A broad spec­trum of reli­gious lead­ers from Wisconsin issued a joint state­ment regard­ing their views on the death penal­ty on October 14. The statement follows:

‘Simply put, we can­not sup­port the death penal­ty’ Posted: Oct. 14, 2006

There are many artic­u­late and com­pelling argu­ments for reject­ing the death penal­ty ref­er­en­dum on the Nov. 7 ballot.

We will not rehearse those argu­ments here. As reli­gious lead­ers, we wish to present a straight­for­ward, val­ues-based argu­ment. We believe that it is impor­tant to go beyond the elec­toral and polit­i­cal aspects of this issue and focus on the deep­er moral, eth­i­cal and reli­gious ques­tions raised by capital punishment.

Simply put, we can­not sup­port the death penal­ty. Some reli­gious tra­di­tions believe that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is sim­ply wrong. Others of us believe that either it is not need­ed in a mod­ern soci­ety or it can­not be applied justly.We are deeply con­cerned about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the death penal­ty might be restored in Wisconsin.

Our state has been with­out the death penal­ty for 153 years. We do not believe that rein­stat­ing the death penal­ty will bring heal­ing to our com­mu­ni­ties nor address the seri­ous con­cerns we all share regard­ing vio­lence and its impact on all of us.

As reli­gious lead­ers, we know that our con­gre­ga­tions and cler­gy see the tremen­dous pain that the injus­tice of vio­lence caus­es in our society.

We know that the grief and hurt can seem unbear­able for fam­i­lies who have lost some­one to violence.

We are all sick­ened by the vio­lent behav­ior that plagues our soci­ety, and we mourn with all who have suf­fered vio­lence or lost some­one to violence.

All of us in soci­ety are vul­ner­a­ble to feel­ings of revenge and ret­ri­bu­tion when we are angered. We can­not let such feel­ings, often very per­son­al feel­ings, dic­tate public policy.

While we rec­og­nize that there is a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion between thought­ful, faith­ful peo­ple on this top­ic, we sim­ply do not believe that a death penal­ty is nec­es­sary nor will it pre­vent violent crime.

We also believe that pol­i­cy mak­ing around issues as sig­nif­i­cant as the death penal­ty, even when a pro­posed ref­er­en­dum is only advi­so­ry, should be very delib­er­ate and thorough.

Surely our state leg­is­la­tors have their own views on capital punishment.

We are also all aware of numer­ous pub­lic opin­ion polls that reveal gen­er­al sup­port for the death penal­ty (although this sup­port declines when life with­out parole is an option, as it is in Wisconsin).

We then must ask why our state Legislature felt it was nec­es­sary to place this ref­er­en­dum on the November ballot.

If, as peo­ple of faith, we believe that each per­son is cre­at­ed by God, we can­not sanc­tion an unjust and unfair sys­tem of pun­ish­ment that involves the cal­cu­lat­ed and delib­er­ate killing of a per­son who would oth­er­wise be incar­cer­at­ed and removed from soci­ety, no mat­ter how offen­sive and heinous his or her crime.

We specif­i­cal­ly ques­tion whether the death penal­ty can be admin­is­tered just­ly since, as human beings, we are inca­pable of cre­at­ing any sys­tem or struc­ture that is perfect.

We urge peo­ple of faith to give seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to this important topic.

In recent years, we have seen our state face very seri­ous social issues. We have also seen a trend toward a less com­pas­sion­ate approach to vex­ing issues such as pover­ty and violence.

It is our hope and prayer that this state can find ways to address vio­lence with­out resort­ing to the use of violence ourselves.

(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Oct. 15, 2006).