Atlanta bishop rallies opposition to death penalty with book of articles by faith, legal leaders

From ENS-

The death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976. Since then, 1,468 convicts have been executed across the country.

And, according to records kept by the Death Penalty Information Center, more than 80 percent of those executions have been carried out in the South, which Diocese of Atlanta Bishop Robert Wright sees as a “terrible irony” for a region known as the Bible Belt.

“People want the love of Jesus for themselves, in terms of redemption, but they want the Old Testament ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ for the people who do these terrible murders,” Wright told Episcopal News Service. “Do we serve a God who can have compassion for the victim and the perpetrator?”

For Wright, the answer is an unequivocal “yes,” and he is heartened by the Episcopal Church’s decades of speaking out against the death penalty while also providing pastoral care to victims’ families.

The Supreme Court’s 1976 decision outlined how states can craft constitutional death penalty laws. Thirty-one states have such laws, and eight of those states carried out executions in 2017, including one in Wright’s state of Georgia. In an effort to renew public attention to the issue and encourage greater advocacy toward abolishing the death penalty, Wright has collected five articles by faith and legal leaders in a book to be released Feb. 15 by the Diocese of Atlanta.

More here-

https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2018/02/12/atlanta-bishop-rallies-opposition-to-death-penalty-with-book-of-articles-by-faith-legal-leaders/