Having been raised in a Christian culture, I never could understand how those who made the laws, and who believed in Jesus, would be able to believe that Jesus, while preaching at followers how to love and forgive one another, would support the death penalty.
From the book, The Death Penalty: An American History by author Stuart Banner: “In Pennsylvania, where murder had been the only capital crime for over three decades, pressure from the imperial government resulted in 1718 in the introduction of the death penalty for manslaughter, rape, highway robbery, maiming, burglary, arson, witchcraft, and sodomy. Later in the century the colony would add counterfeiting, squatting on Indian land, and prison-break to the list.”
June Vandermark
McBride BC
