Religious Conversion and the Death

Religious Conversion and the Death Penalty Ethics & Morality - Death Penalty One curious feature of penal incarceration, particularly lifetime incarceration and death row, is the frequency of religious conversion. It is curious because, by definition, those who commit heinous enough crimes to receive death sentences are the very individuals who have failed to conform to the most basic tenets of religious spirit and moral decision making prior to their incarceration. Conversion to Christianity entails repenting for all of one's prior sins.

To some, when a murderer, through God's grace, repents, that change in perspective should justify suspending the impending execution. Unfortunately, that is an utter legal impossibility, because it completely violates the concept of separation of church and state as well as the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. To allow any specific leniency based on adherence to repentance within Christianity violates the constitutional rights of every American who subscribes to a different religion by virtue of the unequal treatment.

To allow leniency to those who repent or renounce immoral conduct in conjunction with any other religious faith violates the constitutional rights of every American who does not subscribe to any religious faith at all. In both scenarios, it violates the fundamental principle of separation of religious doctrine and secular state authority. Besides the obvious legal impossibility of suspending penal law as a result of religious beliefs, conversions, and repentance, there are good reasons to question the sincerity of death row religious conversions.

Christian doctrine itself suggests that everyone has a chance to accept Christ, because all of us are given the opportunity to do so at many points in our lives. Unless all prisoners on death row were raised in complete isolation from Christianity, they, like everyone else, have all had the opportunity to accept Christ previously, which opportunity they rejected throughout their lives prior to their incarceration on death row.

In fact, because Christianity is the overwhelmingly predominant religious orientation in the United States, the vast majority of those on death row have had many opportunities to accept Christ, and, in all likelihood, more of them have participated in Christian services at some point in their lives long before their final predicament.

Rejecting the belief that their repentance justifies suspending their death sentences is not a contradiction of the principle "Judge not lest ye be judged," precisely because punishment at the hands of man has absolutely nothing to do with God's ultimate absolution of moral responsibility. Furthermore, the fact that the death penalty itself may or may not be inconsistent with God's law is irrelevant to this particular discussion, because that objection applies equally to all death sentences, irrespective of whether or not the person in question is a Christian.

Whether or not God chooses to forgive the choice not to accept Christ in life, any punishment for that in the afterlife is a matter for God, not man, to consider. Likewise, the decision to forgive earthly sins based on repentance and acceptance of Christ is also a matter for God's infinite wisdom and not man's fallible intellectual powers.

In all likelihood, there are explanations besides genuine remorse for one's sins that explain the unusually high religious conversion rates observed in prisons generally, and among those sentenced to life terms and to death, in particular. For one thing, all of us have a psychological need to think of ourselves as being good people. In then outside world, so called illicit pleasures and impulses that conflict with religious morality are a powerful temptation to stray from the moral path.

Without immoral temptation, after all, there would be no motivation to sin in the first place. Even the natural impulse ton think of one's self as a good person is less powerful to many people than the draw of criminal activity. Once confined to a solitary cell without any opportunity to derive pleasure from sinful behavior, there is practically nothing to compete with the natural desire to think of one's self as a good person.

In that respect, religious conversion in prison, especially on death row requires none of the sacrifices, conviction, or integrity of religious conversion while sinful temptations continue to temp one every day. In ordinary life, religious morality and acceptance of Christ requires the believer to conform his behavior to his religious beliefs, at least that is the case when none's religious.