As a faith community becomes successful in ways the world measures success, it becomes easy for its members to live in a relatively low state of tension with the surrounding culture. As part of the “get tough on crime” attitude common in the culture today, the majority of Americans favor the death penalty for the most serious crimes. I argue that capital punishment is both immoral and impractical, and it should be opposed on both religious and secular grounds by Christians, including those of us who also call ourselves Saints.

William D. Russell, L. Kay Gillespie