work with them. The fact that you’re citing certain scriptural passages doesn’t mean that you think they give you your marching orders on any issue in any very simple way?

VICTOR ANDERSON: No. We would end up with a thousand different interpretations on any one of them.

RICHARD GARNETT: I think the questioner actually makes a great point about a mistake that’s made when talking about retribution sometimes. It’s an error to think about a symmetry, if by that you mean the punishment has to somehow look like, be the same shape and size as the crime. When I think of the punishment as being a response to the crime and retributive and restorative, it’s a response not so much to the details of the particular offense but to the disorder that was introduced by the offender.

And so is there a sense of symmetry? Yeah, but I think the questioner is right that it’s not the sort of playground-like symmetry.

QUESTION: First, I wanted to ask Professor Anderson to nuance the kind of shift that he’s making between theological claims and moral directives, so characterizations of God’s nature and God’s activity and moral imperatives for the human community. Because it certainly is true that, at least for Christians, God is known as gracious and merciful and forgiving, but certainly for Barth and for Niebuhr, as well as for a whole lot of other members of the tradition, God’s activity and history is also characterized as judging, ordering, in fact, as the most just of all judges.

I’m wondering whether or not the kind of shift that you are making presumes a certain notion of simple imitation of the divine, a notion that might be a little bit problematic, given the implied equivalence between human agents and the divine agent or the assumed ability of humans to actually imitate the divine agent.

A second question would be for Professor Garnett as well, and that would be you’ve talked about the unique contributions that Christian discourse can make to moral dilemma solving in the public square. But I haven’t heard anyone talk about sin as a possible unique contribution and particularly the way that Christian understandings of sin might correct over-simplistic notions of ease of rehabilitation and so forth and so on.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: Victor.

VICTOR ANDERSON: Niebuhr really understood his work as constituting an historical theology. But what he meant by that was that he takes into account the whole range of history of interpretation over the actions of God. So yes Niebuhr certainly understands the God who judges as well as Bart. Niebuhr and Barth both understand a God who condemns. The history that they evoke is really the history of God’s, the culminating history of God’s activity with humanity. And I think they’re right. The preponderance of God’s activity with humanity doesn’t in the end rest on judgment. The story goes further and it doesn’t just rest on condemnation of sin.

When we’re talking about the biblical witness it’s not taking one particular story from the biblical witness; it’s how the whole story plays out in a divine history, or a better way for me to say it in God’s activity with human beings.

And I think they are particularly right. Barth said it best about Romans 10, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self.” And the mode of reconciliation does involve atonement, sacrifice, condemnation for sin, but that’s not the end of the story, no more than the resurrection is the end of the story. The resurrection moves on to another story; it’s called the ascension. Then we move from the ascension to another story that’s hardly ever evoked in Christian theological ethics, the absence. But then the Christian story does move on to a culminating story for both of these thinkers, and as God’s pattern of activity with us culminates in the gracious act of God for all of us.

Now, that said, that’s not whether we can be God. No, I believe there is one little interpretation of C.S. Lewis that says God’s intention is for all of us is to become little Christs. I don’t believe that. Nevertheless, we cannot deny that the story does inform our Christian moral practices and that’s what its task is, to focus as an authority even if it doesn’t become the ultimate authority for moral actions. It participates with us in our moral deliberations.

RICHARD GARNETT: Two quick thoughts: First, I agree with the questioner that discussions of crime and criminal justice would be incredibly enriched by people bringing to those discussions religious understandings of sin. My sense in my criminal law class is that when we’re talking about crime, of course we’re talking about sin. That’s kind of how we understand wrongdoing. That’s how we first come to understand it. Maybe the discussions would be richer if we actually brought that word out on the table.

With respect to the earlier point about theological claims and such, I’m tempted to say I want to like hedge my bets a little bit, but at least for me pretty much every meaningful claim that I can make is in some sense a theological claim. That is, I am going to try to resist the idea that coming from the stance of faith that there is such a thing as just a purely secularized point to make. I mean, the world is charged with divinity and with significance. Now, I can make arguments in non-religious terms but for me pretty much all the arguments I make are going to have theological significance.

This is an issue that, believe it or not, was kind of hashed out in Supreme Court opinions last year in this Good News Bible Club case. The question arose whether government could require religious believers to identify certain statements as about religion and certain statements as religious, and a brief was written, an excellent brief pointing out how difficult that is for people from religious traditions.

J. BUDZISZEWSKI: Back in the mid ‘80s when I was still a new Christian believer, I had an odd conversation with a couple of my colleagues. They were both ardently secularist but they were vigorously pressing on me the opinion that moral philosophy was worthless. And I said, “Why is it worthless?” They said it has nothing really to contribute to a discussion of these moral questions. I said, “Why do you think that?” They said because it doesn’t have anything to say about sin and isn’t that really the question.

At the time I was very resistant to that suggestion. I was the Christian; they were the non-believers. But they were telling me that moral philosophers needed to talk about sin. So I don’t think that this is something that believers are dumping on a public that doesn’t want to hear it. I think they want to hear it.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: You get the final question, Eric.

QUESTION: I had a question for Dr. Anderson or Professor Garnett. In a lot of the discussions of the death penalty, religion doesn’t come up as much as race. I read an article a couple weeks ago that argued that blacks are underrepresented on death row if you look at the percentage of capital cases relative to the percentage of blacks on death row, because black on black crime is less likely to elicit a death row sentence. So it tested or at least was counterintuitive to my intuition about the over representation of blacks on death row.

So I guess I invite reflection for Dr. Anderson or Professor Garnett about race, religion and the death penalty.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: And I would just remind you that in the reader for the conference there are some interesting data on this question as well, but with that why don’t we just go down the line here and take comments.

RICHARD GARNETT: I read the similar argument and I think had a similar reaction to yours and I’m still trying to process it. I think where the over representation of African American men on death row is sort of undeniable though was in the sense that the death of a white victim is more likely or appears more likely to result in a death sentence, and I don’t think the article that you’re talking about, if we’re talking about the same one, really challenged that point, and I think that’s actually the point where a lot of people who have noticed the discrimination in the death penalty have focused their attention, not so much on the race of the inmate but on the fact that there seems to be an undervaluing of black life —

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: Of who’s the victim.

RICHARD GARNETT: Exactly.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN: Victor?

VICTOR ANDERSON: If you’ll notice, I really didn’t touch it at all and didn’t want to. When you are black, you have to be the spokesperson for this issue in terms of race. What I really could say is that we live in multiple communities and we have to make our moral choices in multiple communities. I know too many African Americans, when we talk about vengeance, the propensity for vengeance is as alive among African Americans as it is among whites as it is among any other human being. And if we start there from the point of view of Christian ethics, the real question still remains a question that hovers over black churches as well, and that is how has God acted toward us all in his actions toward us is still the extra grace.

So crime, the crimes we commit on each other are as likely to elicit for African Americans this feeling for vengeance but there is still transcendence because of the Christian gospel of grace, and that’s one of the things that we have to bring to all of our communities.

I know the racial issue is extremely important to me, but the real question as a public theologian is how do we tackle the entire larger question without reducing it to the problem of race.

(Applause and End of Panel.)

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivery Saturday mornings

Sign up for The Briefing

Weekly updates on the world of news & information

• Death Penalty
• Religion & Death Penalty
• Religion & Politics
• Religion & Social Values

10 facts about the death penalty in the U.S.

Unlike other u.s. religious groups, most atheists and agnostics oppose the death penalty, death penalty draws more americans’ support online than in telephone surveys, most americans favor the death penalty despite concerns about its administration, trump used his clemency power sparingly despite a raft of late pardons and commutations, most popular.

901 E St. NW, Suite 300 Washington, DC 20004 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

© 2024 Pew Research Center

Trending Topics

• Hersh Goldberg-Polin

Get JTA in your inbox

By submitting the above I agree to the privacy policy and terms of use of JTA.org

At the Jerusalem synagogue where Hersh Goldberg-Polin danced in life, grief and anger reign after his death

JERUSALEM — Three hundred and thirty-two days after Hersh Goldberg-Polin danced in the courtyard next to his Jerusalem synagogue on the holiday of Simchat Torah, more than a thousand people gathered there in grief and prayer to mourn his murder by Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

During the Sunday night vigil, the courtyard railings were lined with oversized yellow ribbons to symbolize advocacy for the hostages, Hapoel Jerusalem soccer flags — the 23-year-old’s favorite team — and posters that read, “We love you, stay strong, survive,” a mantra coined by his mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin.

Just hours earlier, one of the posters had been hanging over the balcony of the home of Shira Ben-Sasson, a leader of Hakhel, the Goldberg-Polins’ egalitarian congregation in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem.

“We were sure we would take it down when he came home,” Ben-Sasson said.

The community wanted to unite while respecting the Goldberg-Polins’ desire for privacy, she said, prompting them to organize the prayer gathering.

“But it’s like a Band-Aid or giving first aid, it’s what you do in an emergency. I don’t know how we go on after this,” she said.

A covered courtyard at the Hakhel congregation was filled with mourners the day after Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose family are prominent members, was found to have been killed in Gaza. Hundreds of other people crowded outside the gates, Sept. 1, 2024. (Deborah Danan)

She added that the community, which has a large contingent of English-speaking immigrants, was not prepared for the High Holidays, which begin in about a month. She said, “Seeing his empty seat is hard.”

For Ben-Sasson, who wore a T-shirt bearing the Talmudic dictum “There is no greater mitzvah than the redeeming of captives,” the tragedy is especially painful because, she said, it could have been avoided with a ceasefire agreement that freed hostages.

“Hersh was alive 48 hours ago. We think a deal could have saved him. There is no military solution to this,” she said.

That feeling of bereavement, often mixed with betrayal, pervaded gatherings across Israel on Sunday, as the country struggled with the news that six hostages who may have been freed in an agreement were now dead as negotiations continue to stall. Speakers at protests in Tel Aviv blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who himself apologized for not getting the hostages out alive but blamed Hamas for obstructing a deal. The country’s labor union, the Histadrut, has called a national strike on Monday to demand a deal.

A rare early September rain lashed parts of Israel on Sunday, leading to a widespread interpretation: God, too, was weeping.

Some at the Jerusalem gathering, including the relative of another former hostage, said Netanyahu had chosen defeating Hamas over freeing the captives.

Josef Avi Yair Engel’s grandson Ofir was released from Hamas captivity in November. He paid tribute to Hersh Goldberg-Polin, murdered in captivity, in Jerusalem, Sept. 1, 2024. (Deborah Danan)

Josef Avi Yair Engel, whose grandson Ofir, 18, was released from Hamas captivity in November during that month’s ceasefire deal, expressed shock over Hersh’s murder but said he was not surprised, given the wartime policies of Netanyahu’s government.

“We knew months ago this was going to happen. Bibi’s formula, to dismantle Hamas and return the hostages, wasn’t logical. It’s an either/or situation,” Engel said, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. “He’s tearing the country apart. I’m afraid that in the coming months there won’t be a state at all.”

Engel said he felt a close bond with Hersh’s father Jon Polin, not only because of their joint activism in the hostage families’ tent outside the Prime Minister’s Residence, but also because of their shared identity as Jerusalemites.

“There aren’t many of us in the hostage circle,” he said. “We’re like family.”

Sarah Mann, who did not know the family personally, said the weekend’s tragedy reminded her of Oct. 7.

“This day has sparks of the seventh, which created numbness and an inability to talk. Just complete shock,” she said.

Mourners left notes at a gathering at Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s family synagogue in Jerusalem. Many of the messages used the Hebrew word for “sorry.” (Deborah Danan)

Part of the reason for that, Mann said, was Rachel, who she described as a “force of faith.” Goldberg-Polin’s mother emerged as the most prominent advocate for the hostages globally and became a symbol in her own right as she crisscrossed the world calling for her son’s freedom.

“Millions of people around the world held onto her. Once that was cut, people’s ability to hold onto faith was knocked out today. But even though this has shattered us, we need to keep holding onto God,” Mann said.

For Susi Döring Preston, the day called to mind was not Oct. 7 but Yom Kippur, and its communal solemnity.

She said she usually steers clear of similar war-related events because they are too overwhelming for her.

“Before I avoided stuff like this because I guess I still had hope. But now is the time to just give in to needing to be around people because you can’t hold your own self up any more,” she said, tears rolling down her face. “You need to feel the humanity and hang onto that.”

Like so many others, Döring Preston paid tribute to the Goldberg-Polins’ tireless activism. “They needed everyone else’s strength but we drew so much strength from them and their efforts, “she said. “You felt it could change the outcome. But war is more evil than good. I think that’s the crushing thing. You can do everything right, but the outcome is still devastating.”

Guy Gordon, with his daughter Maya, added a broken heart to the piece of tape he has worn daily to mark the number of days since the hostage crisis began, Sept. 1, 2024. (Deborah Danan)

Guy Gordon, a member of Hakhel who moved to Israel from Dublin, Ireland, in the mid-1990s, said the efforts towards ensuring Hersh’s safe return have been an anchor for the community during the war. The community knew him as the family described him in its announcement of his funeral on Tuesday, as “a child of light, love and peace” who enjoyed exploring the world and coming home to his family, including his parents and younger sisters, Leebie and Orly.

“It gave us something to hope for, and pray for and to demonstrate for,” he said. “We had no choice but to be unreasonably optimistic. Tragically it transpired that he survived until the very end.”

Gordon, like many others in the crowd, wore a piece of duct tape marked with the number of days since Oct. 7 — a gesture initiated by Goldberg-Polin’s mother. Unlike on previous days, though, his tape also featured a broken red heart beside the number.

Nadia Levene, a family friend, also reflected on the improbability of Hersh’s survival.

“He did exactly what his parents begged him to do. He was strong. He did survive. And look what happened,” Levene said.

She hailed Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s “unwavering strength and belief in God,” adding, “There were times I lost faith. I suppose I was angry with God. But she just kept inspiring us all to pray, pray, pray.”

Leah Silver of Jerusalem examined stickers showing Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s mantra for her son Hersh, who was murdered in captivity in Gaza, at a gathering after Hersh’s death, Sept. 1, 2024. (Deborah Danan)

Jerusalem resident Leah Silver rejected politicizing the hostages’ deaths.

“Everything turns political so quickly. I came here because I felt that before all the protests, we need to just mourn for a moment and to pray. And show respect for each other,” she said. “We’ve become confused about who the enemy is. It’s very sad.”

But not everyone at the gathering joined in to sing Israel’s national anthem at the closing of the prayer gathering.

“I’m sorry, I can’t sing ‘Hatikvah,'” Reza Green, a Baka resident who did not know the Goldberg-Polins personally, said. “I’m too angry. We shouldn’t be here.”

Share this:

Recommended from jta.

Meta panel rules that ‘from the river to the sea’ is not inherently antisemitic

‘I’m gutted,’ Doug Emhoff says about murdered hostages at Washington synagogue vigil

Engagement in campus Jewish life spiked after Oct. 7 but has since dropped down somewhat, Tufts study finds

US Justice Department files criminal charges against Hamas, spurred by Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s murder

As Israel endured a difficult weekend at home, its athletes won several Paralympic medals, bringing Paris total to 7

Hapoel Jerusalem, Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s favorite soccer club, mourns the death of ‘our friend in the stands’