c. 1996 Religion News Service

CHICAGO (RNS)-In the 30 years since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, a bitterly emotional debate has preceded each of the 328 executions that have occurred in prisons around the country.

The issue: Is killing a morally defensible punishment for murder?

It is a question no less contentious within religious circles than in criminal-justice ones. The same holy writ cited to justify capital punishment also is used as moral evidence against it.

In Illinois, where 155 convicts sit on death row, the debate among clergy and faithful is emblematic of one that grips the nation, playing out most recently in the Academy Award-winning movie”Dead Man Walking.” The Rev. Robert MacFarlane, rector of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, Ill., for example, opposes the death penalty, but the Rev. Theodore Gracia, pastor of Christ Episcopal Church in nearby Forest Park, Ill., embraces it. “It’s very simple,”MacFarlane said.”I don’t believe we are permitted to take a human life. Open and shut.” But Gracia interprets the death of Jesus on the cross as a sign that state executions can be justified.”The salvation of the world depended on an execution,”he said, referring to the crucifixion.”If the law required the death penalty, if the state chooses to execute it, that’s right. I see nothing theologically flawed with that argument.” It is a view MacFarlane finds troubling.”Jesus chose to embrace death on behalf of all the victims of the world,”MacFarlane said.”Retribution never really satisfies anybody, it never satisfies the ache in their soul. The only thing that does is forgiveness, and that’s hard to come by.” Last October, in keeping with the Episcopal Church’s long history of opposing state executions, MacFarlane introduced a resolution in the governing body of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago to officially denounce capital punishment in Illinois. The resolution, which was approved, is similar to one passed in 1958 by the denomination’s governing body, supporting a ban on the death penalty.

Many proponents of the death penalty argue that executing heinous murderers helps bring closure and a sense of justice to the families of victims.”The death penalty does serve a purpose,”Gracia said.”It fulfills civil law and it helps the families of the victims.” But many clergy disagree.

For more than 20 years, Rabbi Robert Marx of Congregation Hakafa in Glencoe, Ill., has led a support group for parents who have lost their children-some as a result of murder.”I try to help them see that their anger and the killing of (the murderer) won’t end the violence that they really want to see (end),”he said.”It is only God who can determine the number of days and the time we live. Any intrusion in an artificial way … is a way of standing in the place of God.” Marx doesn’t tell the parents that they have to forgive their children’s killers.”I’m not sure it’s up to me to tell people to forgive. I think that’s up to God, too.” There is no uniform doctrine on the death penalty within Judaism, and some rabbis-and many Jewish congregants-favor it. Still, said Michael C. Kotzin, senior vice president of the Jewish Federation of Chicago,”There is a readiness (in the Jewish community) to generally be opposed to the death penalty.”The person who killed (Israeli Prime Minister) Yitzhak Rabin was sentenced to life,”Kotzin notes.”Capital punishment wasn’t even available in that case, and many Jews take pride in that fact as a mark of civilization.” On Monday (May 6), the Rabbinical Assembly, representing 1,400 Conservative rabbis, called upon states with capital punishment to abolish their law. The group asserted that”some capital crimes should be punishable by life imprisonment without parole”and that Assembly members should”speak out on behalf of the victims of violent crime and their families.” But, the group said,”no evidence exists that capital punishment serves as a deterrent to crime and … at least 300 people in this century have been wrongly convicted of capital crimes.”(BEGIN FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

The opposition among some Jews to the death penalty is no doubt rooted in history.

Rabbi Nisson Shulman of Yeshiva University said that in ancient Judaic law the death penalty was”very carefully and rarely administered.”And, he said, it was almost never imposed after the dissolution of the Sanhedrin, Israel’s highest Jewish religious, judicial and political body, which existed from 63 B.C. to about the 5th century A.D.

Even so, Shulman said,”The sense of unhappiness with the death penalty (in Judaic law) in no way minimizes the responsibility of the criminal in the eyes of the court, but there are other ways to punish.” When it comes to forgiving the unthinkable, religious ideals and emotions often collide, sometimes causing even the most devout to trade spiritual imperatives for the satisfaction of revenge.

For MacFarlane, forgiveness is essential, though he admits that if he were counseling a victim’s family soon after the offense occurred, he would not tell them they need to forgive the murderer right away.

Ultimately, however,”the person won’t be free of the murder or the murderer-even if the murderer dies-until there is forgiveness … which is basic to any faith, be it Christian, Muslim or Buddhist. It’s essential,”MacFarlane said.

Janet Kittlaus, head of Lutheran Campus Ministries at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., said Lutherans, at least officially, stand against the death penalty because of grace, a key portion of forgiveness. “Grace is God’s tenacious love for human beings,”she said. “We believe all people are sinners and all fall short. We don’t think that certain people should be singled out for death.”Sometimes a victim’s family thinks that killing the offender will help,”Kittlaus said.”But justice is not revenge. Revenge does not serve our society.” Bill Kunkle, who prosecuted serial killer John Wayne Gacy and who describes himself as”basically an atheist,”disagrees. Kunkle believes revenge is what is needed in the wake of particularly heinous crimes. “I believe in retributive punishment, in just-desserts punishment,”he said.

Many anti-death-penalty activists claim that execution is not a viable deterrent for violent crime. But, Kunkle said,”I don’t care. It’s a mirror of the anger”of victims and their families.”It’s a righteous and just anger that ought to be balanced and assuaged by the government.”(END FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

Pope John Paul II made the Vatican’s strongest statements against capital punishment in an encyclical last year. “The Church has always taught that killing, even in self-defense, is a last resort,”said Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the secretariat for pro-life activities at the National Council of Catholic Bishops. “The recent Catechism and the pope’s encyclical insist that we must use non-lethal means to punish crimes if that can protect the innocent from further crimes,”he said.

Doerflinger calls the need for capital punishment in modern society”virtually -non-existent.” The pope made a tiny allowance for the death penalty only in the most unusual of circumstances, and even then it is not preferable, according to Doerflinger.”The exception reflects strange and unusual circumstances where a country’s legal system has broken down to where there is no other alternative, like a massive civil war where the only alternative to restore order is summary executions,”he said.

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In Chicago, where Cardinal Joseph Bernardin is an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, many of his flock share a disdain for state-sanctioned killings.”The purpose that punishment is supposed to serve, capital punishment doesn’t meet,”said Jim Lund, co-director of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago’s Peace and Justice Office. “It doesn’t have reform or rehabilitation in mind as an end …, it isn’t a deterrent … and it doesn’t restore order,”he said.”Vengeance is the justification for it. It’s not a positive motivation.” Lund said he is confounded by people who claim to oppose abortion yet support the death penalty.”To those people I would say, `What ethic are you drawing from?’ It’s not an ethic that supports life … . They distinguish between innocent life and guilty individuals,”he said.

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The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest evangelical denomination, overwhelmingly supports a government’s right to execute heinous criminals, according to Richard Land, president of the Convention’s Christian Life Commission.”God is the giver and sustainer of life, and when you take a life … you forfeit your right to life,”Land said.

Opinion is so strong among Southern Baptists that the Convention hasn’t bothered to pass an official resolution supporting the death penalty, Land said.”Probably 75 percent of Southern Baptists would say that the Bible mandates (capital punishment) in the Old Testament and certainly allows for (capital punishment) in the New Testament,”he said.

Still, Land issues one caveat in his support of the death penalty.”It would not be moral if you were committed to the death penalty if you were not as committed to its fair and just application,”he said, noting that”you are more likely to be executed if you are poor or if you are a person of color rather than an Anglo.”

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