| Faiths and the Faithful Have Varied Views of Death Penalty |
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Life & death issue Those on both sides point to scripture to support their stances. By Kristen Moulton The Salt Lake Tribune In the hours before murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner is set to be shot to death by firing squad next week at the Draper prison, prominent religious leaders will gather for a prayer vigil and join others for a protest rally. They will decry what they see as the state's unnecessary taking of life. And yet those voices do not reflect the full range of opinion among people of faith. Indeed, even within those religious traditions that oppose the death penalty -- Jews, Roman Catholics, Orthodox and mainstream Protestants such as the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, American Baptists and United Methodists -- some of the faithful disagree. Evangelical Christians generally support capital punishment, although some see it as immoral. Among those traditions that take no stand on the right of states to kill killers, such as the LDS Church and Buddhists, strong positions are found at opposite ends of the question. Most Mormons back the death penalty; most Buddhists reject it. Here is a sample of the perspectives of Utahns from a variety of faith traditions, starting with those whose religions officially are neutral. Buddhists Charles Prebish is the bane of colleagues in Old Main at Utah State University. A 40-year practitioner of Buddhism, he won't kill the box-elder bugs that creep into his office each spring and fall. So it's not hard to understand his position on capital punishment. "I would have difficulty killing anyone for any reason," says Prebish, director of USU's religious-studies program. "I clearly could not support capital punishment under any circumstances." Buddha never explicitly addressed capital punishment, Prebish notes. But the first precept, or rule, for personal spiritual development is to abstain from taking life. It is Prebish's hunch, after four decades as a Buddhist and as one of North American Buddhism's pre-eminent scholars, that most Buddhists reject the death penalty. Latter-day Saints Though The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now has an official position of neutrality -- its statement says "we neither promote nor oppose capital punishment" -- the church has a long history of backing state executions. Indeed, some early church leaders preached that murder was an unforgivable sin for which Mormons could atone only by accepting a bloody death. That belief in so-called "blood atonement" is thought to be at the root of Utah's use of the firing squad. Though it's no longer an option for those sentenced to death, Gardner was able to choose the firing squad because he was sentenced before the law changed in 2004. Philip Barlow, who holds the Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at USU, suspects the Utah-based church's relatively recent neutrality is part of its broader attempt to stay out of politics except when certain moral issues are at stake. Nonetheless, he says, most Mormons likely support the death penalty. "There is a sense of Old Testament justice," Barlow says, "coupled with a New Testament sense of redeeming by blood and informed by a strong Mormon testimony of free agency." Barlow, himself a Mormon, does not share that view."I can't imagine Jesus Christ participating in that sort of justice." Rep. Greg Hughes, R-Draper and a Mormon, agrees with Barlow, although his reasons are more prosaic. "I don't want to give government the right to execute citizens, period," he says. "Inevitably, you're going to kill innocent people." Moreover, the ultimate penalty often is applied unfairly, Hughes says. Someone such as Mark Hacking, from an upper-class white family, got life in prison for murdering his pregnant wife in her sleep while William Andrews, a black man, was executed for watching a buddy kill people at Ogden's Hi-Fi shop. "What is that except a popularity contest?" Hughes asks. "It offends my sense of fairness." Another Mormon Republican legislator, Sen. Jon Greiner, R-Ogden, comes to the opposite conclusion, not from faith so much as life experience. He is Ogden's police chief and, as a young officer, helped investigate the Hi-Fi murders. In his experience, the death penalty is a strong deterrent for those who understand there are eternal consequences. Those murderers with any religious background, he says, "do feel that when they move on, there is a significant price they'll pay." Evangelical Christians The Rev. Greg Johnson, a Utahn who is on the board of the National Association of Evangelicals, says some crimes are so heinous that the state is justified in putting the perpetrators to death. And yet, he says, "it ought to make us all sad that this ultimate act of justice has to be performed." Both Old and New Testament verses can be employed, he says, as justification. "If you take a life, you lose your life," says Johnson, president of Standing Together, a coalition of Utah faith communities. Moreover, humans have an innate need for justice, Johnson says. "Ronnie Lee Gardner will never be able to kill anyone else." The Rev. Mike Gray, senior pastor at Southeast Baptist Church, doesn't subscribe to the "eye for an eye" school of biblical interpretation. One can find support for the death penalty in scripture, he says, but not a demand that it be wielded. "It needs to be used in limited situations," Gray says. "It's not to be a general policy that capital punishment is the answer for every capital crime." Christians should not approach Gardner's death with a sense of vengeance, he says. "It's not, 'Hey, let's get him.' There's no sanctity of life in that." Muslims Shuaib-ud Din, imam of the Utah Islamic Center, says the Quran and Prophet Muhammad's sayings are clear: A society should put killers to death. In fact, he says, the Quran has a passage very much like that found in Jewish scripture and Christianity's Old Testament concerning an "eye for an eye." "We don't believe in a God of vengeance," Din says. "We believe in a loving God, and this is for the betterment of society as a whole. It will serve as a deterrent. It will curb crime." Capital punishment, he adds, never is to be used outside the civil law or by vigilantes. And the imam does have reservations about how well the system works and whether innocent people are sometimes executed. "That's most disturbing to me," he says. "The judicial system has to be near perfect for capital punishment to take place." Jews Rabbi Joshua Aaronson, of Park City's Temple Har Shalom, says Jews never have seen "eye for an eye" as an excuse for retribution, for taking the life even of a killer. "There is no equality in justice in that way. It never works," Aaronson says. "One life can't be substituted for another life." Employing all the faith's scriptures -- not just those that Christians share in the Old Testament -- rabbis through the centuries have affirmed that, while Jewish law permits the death penalty, it should rarely, if ever, be used. It is understood as God's prerogative, not man's. Most movements within modern Judaism oppose capital punishment, although some Orthodox Jews are less emphatic and have called only for a moratorium on its use in the United States. Aaronson also objects to the way capital punishment is applied in this country, in which most murderers put to death are poor and ethnic minorities. More than 100 people condemned to die have been later found to be innocent, he says. "We diminish ourselves as a state whenever we put to death anyone by any means." Mainline Protestants Nancy Appleby, an Episcopalian, says she has no great sympathy for people such as Gardner. "He's done terrible, terrible things, and it's very hard to love him," says Appleby, chairwoman of the Utah Episcopal Diocese's Peace and Justice Commission. "But if we're called to love everyone, that includes Ronnie Lee Gardner." Her church has opposed capital punishment for more than 50 years. Appleby notes that is a particularly difficult issue for Utahns in the wake of last month's murder of 4-year-old Ethan Stacy. His mother and stepfather, Stephanie and Nathan Sloop, are charged with capital crimes in his death. "That makes everyone think that people who kill ought to be killed," Appleby says, but "when we execute people, we do something bad to ourselves as well. We brutalize ourselves, basically." In an e-mailed statement, outgoing Bishop Carolyn Tanner Irish, of Utah's Episcopal Diocese, says she longs for the day that justice is "neither retributive nor vengeful." "As Christians, we condemn the taking of a human life, recalling that Jesus himself was the victim of state-sponsored murder," she writes. "His death holds before our eyes the poverty of capital punishment and its capacity to dehumanize those who carry out its sentence." The Rev. Steve Klemz says he sees no good from the death penalty, no redemption for society or the victims of crime. "I can't even begin to understand the pain people feel and the need for some kind of retribution, but it just doesn't happen with the death penalty. If anything, it gets more attention to the person who is being executed," says Klemz, pastor of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Salt Lake City. His denomination has taken a position that leans against capital punishment, although it hasn't yet condemned the practice as have other mainline Protestant denominations. As Klemz sees it, scripture's main purpose is to convey what is life-giving and life-diminishing. "What Jesus said always had to do with life and living life abundantly," Klemz says. "I don't see how the death penalty does anything to promote life." The Rev. France Davis, pastor of Salt Lake City's Calvary Baptist Church, says he opposes the death penalty not because it is inherently wrong. It is immoral in practice, he says. Most inmates sentenced to death are poor or racial minorities, he says, and it takes too long for a person to be executed while failing to deliver the intended deterrent effect. "It's cruel and unusual punishment, it seems to me, to keep someone on death row for years and years and years." Roman Catholics The Roman Catholic Church, like most Christian faiths, recognizes a state's right to execute murders. But in the past 25 years, the nation's single largest denomination increasingly has argued that the death penalty is not justified when a society has other means to keep citizens safe. In a 1999 statement, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops argued that the United States cannot overcome crime by executing criminals, nor can it restore the lives of the innocent. "The death penalty," the statement says, "offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life by taking life." Monsignor M. Francis Mannion, pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, says the faith has taught against the death penalty more explicitly since the 1960s and the Second Vatican Council. "It is part of the church's pro-life stance, which opposes killing anyone." The church, however, uses much stronger language for abortion, which is considered "intrinsically evil." The Rev. Erik Richtsteig, pastor of St. James the Just Catholic Church in Ogden, says that while it is clear the church recommends against the death penalty, it is not an infallible teaching that must be believed by all Catholics. "As a Catholic, you do not have to oppose the death penalty." Nonetheless, Mannion, a theologian, says: "There isn't as much breathing room as Catholics sometimes think on this matter." This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Tribune reporter Peggy Fletcher Stack contributed to this story. http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_15263217 |
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