Last evening during her debate with Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton reiterated her support for capital punishment, explaining: “I do, for very limited, particularly heinous crimes believe [the death penalty] is an appropriate punishment,” citing executed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s sentence as “appropriate.”
Clinton’s girlhood immersion in 1960s Methodist Social Gospel activism is often recalled as deeply formative. The Methodist Church (predecessor to United Methodism) first started opposing capital punishment at its 1960 General Conference, although most Methodists likely remain unaware of it. During their years in Arkansas politics, the Clintons supported capital punishment, which was politically necessary in a southern state. Once, reputedly, after her United Methodist pastor in Little Rock criticized capital punishment from the pulpit, she carefully and lengthily explained her stance to the pastor during the typically brief after service handshake while others waited in line. Her time as Secretary of State maybe reinforced her understanding that the world is full of constant dangers and violently wicked men against which government must act most decisively.
Whatever her motives and trajectory of reasoning, Clinton’s stance is the historic Christian teaching on capital punishment. As articulated by Thomas Aquinas, who was not the first Christian theologian to explain it, the state is divinely ordained to punish the wicked, including sometimes lethally, per St. Paul’s citation of the sword with which God has armed rulers. As the current Catholic catechism declares: “Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.” Recent popes have stressed alternatives to capital punishment while of course not denying the church’s historic teaching that government rightly has this power at least theoretically.
Here’s why, among other reasons, capital punishment is important in Christian teaching about the state’s vocation. No government anywhere is possible without lethal powers through its police, judiciary and military functions. No state can provide for public order and restrain evil without the option of lethal force. No government in the world tries to. God ordained government in every society and every time to deter and punish with violent force when necessary. The alternative is anarchy and capricious harm and destruction for the most vulnerable.
Much of modern Christian political witness denies this reality and morally equates all violence, all if which supposedly Jesus disapproves. Its dogmatic opposition to capital punishment, declaring it always wrong, is part of a wider pacifism also rejecting the military and forceful police action. Essentially they divorce Christianity from all plausible governance and prefer utopian and ultimately gnostic dreams to the public realities that orthodox Christian public theology has historically addressed. There is especially among Protestants lots of sloppy unserious thinking about capital punishment. One sloppy argument denounces capital punishment because Jesus was a victim of it. But this argument would also denounce any form of arrest and imprisonment, which Jesus also unjustly suffered. In truth, Christian absolute pacifists cannot countenance arrest and imprisonment either, as both are facilitated by force and the threat of lethality.
The antidote to sloppy moral thinking by contemporary Christians, especially Protestants with often low appreciation for the historic universal church, is greater immersion in the ethical riches of Christian moral tradition. Christians should never deify their own cultural standards and should instead strive to think with the whole Body of Christ across cultures and ages. We in our own time don’t command ultimate spiritual wisdom, on capital punishment, or any moral issue.
It’s been pointed out that Clinton and other pro-death penalty Democrats are different from European left of center parties that universally oppose capital punishment. Perhaps the stronger memory in America of Christian moral teaching, compared to more secular Europe, is one explanation. She deserves commendation for sticking to her stance, which is not universally popular within her constituency.
In explaining his opposition to capital punishment yesterday, Bernie Sanders said: “I just don’t want to see government be part of killing. That’s all.” Maybe this argument should also apply to abortion and euthanasia, whose legality both he and Clinton affirm. Christian teaching and Western moral traditions assign more importance to protecting the unborn, the very ill, the elderly and vulnerably depressed than to sparing the lives of convicted mass murderers.
Comment by Mark Bell on February 5, 2016 at 7:11 pm
Even a stopped clock is right twice per day.
Comment by BJ on February 8, 2016 at 2:44 pm
It is one thing to affirm the principle of the government having the authority to execute, but it is another thing altogether to say that a certain government is competent enough to do it without travesty, injustice, and sin. I ma not sure I trust the current leaders to do this in a morally upright way.
The execution of an innocent or mentally ill person is sin of the highest order. For Christians, we see Moses, David, and Paul, (murderers all) being used by God in mighty ways. If capital punishment is used consistently, these men all do not arrive on the scene to accomplish their God-ordained roles.
These thoughts ought to give us pause, and as ones who serve the Prince of Peace, we ought not celebrate the death of anyone.
Comment by Brad F on February 8, 2016 at 4:46 pm
Um, whom did Paul murder, pray tell?
Comment by BJ on February 8, 2016 at 5:01 pm
In Acts 9, it says that Paul was “breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples.”
In Acts 22, Paul confesses that “I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison…”
I don’t have specific names, and I guess it wasn’t technically illegal, but he openly persecuted the church, killing Christians along the way.
Comment by John S. on February 9, 2016 at 9:06 am
Paul was probably guilty as a conspirator of killing some, at least Stephen.
Comment by BJ on February 9, 2016 at 9:27 am
The Acts 22 quote is unquestionably a confession. He may not have used his owns hands, but he ordered them and was responsible for ending the life of innocent people.
Comment by John S. on February 9, 2016 at 9:04 am
By your logic, of presumed incompetence of the government, any punishment of any person must first be assumed to be suspect and probably an injustice.
In the meantime, who is advocating death for the innocent?
Comment by BJ on February 9, 2016 at 9:26 am
You seem to be twisting my points. Nobody is advocating death for the innocent (that I am aware of), but incompetence leads to that. Do you trust Somalia or Syria to properly and justly administer executions? I don’t. I won’t deny the principle, but in their cases I would openly oppose it.
And governmental incompetence does not stop any punishment. It ought to give caution to a punishment that cannot be undone. A wrongful imprisonment case can be reversed. A wrongful execution, cannot.
Comment by John S. on February 10, 2016 at 5:47 am
20 years in prison cannot be undone.
Comment by BJ on February 10, 2016 at 6:39 am
I never said it wasn’t an injustice or a travesty, but there is at least some semblance of correcting it, however minor it may be in comparison to the injustice.
But please note this runs contrary to your other argument. In fact it is support for my position that we ought not let incompetent or corrupt governments wreak havoc because we don’t want to give up a general principle.