Capital punishment may be diametrically opposed to the Christian doctrine of salvation.

The sentencing of the smiling Bali killer Amrozi to execution has raised an intense debate in Australia. Some victims’ family members expressed their pleasure when they heard the verdict. Others gave a different response, saying things like ‘execution is too quick, he should be made to rot in hell’, or words to that effect.

The accused himself indicated his own deep satisfaction, claiming that he would be a martyr and would be followed by many other martyrs who would model their own actions on his example.

Australians generally seem supportive of this death sentence handed down for Amrozi. Most recall their horror when they learned that 202 people, including 88 Australians, were killed.

A Newspoll, published in The Australian (19.8.03) indicated that 57 per cent of those surveyed favoured the death penalty for major acts of terrorism committed here in Australia. A majority also favoured the death penalty for the Bali bombers. Male and female responses differed. Sixty per cent of males polled favoured the death sentence compared to 53 per cent of females.

Support was spread evenly across age groupings, but more Coalition voters (64 per cent) were in favour than Labor voters (57 per cent). Blue collar voters (66 per cent) were in support while about half of professional voters were opposed.

This makes interesting reading, given that capital punishment for crime was prohibited by the Federal Government over 30 years ago and that the last person to die by execution in Australia was Ronald Ryan in Victoria in 1967.

Obviously a heinous crime committed against Australians, such as the Bali bombing, powerfully sways public opinion. But public opinion usually swings given the particular context. Remember our overwhelming opposition to capital punishment when two young Australians, Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers, were executed in Malaysia when they were convicted of drug dealing.

Drugs dealers are equally as culpable as bombers in causing deaths, though in the case of drugs it may be a longer, slower death. So why the swings in public opinion? Perhaps because dealers’ victims aren’t so clearly before community eyes as victims in the Bali event.

Where should Christians be in this debate? It is a very long time since we have conducted a debate in principle on this matter in the forums of this Diocese.

There was a flurry of discussion in the late 1970s when a teenage girl was brutally murdered and the community was outraged. But when the minister who conducted her funeral service questioned whether capital punishment was not demanded in that case he was savaged by the media. The Anglican Information Office (AIO) appeared to distance itself from his comments. The minister appealed to the Standing Committee, which appears to have walked carefully down the fence. It declined to formalise a policy on the appropriateness of capital punishment, saying that such a statement would be ignored by the media and that it could be used ‘to discredit the Christian Church’. It did, however, endorse the reference to Article 37.

The minister in question argued that a “case of capital punishment may properly be based upon Article 37 of the Thirty-nine Articles and upon biblical authority.”

Article 37 says, “The laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death, for heinous and grievous offences.”

That there is biblical authority for capital punishment cannot be denied. Consider, for example, Romans 13:2-4, especially, “But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain.”

The AIO said in its disputed media statement in 1978 that the ‘finality’ of capital punishment makes it very ‘problematical’. This goes to the heart of many Christians’ unease about capital punishment, even when they accept there is biblical support.

Over the last century it became clear that some people who were found guilty and executed were in fact innocent, but the evidence that brought their innocence to light came too late. In contemporary society the use of DNA technology has found that many people in death row cells in US prisons, though found guilty by a jury of their peers, are actually innocent of their crime. The thought that they may be accusing a person whose pleas of innocence may much later be found to be true makes many people uncomfortable and uncertain about the finality of public execution.

What theory underlies the use of punishment? It may be for deterrence/prevention, for retribution or for rehabilitation.

Deterrence is the reason for strong community calls for long, harsh gaol sentences, for instance in the case of rape, though there doesn’t appear to be any clear statistical evidence of lower rates of crime.

Retribution is the reason that underlies capital punishment; it’s ‘an eye for an eye’ or perhaps ‘seeing justice done’. But is this justice? What has happened to mercy? I may be way off beam here, but I suspect that capital punishment is the exact opposite of the doctrine of salvation.

For Christ “bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1Pet 2:24) and made us his new creation. In the mercy of God, Christians are rehabilitated people. Why execute someone and deny them that opportunity? Prison ministry bears much fruit for the gospel.

What do you think?