Should Christians Support Capital Punishment?

Should Christians Support Capital Punishment?

on March 10, 2016

During an event on Monday, liberal activist Shane Claiborne and other panelists went on the offensive against capital punishment. They made the case why capital punishment was wrong and Christians should oppose it.

The panel, held on March 7 at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, included Claiborne; Rev. Bernard “Chris” Dorsey, a professor at Western Theological Seminary; Gail Rice, an author, consultant and adult literacy specialist; and Randy Steidl, a former death-row inmate who was falsely accused of murder in 1986 and finally released in 2004.

This event was both thought provoking and perplexing; at some points convicting and at others theologically muddled.

On the one hand, Rice and Steidl presented powerful first-hand testimony about how capital punishment can go wrong. Steidl began the session by sharing his experience of spending nearly 18 years in prison, most on death row, after being wrongly convicted of a brutal murder in Paris, Illinois, in 1986. Although the case against him was weak, it took a monumental effort over many years to overturn his conviction, in large part because of a dysfunctional and corrupt justice system in Illinois at the time.

“Until they start holding police and prosecutors accountable, and make them do serious jail time, you’re going to continue to have innocent people on death row and doing life without parole in this country,” Steidl said.

Rice wrote in 2011 that capital punishment was “personal for me,” too. She has worked with prisoners over the years, including many on death row. But her connection goes even deeper than that. Her brother Bruce VanderJagt, a policeman in Denver, was murdered in 1997.

During her talk, Rice explained that after her brother’s murder she became even more convinced that capital punishment was wrong because it was “always going to be unfair to poor and minorities.”

Claiborne and Dorsey took a more academic approach. They argued that capital punishment contradicts Christian ethics. Dorsey said that capital punishment lacked scriptural support, and that the 5th-century Church backed it under Constantine because they wanted to execute heretics.

“I lift that up for us to understand that regrettably, the Christian Church has had this uneasy and indeed very unfortunate entanglement with violence, state-sponsored violence, which is in the effect Christian violence,” Dorsey said.

Claiborne went even further, implying that Christ was personally opposed to capital punishment. He said Jesus was “like the water that was poured on the electric chair. He short-circuits the whole system.”

During his talk, Claiborne developed the idea of rehabilitative justice and the need for forgiveness, neither of which he argued could be accomplished through capital punishment. Claiborne, a firm pacifist, decried violence in general during the Q&A time at the end of the session.

“Our whole world is addicted to violence,” Claiborne said. He continued that Jesus pointed His followers away from this “contagion of violence” and their enslavement to fear. Claiborne quoted 1 John 4:18, which says that “perfect love casts out fear.”

Undeniably, panelists at the event made some salient points. Capital punishment is not always administered justly in America. It disproportionately affects the poor and racial minorities. I believe this should give Christians pause.

But in my view, the panel went off track in renouncing capital punishment in all situations and “state-sponsored violence” in all forms. Not many of us would want to live in a society where the government refused to use any type of force. That would mean no national defense, no law enforcement, and no taxation – in essence, no government at all.

I believe individual Christians’ mandate to turn the other cheek in the face of evil is misapplied to government. In Romans 13:3-4, Paul clearly affirms governments’ right to employ force:

“For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”

Marc LiVecche, just war and global statecraft scholar at Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), has tackled this issue repeatedly. In a recent essay called “The Violence of Pacifism,” he argued that pacifism has the opposite effect of creating peace. He noted that force is not desirable, but it is often necessary to achieve justice and order.

“Force cannot create peace, but it can create the conditions necessary for peace to have any chance at all of taking root,” Livecche said. “In any case, while there is a divine mandate that speaks to turning our other cheek to our attacker, there is never such warrant to turn our neighbor’s unstruck cheek to their attacker.”

In other words, the type of forgiveness which Christ expects of individual Christians simply isn’t viable public policy. This logic applies to both war and capital punishment.

From 1977 until just last year, the progressively-oriented National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) recognized the necessity of capital punishment. (Interestingly, Shane Claiborne admitted that he “conferred with NAE board members during their otherwise closed deliberation” regarding its stance, as IRD President Mark Tooley discussed in an article last October.)

In its previous statement on capital punishment – before consulting with Claiborne and liberalizing on the issue – the NAE recognized the complex interaction between forgiveness, rehabilitation, and justice:

“The place of forgiveness and rehabilitation of the criminal must not be minimized by those who are concerned with the administration of justice. However, concern for the criminal should not be confused with proper consideration for justice. Nothing should be done that undermines the value of life itself, or the seriousness of a crime that results in the loss of life.”

So where does this leave American Christians? I believe Claiborne and his fellow panelists got it partly right. Many conservative Christians seemingly turn a blind eye to how both capital punishment and incarceration disproportionately affect racial minorities and the socioeconomically disadvantaged. Some give a free pass to law enforcement and prosecutors.

“At the very least, we have to acknowledge the reality that sometimes the prosecutors get it wrong,” Dorsey pointed out. I believe all American Christians – particularly well-off, white conservative Christians – should take this to heart. As Christians, we should be actively holding the government accountable when it comes to the just use of force.

But at the same time, progressive Christians can maintain unrealistic expectations when it comes to reducing violence in society. Governments and individual Christians promote human flourishing in different ways. While the Church pursues social and individual reconciliation, our authorities must continue employing force to maintain order and relative peace this side of Heaven.

  1. Comment by Ikeydog on March 10, 2016 at 12:03 pm

    The question must be asked then, what is the individual Christian’s role in government? Are we called to be “in the world but not of the world”? Should Christians participate in the role of government in enacting necessary violence and ending of human life?

  2. Comment by DannyBoyJr on March 10, 2016 at 10:44 pm

    I believe that Wesleyan holiness is not compatible with the death penalty. We must seek justice but not at the expense of supporting state-sanctioned murder.

  3. Comment by Harry Callahan on March 15, 2016 at 9:27 am

    The argument against any judicial action as being “disproportionate effects against minorities” is truly intellectually hollow.–If crimes are disproportionately committed by minorities, which they are, it is only logical that those minority individuals be held accountable.

  4. Comment by David on March 15, 2016 at 12:01 pm

    “I believe individual Christians’ mandate to turn the other cheek in the face of evil is misapplied to government.” So logic would dictate that if a Christian and government have different mandates then a Christian cannot serve in government. That’s what a reasonable person must conclude. Government is all about force and coercion. It cannot possible exist without using force or the threat thereof. This is antithetical to the teachings of Christ.

  5. Comment by michiganliberty on March 15, 2016 at 5:08 pm

    My doctrine is simple, the New Testament for my friends, the Old Testament for my enemies. We must smite the wicked.

  6. Comment by Susan Stein on March 20, 2016 at 11:59 am

    I am not Christian, but if you read the Talmud and not just what Christians call the “Old Testament”, the rabbis make it virtually impossible to every execute anyone. For example, in order to execute anyone, you must have at least two witnesses to the actual murder. There should be ten judges and they all must agree to execute anyone.

  7. Comment by Matt Crum on March 24, 2016 at 5:08 pm

    There’s a huge fallacy in you’re argument. Force does not equal violence. If police arrested some kid for vandalism, you wouldn’t describe the policeman as being violent. Violence happens when people get beaten senselessly by police for example. They are not equal scenarios, so you can’t say a pacifist is against force.

  8. Comment by Kingdom Ambassador on March 24, 2016 at 5:53 pm

    Had the 18th-century founders (like their 17th-century Christian Colonial predecessors) established government and society on Yahweh’s Ten Commandments and their respective statutes and judgments (including the Bible’s six juridical safeguards), the question of capital punishment would not be such a muddled mess nor opposed so much today.

    For those six safeguards, see online Chapter 14 “Amendment 5: Constitutional vs. Biblical Judicial Protection” of “Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective” at http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/BlvcOnline/biblelaw-constitutionalism-pt14.html.

    Also Chapter 17 “Amendment 8: Bail, Fines, and Cruel and Unusual Punishments.”

  9. Comment by Grundune on March 27, 2016 at 7:51 am

    This is another free advertisement for Ted R. Weiland’s campaign to abolish the U.S. Constitution in favor of a one-man-rule theocracy.

    If God wants us to form another theocracy and live under the rule of His prophet, then I’m all for it. But it has to be God’s will not Weiland’s politics.

  10. Comment by Paladin on March 25, 2016 at 5:01 pm

    According to SCRIPTURE but then again if we were doing that then our ‘Constitution’ would reflect Godly standards which it does not — however, our true founders the Colonials, in their system it did to a large degree and they not only honored King Jesus with their lips but in their service.

  11. Comment by Ethan Ellingson on March 25, 2016 at 5:18 pm

    God’s righteous judges (a challenge to find in America) will judge cases as a servant of Him rather than a creed or document of men, as per Romans 13:3ff:
    “Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.”

  12. Comment by Kingdom Ambassador on March 26, 2016 at 8:47 am

    “…The Bible stipulates, among other things, that judicial appointees must be men of truth who fear Yahweh and hate covetousness. (See Chapter 5 “Article 2: Executive Usurpation” for a list of additional Biblical qualifications.) The United States Constitution requires no Biblical qualifications whatsoever. Nowhere does the Constitution stipulate that judges must rule on behalf of Yahweh, rendering decisions based upon His commandments, statutes, and judgments as required in Exodus 18. That not even one constitutional framer contended for Yahweh,3 as did King Jehoshaphat, speaks volumes about the framers’ disregard for Him and His judicial system:

    ‘And he [King Jehoshaphat] set judges in the land throughout all the fenced cities of Judah, city by city, and said to the judges, Take heed what ye do: for ye judge not for man, but for YHWH,4 who is with you in the judgment…. And he charged them, saying, Thus shall ye do in the fear of YHWH, faithfully, and with a perfect heart.’ (2 Chronicles 19:5-9)….”

    For more, see online Chapter 6 “Article 3: Judicial Usurpation” of “Bible Laws vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective” at http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/BlvcOnline/biblelaw-constitutionalism-pt6.html.

    Then, find out how much you REALLY know about the Constitution as compared to the Bible. Take our 10-question Constitution Survey at http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/ConstitutionSurvey.html and receive a complimentary copy of a book that EXAMINES the Constitution by the Bible.

  13. Comment by Grundune on March 27, 2016 at 7:55 am

    Weiland aka Kingdom Ambassador, hasn’t written anything new in years. Even his answers to his disciples are reprints that he has used hundreds of times before,

  14. Comment by Gregory Alan of Johnson on March 25, 2016 at 6:19 pm

    In the Biblical context of law/order under Yahweh-God’s perfect law, yes we should support it. Under the current (1774/1871) Satanic system of commerce founded judicial actions, no, as already stated in the article.

  15. Comment by The_Physetor on April 2, 2016 at 11:10 am

    Shane Claiborne, the clown prince of post-Christian Christianity.

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