Shane Claiborne on the Death Penalty, Grace, and Restorative Justice
“Aside from all the other things we’ll talk about, like racial inequities, a broken system — that so many folks have been exonerated after proving their innocence hours before their execution — Really, in the end, one of the questions [the death penalty] raises is: Is anybody beyond redemption?”
About 7 weeks ago, we contacted Red Letter Christians about an interview with Shane Claiborne.
About 2 weeks ago, Shane Claiborne gave us a call on our lunch break.
This all came about after we finished Shane’s newest work Executing Grace, an engaging conversation about the abolition of the death penalty.
Shane’s kindness and wisdom was overwhelming, and after 35 minutes of conversation, we’ve whittled it down to this post. If you need more, you’re in luck. Read the full transcription here.
Stay tuned throughout this interview, we’ll put all relevant links and bonus content at the bottom.
For those of you that don’t know, Shane is speaker, theologian, and activist. He says it best himself:
I’m a Tennessee boy. I grew up in East Tennessee most of my life, then came up to Philly to go to college and fell in love with this city, and particularly, my neighborhood on the north side of Philadelphia. 20 years ago, a group of homeless families had moved into an abandoned Catholic church building and were living there, and that sparked the real movement on our college campus, and really all over our city in bringing attention the urgent crisis of homelessness among moms and children. We got involved in that and never left. So we moved into the neighborhood shortly after that, and we were really inspired by the Early Church in the book of Acts were it says everyone shared all their possessions and met in each other’s homes, worshiped God, and took care of each other, so we set out to do that and we’ve been doing it for 20 years now.
Shane is the author of the newly-released (and aforementioned) Executing Grace, and we talked a bit about why he chose to write about the abolition of the death penalty.
In the Bible, there’s some 30 death-worth crimes, like working on the Sabbath, or disrespecting your parents. [Laughs] Are we that fundamental that we should bring back that death penalty? Yet, I did see this idea that an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, the more I look at that scripture, the more I knew it was very clear that it was to stop the spiral of violence and make sure that no one did more harm than the harm that was done to them. So, it wasn’t a license for revenge, but a limitation, actually, of how much you can retaliate. Then it makes total sense when Jesus comes and says “You’ve heard it was said ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ but I tell you there is even a better way.” Just because you can poke someone’s eye out legally doesn’t mean you should and that it’s right. It teaches us a more perfect justice.
The other thing about the death penalty that is very unique is that the death penalty has succeeded in America, not in spite of Christians, but because of us. The Bible Belt is the Death Belt. Wherever Christians are most concentrated is where executions are happening, and that’s deeply troubling to me.
The Badlands has its roots in Arkansas and Tennessee, so we consider ourselves familiar with the existing relationship between the Christian faith and the death penalty. Two belief systems that seemingly can’t coexist have found a way to thrive in the same region for hundreds of years. This relationship is complex, but Shane explains how racial inequities, faith, and American history have created a perfect storm for the perpetuation of the death penalty.
I think we’ve misinterpreted some of the scriptures to justify the death penalty. So whereas a lot of folks in our country feel like we can do far better justice — it’s more expensive to do the death penalty than the alternatives — there’s so many reasons that people come to the conclusion to abolish the death penalty. But Christians still have an overarching trump card of scripture — well, maybe not a trump card — it’s kind of been something that has superseded some of those other things.
What’s also troubling is that these are the same places that were the Confederacy in many cases. It’s impossible to separate our contemporary practice of the death penalty from our history around race and slavery and, specifically, lynching. Where lynchings were happening 100 years ago is where executions are happening today. And that’s a haunting and eerie thing.
So, when we really began executions rather than lynchings, black folks were 22% of our population in 1950, for instance, but they were 75% of the executions. Now, African-Americans are 13% of the population, but they’re still almost half of death row, and over a third of the executions. 34% of the executions are black folks. So, like, I mean, things like the race of the victim is one of the biggest determinants of who gets executed.
The picture Shane paints is heavy. He goes on to say that the way that anyone and everyone can help break the system and do their part in restoration is in the telling of stories. Keep reading, because at the bottom of this post, we’ll have a list of resources that will allow you to get involved and tell others’ stories.
“…the more you look at it, you see that we’re actually not killing the worst of the worst. We’re killing the poorest of the poor. One of the biggest determinants of who gets executed is how many resources they have to defend themselves.”
Our conversation with Shane turned to the practicality of abolishing the death penalty. Sure, it sounds good, but how reasonable is it, and what do the alternatives look like? The answer, Shane says, is restorative justice.
This is the company we keep when it comes to the death penalty: China, the number one executing country; Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, those are the top 4, and number 5 is the US. And those are not countries that are known as champions for human rights, you know.
So I think we can — we definitely can, and we must do better — and a lot of the world looks to the United States, whether we like it or not. We’re sort of the pioneer, so I think that restorative justice is what God is about — this idea that same word for “righteousness” and “justice” is in scripture. And we think of justice sometimes as getting what you deserve, you know — what crime was committed and what is the punishment for that crime. That’s how a lot of the criminal justice works. But God’s justice is restorative, so it’s not as interested in those same questions of “What did they do wrong?” and “What is the punishment for that?” It’s more about “What harm was done?” and “How do we heal that harm?” and that’s a much more redemptive version. So, it definitely doesn’t turn a blind eye to harm, but it does say we want to heal the wounds of that.
Most encouraging to us are the clear examples of countries enacting an effective restorative justice model.
But you even think of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and Rwanda after some of the most horrific events in recent history — things like the Rwandan genocide. Well, Rwanda came out of that going like “Death was the problem, not the solution.” There was kind of a death fatigue, so no one wanted more death. But they created ways that the people who had done these atrocities could repent and be a part of rebuilding the world that they destroyed.
It’s interesting because South Africa is another example of that, after the fall of apartheid one of the things they did away with was the death penalty. They said the sanctity of life means we don’t want a government that kills. That was also a part of the old world that they were a part of during apartheid. But even after the Holocaust, folks had the deep sense that [killing] was the disease, not the cure, so there aren’t any cases of execution even after these. There are some — called ‘death fatigue’ — people who just grow so tired of death, so they don’t want to keep perpetuating death and creating more victims and more anger and more pain. They want to heal from that, and I think that’s exactly what God wants to do.
We see this in the Bible too; Cain was exiled, not killed.
And interestingly enough that’s part of what God’s original law was doing with the ‘eye for an eye’ thing. It was actually to limit the patterns of retaliation and then to begin to heal from that. So, even with things like Cain and Abel, Cain wasn’t killed. Cain was exiled. But he was allowed to build a city and was even marked so that he would not be killed — but be protected, his life would be protected at least. [Cain] goes on to have a family and build a city. So I think in the end, God’s justice is redemptive, it’s restorative, it’s about giving life, not taking life.
“I think that’s a way we can look at it — not turning a blind eye at all to folks who do wrong, but allowing them to be a part of the healing and to prevent further harm. You know it doesn’t do anything to take their life. It doesn’t do any good to take their life except create new wounds.”
Restorative justice says that those who do the wrong deserve a chance to invest in the healing process. If a military officer helps raze a village during a military coup or apartheid, instead of being sentenced to death, that officer is sentenced to help rebuild that village. Restorative justice is specific, reconciliatory, and catered to the healing of both parties — the offender and the offended.
By asking Shane to explain restorative justice to us, we wanted to make sure this talk remained practical and not theoretical. In that same spirit, we asked Shane what we regular folks can do to help end the death penalty.
That’s a great question, and the good news is that we’re making tremendous process. I’m kind of new to the game on some of this too, and so part of what we can do is that we can completely spotlight and amplify the voices that are out there. So groups like Journey for Hope and Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation, these groups are out there speaking all the time. They’re on tour in Nebraska right now because it’s on the ballot in November. There are two states in particular that are softball pitches when it comes to this: California and Nebraska will be voting to repeal the death penalty in November. So I think we can create some really healthy, viable conversations in those states. But, in our country, there’s a national movement to abolish the death penalty because death sentences are at a 40 year low, executions are at a 20 year low…we really only had two states that are actively executing this year, and that’s been Texas and Georgia. There’s a few others that execute from time to time, but like, the death penalty is on it’s way out. There’s only a few kind of strongholds for it, and so I think we can really rally that energy. Almost every year a new state abolishes the death penalty.
Shane continues and invites us to take part in the conversation on his Facebook page and to get involved with demonstrations and prayer vigils in our communities.
The death penalty is almost over in the United States. With a final push, we can legislate it completely out of practice.
When you poll snake person Christians, Christians born after 1980, it’s like 80% of them are against the death penalty. It’s not because they’ve thrown out their faith, but it’s because of their faith they can’t reconcile the death penalty with Jesus and their commitment to Jesus. So, it’s an exciting time, but I would love to see the Church on the right side of history. It’s not that hard to say slavery is wrong after we’ve abolished it, you know? [laughs]
I think there’s a whole lot we can do even just with folks issuing statements of concern for denominations, for churches. The United Methodists had a great statement. The NAE, on of the biggest coalitions of evangelicals, the National Association of Evangelicals, revoked their pro-death penalty statement. a year or so ago, which was crazy because that had been in place for like 3 or 4 decades, since like the 70’s. So even though they’re not explicitly against the death penalty, they did say they’re going to support christians who oppose the death penalty. Those are huge stances. One of the largest Latino coalitions made a unanimous statement against the death penalty. So even evangelicals — traditionally, that has been one of the backbones for the moral justification of the death penalty, so — that’s unravelling, and I’m excited we can be part of making the death penalty history.
Shane’s work is important. With his help and the help of those around us, the church is postured to be on the right side of history. The death penalty is not only fiscally irresponsible, its a statement against the sanctity of life — that some people are beyond redemption. It teaches us “this idea that we can kill those who kill to show that killing is wrong.”
Let’s end it.
Here’s how you can get involved.
Links and Resources
- ExecutingGrace.com — For all things death penalty abolition, this is the place. Many of the links below can be found within.
- Death Penalty Information Center Fact Sheet
- Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation (MVFR)
- Death Penalty Information Center
- UNICEF’s principles of restorative justice
- Buy Executing Grace
- Our full interview transcript — So much great, extra content is here. Don’t miss out.
