A Christian ethicist and Evangelical Left figure recently critiqued use of the death penalty at a leading Christian college.
“If Jesus is central and the example of the early church is taken seriously, it leans one against the death penalty,” suggested David Gushee of Baptist Mercer University. “We don’t need it, it’s not good public policy, and it doesn’t fit with the deepest witness of the scriptures.”
Gushee, co-founder of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, spoke November 6 as part of a panel titled “The Death Penalty Forum” held at Evangelical Christian Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. None of the panelists defended the application of the death penalty in the U.S. criminal justice system.
The Mercer University professor was joined by Vincent Bacote, Director of Wheaton College’s Center for Applied Christian Ethics, Gabriel Salguero, President of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, Frank Thompson, former Superintendent of Oregon State Penitentiary, and Kirk Bloodsworth, a former death row inmate who was the first person in the United States to be exonerated by DNA testing.
In his presentation, Gushee acknowledged that Old Testament law allowed for and specifically prescribed the death penalty for certain offenses, but proposed that an evolving understanding of the limits of state-sponsored killing has narrowed the application of the penalty so much so that it now no longer applies to incarcerated criminals.
“A lot of times with death penalty conversation, you know exactly where someone is going to end up based on where they start,” Gushee announced. “If they start with Old Testament law, skip over Jesus and go to Romans [chapter] 13, you have one approach. If they start with Jesus and skip over Old Testament law and don’t say much about Romans 13, you have another approach.”
Gushee explained that he was going to attempt to do neither of those, “but I am going to start with Jesus.”
“If you thumb through the Gospel of Matthew, for example, you get these notes that have echoed through the consciousness of Christians through the centuries: ‘blessed are the merciful,’ ‘blessed are the peacemakers,’ you get Jesus teaching in the Sermon on the Mount those hard words about not retaliating, about turning the other cheek and going the second mile, about loving our enemies. Or ‘do not judge lest you be judged’ which when you allow such words to work deep in your heart tend to elevate our own sense of sinfulness and unworthiness rather than someone else’s sinfulness and unworthiness,” Gushee shared. “We think about how Jesus represented a posture of forgiveness, of understanding, of inviting people into his community whom other people condemned, in contrast with the religious leader types of his context.”
Gushee noted that both Jesus and John the Baptist experienced unjust execution at the hands of earthly powers.
“It helps to remember that heritage when we remember the death penalty,” suggested the Director of Mercer University’s Center for Theology and Public Life. “To be followers of Christ we are not about bearing swords or slashing our way to a better world. There is something not quite Christ-like about that.”
Instead, Gushee proposed that there is a basic right to life and law and that culture needs to protect that right.
“Human beings must be trained by their parents and by society not to deal with their frustrations and their lusts and their angers by killing other people,” Gushee stated. “If they do kill somebody else they must be prevented from doing it again. They must be apprehended and given a fair trial, punished proportionately and prevented from killing again.”
While the Old Testament mandates the death penalty for over a dozen offenses, Gushee qualified that the scriptures set an extraordinary high proof for the use of the death penalty including two eye witnesses.
Gushee also pointed to Cain, Moses and David as three examples of killers in scripture that are mercifully spared by God from having to suffer the death penalty that Old Testament law prescribes. Rabbis over the centuries, Gushee explained, interpreted the death penalty statutes of the Torah gradually to more and more narrow the grounds “so that it became essentially unusable.” They retained the death penalty as it signals “the seriousness of murder” but they tried to reduce the actual use of the death penalty.
“The towering example of Jesus rounds off this testimony – a savior who died for God’s Kingdom but did not kill for it, and left behind a church that was also a nonviolent movement,” Gushee proposed, adding that the church “did not embrace killing for war or criminal justice until at least three centuries later.”
The Mercer University professor assessed that most of western civilization turned decisively against the state having the power to kill its own citizens after the crimes of the 20th century. While Gushee allowed that some states misuse the death penalty because they are evil, he proposed that other states misuse the death penalty because they are not able to do a just administration of justice.
“I think that’s more our case in the United States,” Gushee appraised. “I would like to see us come to a place as Christians where we could lead society to the ultimate elimination of the death penalty.”
Gushee also addressed Roman Catholic skepticism towards the death penalty, assessing that the church, which was pro-death penalty for centuries, was an example of how change happens.
“Coming out of the Holocaust, World War II and the mayhem of the 20th century, the Catholic Church changed its position. Now official Catholic teaching is opposed to the death penalty,” Gushee appraised, allowing that the church’s catechism permitted taking life as a last resort to prevent others from being harmed. “The sacredness of life means that ending someone’s life, either as a murderer or as punishment for murder is the gravest thing that one can do.”
The catechism of the Roman Catholic Church states:
“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.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”
“There are various ways to advance justice, and I think what our panel has been saying is that the death penalty has not proved in the U.S. to be on balance, in our view, the best way to advance justice,” Gushee concluded. “From my Christian perspective, there is something about the way Jesus did his ministry that advanced the Kingdom of God, and taught, lived and died that shadows and affects our Christian life – or ought to – including the way that criminal justice is meted out. There is a dimension of mercy, for rehabilitation, a concern for everybody in the system, care for ‘the least of these’ that begins to bleed into our way of thinking, including the criminal justice system.”
Comment by Dan Horsley on November 24, 2014 at 3:28 pm
So much compassion.
Except for the victims and the victims’ families. Only the criminals have rights, criminals’ victims have no rights.
Is that “Christian”?
Comment by yolo on November 25, 2014 at 8:33 am
Nope. It’s Marxist. I was once in an argument with a Marxist. The Marxist kept asking me if I believe in free will. I said, “yes I do.” The point was that the Marxist did not believe in free will, but for reasons entirely different than a Calvinist. The Marxist asserted that NO criminal is responsible for their actions because society caused their problems, their poverty, their reasons for committing the crime, and even the crime itself. Hence, WE are responsible rather than the criminal. The real reason why pro-aborts vehemently oppose the death penalty is because they do not believe that the condemned are responsible for their actions and they believe that they shouldn’t even be incarcerated. They believe in “reeducation” like any good communist, which of course is “reeducation” of all of society.
Comment by yolo on November 25, 2014 at 8:39 am
By the way, this is the exact reason why you will repeatedly hear them talk about how terror will be eliminated when poverty is eliminated, as if terror has something to do with family income. They’re dumbfounded when presented with the fact that individuals from high income families are as culpable for terror as anyone else.
Comment by yolo on November 25, 2014 at 9:13 am
Nope. It’s Marxist. I was once in an argument with a Marxist. The Marxist asserted that NO criminal is responsible for their actions because society caused their problems, their poverty, their reasons for committing the crime, and even the crime itself. Hence, WE are responsible rather than the criminal. The real reason why pro-aborts vehemently oppose the death penalty is because they do not believe that the condemned are responsible for their actions and they believe that they shouldn’t even be incarcerated. They believe in “reeducation” like any good communist, which of course is “reeducation” of all of society.
This is the exact reason why you will repeatedly hear them talk about how terror will be eliminated when poverty is eliminated, as if terror has something to do with family income. They’re dumbfounded when presented with the fact that individuals from high income families are as culpable for terror as anyone else.
Comment by Claus von Stauffenberg on November 28, 2014 at 2:06 am
TO: YOLO *******
YOU WROTE: …” they [Marxists] do not believe that the condemned are responsible for their actions and they believe that they shouldn’t even be incarcerated. They believe in “reeducation” like any good communist,”
~~~~~ I have that understanding as well, but how do they explain their gulags and casual murders of myriads of their own kind? Is this what they call “re-education” for political prisoners? What do they call it for the crimes of murder?
Please explain if I am confusing the issue. Thanks.
Comment by Greg on November 24, 2014 at 8:06 pm
In 2010, there were 14,748 murders in U.S. prisons. How can one argue that incarceration is always the correct antidote for murderers? And what do we do with murderers who murder in prison? Is the death penalty OK then? And if it’s not, but we further put prison murderers into a life-sentence of solitary confinement, aren’t the same anti-death penalty folks going to claim that that is cruel and inhumane treatment? What to do? Oh, what to do?
Comment by yolo on November 24, 2014 at 9:20 pm
What exactly is the Christian Left’s principle on life? On the one hand, they embrace the pro-abort agenda including genetic screening (like what happened in the early 20th Century). On the other hand, they defend the condemned no matter how many victims there were and no matter how heinous the crimes were. So what exactly is their principle on life?
Comment by Namyriah on November 25, 2014 at 5:32 pm
“What exactly is the Christian Left’s principle on life?”
It’s precisely what the Secular Left’s principle on life is.
So, kinda makes you think they aren’t “Christian” at all.
Comment by yolo on November 24, 2014 at 9:24 pm
What exactly is the Christian Left’s principle on life? On the one hand, they embrace the aborting of innocent human life including as a result of genetic screening (like what happened in the early 20th Century). On the other hand, they defend the condemned no matter how many victims there were and no matter how heinous the crimes were.
Comment by Sandra K Jenner on November 25, 2014 at 9:29 am
It has to do with their attitude toward sex. They see sex as something that should have no consequences, and if there are consequences (an unborn child), then dispose of the consequences. The real motive behind feminism is, men can sleep around and not worry about children, so abortion allows women to do the same. So women can be as irresponsible and as hedonistic as men. People on the left call that “progress.” An objective observer would call it “both sexes have the morals of alleycats.”
Comment by yolo on November 25, 2014 at 10:45 am
It’s no wonder why they have utter contempt for good men.
Comment by Namyriah on November 25, 2014 at 5:31 pm
I see some middle ground in here. Reserve the death penalty for the most egregious killers – Jeffrey Dahmer comes to mind, also the two DC snipers – give a life sentence to the lesser offenders.
Comment by Claus von Stauffenberg on November 28, 2014 at 1:31 am
Here comes another insignificant talking head who has nothing based on Scriptural authority. He is letting his finite “reason” overrule the Scriptures, and is making himself his own God by diminishing the Bible. They are a dime a dozen ! They come and go like the snows of winter.
I opine that the campaign for abolishing capital punishment would have made a great deal more sense in earlier years before DNA and the sophisticated sciences of forensic criminology and investigation was not as consummate as they are today.
The chances of wrong convictions today are slim with all of the cutting edge technology that we possess. Not only that, people often forget that in cases that fashion the slightest doubts of a jury, they can order the judge to render a lesser sentence if it is ruled as execution. They have that power.
At least we know how God feels about criminal murder in cases of adequate proof. “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind. ~ Genesis 9:6
My heart will always be captive to the word of God in all matters that God has addressed.
Comment by dudleysharp on October 19, 2015 at 12:09 pm
Gushee should have looked deeper into Matthew;
Some wrongly believe that Christ abandoned the Law of the Hebrew Testament and instituted a new ethic in the New Testament, based solely on mercy.
There are 20 chapters, within the 28 chapters of Matthew, which discuss destruction, hell, unquenchable fire, and/or differing forms of punishment and exclusion by God (see Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:22, 29-30; 8:12; 11:23-24; 12:30-32; 13:41-42, 49-50; 18:8-9; 22:2-14; 23:33, 25:40-46) and/or honor the Law of the Hebrew Testament (see specific references Matthew 5 and 15).
“For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” Ephesians 5:5.
“When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.” 2 Thessalonians 1:7b-9.
And so it is throughout the New Testament.
See also Mark 3:29; Luke 13:24-28; John 5:24-29, 15:6; 2 Peter 2:4-9; Jude 1:5-15: Revelation 13:10. NAS, 1978