Death And Christianity

As one of the greatest treasures of human civilization, the Christianity plays acrucial role in cultural developments and social transitions. Its enormous impacts arenot merely restricted to Europe, but spread over the globe.There are2means for the Christianity exercising its influence on the deathpenalty. On one hand, the Christian doctrine subconsciously affects people’s thoughtsabout the death penalty. On the other hand, the Christianity directly regulates affairsconcerning the death penalty by religious rules. However, no matter by which meansdoes the Christianity bring its effects on transitions of the death penalty, its vital roleshould not be neglected.To discuss about relation between the Christianity and the death penalty, I wouldlike to examine the Christian doctrine at first. Presently, there is no well-acceptedconclusion regarding whether the death penalty is backed by the Christianity. Therelated doctrine for this issue are so ambiguous that both supporting evidences andcontradicting evidences for death penalty are easy to find within Christian divinity.What is helpful to readers to make it clear, this dissertation will categorize Christianviewpoints about the death penalty in its second part.We could also hardly lose sight of the Christianity History. When facing with thedeath penalty, acts of the Christian churches or the Christian are quite changeable.With developments of Christian churches, the social role of Christianity is likewisechanging. To protect the best interests of the Christianity in a nation, the tactics thatthe Christian churches adopted are also adaptive to the trend of certain ages.What worth mentioning is that people nowadays tend to share their basic valuestowards death penalty. It is more likely to gather people’s consensus on such a slogan“give the life respect, confine the death penalty” in today’s society. Having beenguided by this, the criminal law in China had already been alternated for8times. Inits last edition, the number of accusations with death penalty was largely decreased(from68to55). In the meanwhile, accompanying with imports of western culture, theChristianity garishly expanded its influence in China by both Christianity societiesand theologies. Judge from the surviving abilities of the Christianity as well asChinese attitudes towards the Christianity, it is clear that the Christianity has itsunique strength in changing Chinese views about the death penalty. Although we have to admit that the relation between the death penalty and theChristianity is quite complicated, there are still some clues for tracing. History revealsthat this relation would never remain steady and unchanged. And up to now, therelation between the death penalty and the Christianity is generally positive.As firm as my belief, people around the globe do share their common and basicvalues. One of those values shall be respect the life. This makes many people wishthat the Christianity may largely contribute to confining the death penalty.