I get what people mean when they say you can’t be Christian and support the death penalty, I know that non-toxic Christianity cannot justify the taking of someone’s life, I know that the way in which I practice my faith keeps me from supporting state sanctioned murder.

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I know many Christians have fought the death penalty for always. This is true and also there is the other side of the story.

We have to be honest about the history of Christianity and the death penalty, as well as the ways in which Christians today justify it w/their faith.

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Because the issue isn’t whether people are Christian or not, the issue is that toxic theology has been used to justify all sorts of abuses and injustices as the moral, God ordained, course of action.

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Augustine asserted that God authorized the killing of ppl by general law and he who executed the killing didn’t commit homicides but was an agent of God putting criminals to death. A lot of the legality of capital punishment comes from Thomas Aquinas’ theology and his claim

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that the state has a moral responsibility to protect its citizens. Aquinas used ≠ epistles to justify and defend capital punishment, and to argue that the commandment “thou shall not kill” is displaced by verses all other the Bible that speak of killing evildoers.

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Notions of ‘malicide,’ which is the killing of non-Christians to “protect the world from evil,” have been around mainstream Christianity for well over a 1000 yrs. During the 16th century councils were held to defend “lawful slayings”, which are a theological defense of

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capital punishment. “Just war theory” was a doctrine introduced by Augustine and later expounded on by Aquinas, to justify the killing of “enemies” and taking of land. For most of the 20th century “Just war theory” continued to be a doctrine many Christian denominations

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aligned with and used to support the death penalty.

So while I understand the intent behind telling people that “Christians can’t support the death penalty,” the truth is that because of Christianity the death penalty has survived in the west as long as it has.

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It is Christianity what has provided a moral justification for the death penalty; and given ppl the idea that capital punishment is ordained by God.

It is irresponsible to pretend now that Christianity opposes capital punishment, when it has been used to defend it all along.
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What we need to speak about is not what Christianity ought to support or condemn, but what the ethical thing to do is; even if you can twist the Bible to justify opposing it. What we need to speak about is how dangerous toxic theology is.

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What we need to speak about is decentralizing the Bible as a moral code of conduct. What we need to speak about is how toxic Christianity opposes critical thinking skills and keeps us defending things that are absolutely disgusting .