Death penalty perverts Christianity, say church leaders -16/01/06

Protestant leaders in Austria have called on the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger to suspend the death penalty and spare the life of an elderly convict on death row. And a Catholic sister who has spent her life counselling both those who commit, or are victims of, capital crime says that Christian supporters of the judicial executions are perverting the message of Jesus Christ. “A country which uses the death penalty violates its citizens’ human dignity,” the Evangelical Church in Austria said in advance of the scheduled execution of 76-year-old Clarence Ray Allen on 17 January 2006.

Mr Schwarzenegger is of Austrian origins, though he and his home city, Graz, site of the second European Ecumenical Assembly in 1997, have recently disowned one another. Clarence Ray Allen is blind, diabetic, has a weak heart and is wheelchair-bound. He has been on death row for 26 years. His lawyers argue that it would be cruel to kill him because of his infirmity, though they do not deny the extent of his crime. The Austrian church leaders are taking their stand on the more fundamental judgement that contemporary “biblical and theological arguments point only to a clear and unambiguous ‘no’ to the death penalty.”

This is a position that puts them in direct confrontation with the religious right in the United States. Mr Allen already was serving a life sentence for murder — arranging the strangulation of a witness to his 1974 burglary of a Fresno-area store — when he was condemned to die for calling from his prison cell for the 1980 shotgun slayings of three of that store’s employees. California has 646 people on death row, more than any other state. Last month Governor Schwarzenegger refused appeals against the execution of ‘Tookie’ Williams, the Crips gang leader who recanted his criminal past and spent many years campaigning against gang violence from his prison cell.

Christian opponents of the death penalty, including Sister Helen Prejean, whose story was dramatized 10 years ago in the film Dead Man Walking, say that it is merciless, discriminates against the poor, denies the reality of redemption and risks killing the innocent. Sister Helen was in the UK last week promoting her new book, Death of the Innocents. She has attended the executions of men she knows to be guilty of horrific crimes, but also of those she believes to be wrongly convicted, and prays with and counsels their families and those of their victims. The Louisiana-based nun, aged 66, insists that US politicians’ rhetoric is moderating and that the number of death penalty convictions is in decline.

Public uneasiness about wrongful convictions and the manifest inequity with which the death penalty is implemented is growing, she says. Opinion polls bear this out. Sister Helen is especially scathing about politicians and judges who use the Bible to justify executions. “I call it Christianity-lite”, she declares. “It’s not real Christianity. Truly it is blasphemy. Jesus Christ is being held hostage by these people: his whole message is being perverted.”