A petition urging the reintroduction of the death penalty in the UK poses some pertinent questions for Christianity
The recent launch of a petition urging parliament to consider the restoration of the death penalty will not make for a completely dispiriting episode if it gives us pause to revisit the punishment's long relationship with Christianity, an alliance that was formally ratified when Henry I reinstated state-sanctioned execution in 1108. This was an age in which the biblical warrants for capital punishment re-established themselves in the penal "philosophy" of the nation, and in which the Christian religion, in all its sanguinary imaginings, really was religious.
The biblical warrants themselves are numerous: the Old Testament enthusiastically identifies 36 offences that are punishable by death (these include being rude about mum and dad and, if you are a woman, getting married while no longer a virgin), while the New Testament, supposedly the most enlightened part of the Bible, practically assumes the right of the state to execute "offenders". Furthermore, Exodus 21:13, which commands us not to kill, was taken by St Augustine to rest in full sympathy with the argument for capital punishment, it being "in no way contrary to the commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill' to wage war at God's bidding, or for the representatives of the State's authority to put criminals to death." Martin Luther went further still, issuing a swaggering condemnation of the practice whereby the executioner would petition his victim for forgiveness. No need, says Luther: the executioner is an agent of God.
Source: The Guardian, August 24, 2011
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