Religion

Overview

Religious denom­i­na­tions in the U.S. have fre­quent­ly made state­ments about the death penal­ty, some­times point­ing out con­cerns about its appli­ca­tion, and oth­er times judg­ing the moral­i­ty of the pun­ish­ment itself. Historically, most major reli­gious bod­ies allowed for the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but crit­i­cism of the prac­tice has great­ly increased in recent times.
 

At Issue

In a diverse democ­ra­cy, no sin­gle reli­gious point of view occu­pies a priv­i­leged posi­tion in the fram­ing of law. Nevertheless, the prin­ci­ples of var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties of faith are rel­e­vant in the polit­i­cal debate because they help inform the views of their respec­tive con­stituents and reflect the ​“evolv­ing stan­dards of decen­cy” that are vital to the Supreme Court’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the Eighth Amendment.

What DPIC Offers

DPIC pro­vides a com­pi­la­tion of state­ments about the death penal­ty from a broad array of reli­gious denom­i­na­tions. DPIC occa­sion­al­ly high­lights the views of those speak­ing from a faith per­spec­tive when the com­ments relate to a case or con­tro­ver­sy involv­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Finally, it fea­tures the results of death penal­ty polls when bro­ken down by particular faiths.