By Dr Rod Benson
There are strong arguments for and against capital punishment. Some claim that crimes such as terrorism, drug trafficking or genocide should attract the death penalty. Others view the death penalty as barbaric. This article offers reasons to oppose the reintroduction of the death penalty in Australia, and was submitted to the National Council of Australian Baptist Ministries for consideration in November 2015.
Biblical teaching
In the Old Testament, capital offences included murder (Ex 21:12-14), causing a miscarriage (Ex 21:22-25), cursing one’s parents (Ex 21:15), kidnapping (Ex 21:16), sorcery and witchcraft (Ex 22:18), bestiality (Ex 22:19), working on the Sabbath (Ex 35:2), adultery (Lev 20:10-21), incest (Lev 20:11f, 14), gay sex (Lev 20:13), and more.
These provisions may appear harsh, but they restricted the spirit of natural vengeance, and the degree to which the death penalty was actually applied is unclear.
Those who seek biblical support for the death penalty argue that the statement in Genesis 9:6 was given to all people, reflecting the belief that humans are made in the image of God. The sacredness of human life justifies the ultimate penalty for one who deliberately takes a life.
Abolitionists often read Genesis 9:6 as a prediction of the future consequences of murder. They may also argue that Matthew 5:38-41 annuls the OT doctrine of “a life for a life.”
There is limited reference to the death penalty in the New Testament. Abolitionists claim John 7:53-8:11 as proof that Jesus rejected capital punishment, while retentionists arguing that Jesus merely assured the woman of her forgiveness.
In Romans 13:1-7, Paul claims it is the responsibility of the civil government to maintain civil order. Abolitionists interpret the word “sword” as a metaphor for law enforcement. Retentionists interpret the word to imply the state’s power to apply the death penalty.
Arguments for the death penalty
1. Justice demands retribution. The punishment should fit the crime. On the other hand, social researcher Hugh Mackay said, “We don’t rape rapists. Why should we want to kill killers?”[1]
2. The death penalty expresses society’s outrage at heinous crimes. For example, Charles Colson welcomed the execution of U.S. terrorist Timothy McVeigh: “Just deserts, in some extreme cases, demand extreme punishment.”[2]
3. The death penalty serves as a deterrent. However, this does not apply to crimes of passion, and there is no causal link between capital punishment and the murder rate.
4. Capital punishment is cheaper than life imprisonment. It is argued that it is in the state’s economic interest to execute rather than imprison those guilty of heinous crimes.
Arguments against the death penalty
1. The death penalty violates human dignity. When the state kills a person, it declares a diminished value on human life. As James J. Megivern puts it, “Basic to all other rights is the right to life. This right cannot be forfeited by misconduct … Therefore the state has no right to kill.”[3]
2. Punishment should be proportional to the crime committed. While execution for mass murder may seem a reasonable punishment, this may not be the case for minor drug law infringements.
3. There is a bias of race, geography and quality of legal representation in many capital cases. Historically, a disproportionate number of those executed are black, poorly educated and economically disadvantaged.
4. Mistakes can be made and are irreversible if the accused is dead. Where a person’s life is extinguished, and later evidence proves their innocence, the miscarriage of justice cannot be rectified.
5. Reform is impossible once the offender is killed. Retentionists argue that the purpose of the justice system is not reform but retribution. Modern criminology generally favours reform.
6. Death sentences are costly and entail long and costly appeals. There is a significant financial cost associated with convicting and incarcerating a prisoner, ensuring due process, and killing the offender.
7. Capital punishment celebrates violence. A society that executes criminals is arguably a society that not only condones but celebrates violence.
8. Better alternatives exist. The prospect of a life sentence is thought to be more dreaded than execution, and demands that our safety depends on capital punishment may later appear illogical.
9. The death penalty is incompatible with the “consistent life ethic,” which applies the doctrine of the sanctity of life to all situations, including abortion and euthanasia.
Australian Baptists and capital punishment
Australian Baptist Ministries has historically not determined a policy on capital punishment. This is unsurprising since the issue is politically divisive, criminal justice is generally the responsibility of State and Territory rather than federal laws, and the theory and practice of state punishment has not been central to Baptist social concern.[4]
Whereas Baptists globally have a strong tradition of upholding human rights, there does not appear to be any significant resolution or publication by the Baptist World Alliance linking a concern for human rights with a preference for the abolition of capital punishment. Dr Neville Callam’s recent book, summarizing the witness of the BWA on human rights, outlines the extensive contribution to human rights by Baptists, especially in relation to religious freedom, but makes no mention of the ethics of capital punishment.[5] Similarly, Baptist ethicist Joe E. Trull does not mention capital punishment in his book on Baptist ethics.[6]
On the other hand, arguments about the sanctity of life based on the biblical principle that all persons are made in the image of God, deployed in opposition to abortion, may with equal resonance be applied to the issue of capital punishment. This is known as the “consistent life ethic.”[7]
In Australia, capital punishment was introduced one month after the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, when Captain Arthur Phillip ordered the execution of a convict for theft. Capital punishment was last used in 1967, when Ronald Ryan was hanged in Victoria for fatally shooting prison officer George Hodson during an escape from Pentridge Prison in 1965. The last person sentenced to death in Australia was Brenda Hodge in August 1984, whose sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. The death penalty for offences under Commonwealth law was abolished in 1973, and in 2010 federal legislation prohibited capital punishment in all Australian states and territories.
Australia is also a party to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which declares that “abolition of the death penalty contributes to the enhancement of human dignity and progressive development of human rights,” a commitment requiring that all necessary measures be taken to ensure that no one is subject to the death penalty. The United States of America is the only Western democracy that permits the death penalty.
In Dr Ken Manley’s magisterial two-volume history of Australian Baptists, capital punishment is mentioned once.[8] In 1962, Baptist Union of Victoria General Superintendent Tom Keyte publicly opposed capital punishment as “barbaric and uncivilized,” and participated in an ecumenical deputation to the Victorian government concerning the hanging of a prisoner named Tait. Some Victorian Baptists denounced his action as overtly political, and therefore inappropriate for a senior Baptist leader. The BUV eventually issued a statement opposing capital punishment in 1968.[9]
On the basis of Dr Ken Smith’s research on social issues among Baptists in Queensland, it is apparent that no formal statement has been made on capital punishment, at least in the period 1938-1990.[10] However, the 1971 Assembly of the Baptist Union of Queensland adopted the BWA’s 1965 resolution titled “Manifesto on religious liberty and human rights,” which expressed displeasure with “acquiescence in policies which deny basic human rights and bring suffering to individuals and communities,” and appealed “to our fellow Baptists and fellow Christians everywhere … to study what the teaching of Christ implies for human freedom and dignity.”[11]
In NSW & ACT, two Assembly resolutions pertain to capital punishment. The first, in 1989, affirmed the conviction that every human life was created in the image of God and was of immense worth; and that the death penalty imposed solely for holding political, religious or moral convictions was always unacceptable.[12] It therefore implicitly sanctioned capital punishment for other unspecified crimes, despite the fact that capital punishment was abolished by the NSW parliament in 1985.[13]
The second, in 1996, affirmed the belief that all people are made in the image of God and should therefore be treated with dignity, regardless of their crimes; that they “should therefore be given every opportunity to change their lifestyle away from destructive patterns of behaviour and toward a responsible and productive life”; and, “in keeping with these foundational beliefs, the Baptist Union of NSW commends the compassionate and progressive corrections policy of the present State government.”[14] At the time, Labor Premier Bob Carr was in the second year of his ten-year premiership. This resolution suggests a preference for the practice of restorative justice in place of retributive justice, although it does not specifically mention capital punishment.
Conclusion
Baptists in Australia have been reluctant to pass formal resolutions on capital punishment, but it appears that none have been passed which approve of capital punishment or call for its reinstatement in any jurisdiction. This paper recommends that the ABM National Council address the situation by passing a resolution or making a formal statement indicating its opposition to the death penalty for all offences. A suggested form of words follows:
Australian Baptist Ministries does not support calls to reinstate capital punishment federally or in any Australian State or Territory. This view is supported by the biblical teaching that every human person is created in the image of God and should therefore be treated with commensurate respect and dignity.
Additional arguments informing this view include a concern about discrimination in the justice system in jurisdictions which practice capital punishment; a perceived lack of proportionality in sentencing with respect to capital offences; lack of conclusive evidence that the death penalty has any impact on capital crime rates; and a preference for restorative rather than retributive justice.
Dr Rod Benson is Research Support Officer at Moore Theological College, Sydney. He previously pastored four Baptist churches in Queensland and NSW, and served for 12 years as an ethicist with the Tinsley Institute at Morling College. This article was written in 2015.
References
[1] Hugh Mackay, “Chink appears in armour against death penalty,” The Sydney Morning Herald, 13-14 Jan 2007.
[2] Charles Colson, Preserving the dignity of man: The case for capital punishment,” BreakPoint Commentary no. 010608, available at http://www.leaderu.com/socialsciences/colson-dignity.html.
[3] James J. Megivern, The Death Penalty: An historical and theological survey (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), p. 487.
[4] It should be noted that the task of trawling through minutes of meetings of the National Council of the Baptist Union of Australia and its predecessors to locate resolutions on social issues has yet to be done.
[5] Neville Callam, Pursuing Unity, Defending Rights: The Baptist World Alliance at Work (Falls Church, VA: BWA, 2010), see especially pp. 97-129.
[6] Joe E. Trull, Walking in the Way: An Introduction to Christian Ethics (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1997).
[7] See, for example, David P. Gushee, The Sacredness of Human Life: Why an Ancient Biblical Vision is Key to the World’s Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 367-372; and his April 2000 Staley Lecture at Cumberland College, published as “The consistent ethic of life” in David O. Ahearn & Peter R. Gathje (eds), Doing Right and Being Good: Catholic and Protestant Readings in Christian Ethics (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005), pp. 248-256.
[8] Ken R. Manley, From Woolloomooloo to ‘Eternity’: A History of Australian Baptists. Volume 2: A National Church in a Global Community (1914-2005)(Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2006), p. 663.
[9] The Australian Baptist, 14 Aug 1968, pp. 1, 3.
[10] Ken Smith, “Religion and social issues: Discussions and resolutions of the Baptist Union of Queensland, 1938-1973,” revised version of a Master of Literary Studies dissertation submitted to the Department of Studies in Religion, University of Queensland, 1990.
[11] Quoted in Smith, ibid. p. 53.
[12] Baptist Union of NSW, Annual Reports 1989, pp. 21-22.
[13] The last state execution in NSW took place in 1940, and the death penalty for murder was abolished in 1955.
[14] Baptist Union of NSW Handbook 1997, pp. 44-46.
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