The 110th Congress should:
- eliminate capital punishment from all federal crimes.
Kevin Craig opposes the shedding of blood. "Capital
punishment" in western civilization is historically derived
from Biblical passages which demanded that the blood of capital
criminals be shed:
Whoever sheds man's blood, By man his
blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.
Genesis 9:6
Smaller sins could be atoned for through the temple sacrifices:
lambs, turtledoves, etc., but some crimes were so serious that atonement
could not be made in any other way than by the shedding of the blood of
the criminal himself:
So you shall not pollute the land where
you are; for blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for
the land, for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him
who shed it.
Numbers 35:33
In cases of unsolved homicide, Deuteronomy 21 required the town
elders to shed the blood of a heifer in order to atone for the
shedding of innocent blood:
{7} "Then they shall answer and say, 'Our hands have not shed
this blood, nor have our eyes seen it.
{8} 'Provide atonement, O LORD, for Your people Israel, whom You have
redeemed, and do not lay innocent blood to the charge of Your people
Israel.' And atonement shall be provided on their behalf for the
blood.
{9} "So you shall put away the guilt of innocent blood from among
you when you do what is right in the sight of the LORD.
Christian theologians for 2000 years have rightly concluded that in
our day only the blood of Christ can provide such atonement in cases of
an unsolved homicide. Yet they persist in requiring the shedding of the
criminal's blood when the homicide is solved.
More here.
This has foreign policy implications. "Holy war" in the Old
Testament was "capital
punishment" on a national scale. The Promised
Land was being cleansed of heinous sins committed by the pagans who
inhabited the land promised to Abraham. Anyone using Old Testament texts
to justify U.S. invasion of a non-Christian land is denying the efficacy
of Christ's blood as the only means of atonement, and abusing the Bible.
One only has to check out Bush's record as Governor of Texas to see
his own preference for death over life. During his tenure as Governor,
Bush presided over a record setting 152 executions, including the 1998
execution of fellow born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted
murderer who later led a prison ministry. Forty of Bush's executions
were carried out in 2000, the year the Bush presidential campaign was
spotlighting their candidate's strong law enforcement record. The
Washington Post's Richard Cohen reported in October 2000 that one of the
execution chamber's "tie-down team" members, Fred Allen, had
to prepare so many people for lethal injections during 2000, he quit his
job in disgust.
Bush mocked Tucker's appeal for clemency. In an interview with Talk
magazine, Bush imitated Tucker's appeal for him to spare her life -
pursing his lips, squinting his eyes, and in a squeaky voice saying,
"Please don't kill me." That went too far for former GOP
presidential candidate Gary
Bauer, himself an evangelical Christian. "I think it is nothing
short of unbelievable that the governor of a major state running for
president thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to
death," said Bauer.
Wayne
Madsen: Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult
To see an example of the use of the Bible in early American legal
codes, see the 1641 "Body
of Liberties," the statute book for Massachusetts. Scroll down
to section "94. Capitall Laws."
Notice also the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647). This creed
and catechism had tremendous
influence in the colonies, and the Larger Catechism quotes the
Biblical texts above as support for killing in cases of "publick
justice."
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