Sunday, October 16, 2005


The Bible and the death penalty By Wade Hall
Special to The Courier-Journal


When pressed, many Americans who support capital punishment will say it's because the Bible requires it. But does it? In "The Biblical Truth About America's Death Penalty," a long and detailed study of the huge American support for the death penalty, Dale S. Recinella presents convincing exegeses of both Hebrew and Christian texts and concludes that, in using Scripture to justify capital punishment, we misunderstand Old Testament laws and ignore the Gospels and the example of Jesus.

Recinella, a lawyer who has spent 20 years as a lay Catholic chaplain to death-row prisoners in Florida, reports that 87 percent of American executions have taken place in the Bible Belt since 1987. Texas was responsible for 149. Kentucky had one.

Furthermore, he says that most Christian advocates believe "that the death penalty is mandated by the Hebrew scriptures, is not prohibited by the Gospels, and seems supported by the Epistles in the Christian scriptures." These people believe in theonomy, he says, which holds that the laws and commandments of the first five books of the Old Testament apply as much to modern Christians as they did to "ancient Israelites."

He notes, however, that such people cite and observe these rules and regulations selectively. Indeed, Recinella finds similarities between the methods that 19th-century Christians often used to defend slavery and 20th-century methods to justify capital punishment -- and, one might add, the way the Bible is selectively cited and distorted to condemn homosexuality.

Regarding the eye-for-an-eye and a life-for-a-life concept of justice, he notes that advocates of the death penalty also have to contend with "the nagging problem that the words and deeds of Jesus Christ seem to fly in the face of retaliatory violence."A careful reading of this book will invite you to examine your conscience and your Bible and consider the evidence Recinella has amassed against the American death penalty. He believes that the Bible cannot be used legitimately to support it. See if you agree.

Wade Hall is professor emeritus of English at Bellarmine University.