Christians for death penalty

Bald. Tattooed. Pierced. Outspoken. That’s how Jeff Ludington described himself to me over the phone a few days before Christmas.

It was a reminder; I’ve met Ludington, leader of Emerge, the college and young adult ministry of Christ Presbyterian Church, face-to-face more than once. He is also soft-spoken, contagious in his energy and as excited about living for Jesus Christ as anyone I’ve ever met.

In December, while the controversy over whether to execute Stanley “Tookie” Williams raged internationally, I made phone calls and sent out e-mails to a number of local religious leaders asking them to offer their perspectives on the death penalty. Ludington was the only one who agreed to speak with me.

“I come from a background that most religious leaders don’t have,” he wrote to me in an e-mail. His point of view is anchored in his understanding of the Bible, both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Yet along with that comes his personal experience as an ex-con.

If you’re like me, you might think that would mean he’s against the death penalty, but it doesn’t.

Ludington, who was arrested himself dozens of times between the ages of 18 and 28, thinks our legal system tends to be overly lenient with criminals, thwarting their punishment from serving as any kind of deterrent from crime.

“It takes a lot to get [the courts] to really do anything severe,” he says. As for Williams, Ludington points out that between his conviction and execution he had 26 years to argue for his innocence while, as Ludington sees it, Williams as good as admitted his guilt in the film “Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story.”

The son of man who has been a worship pastor for the last 28 years, Ludington says he attended church as he grew up; he just wasn’t listening. At the age of 13, he started to use drugs. “Anything with drugs, whether you’re buying them, selling them or doing them’s illegal,” he says. “The fact that [as] a 13-year old [you] can’t pay for drugs, you gotta do stuff [to buy them].”

His drug use and eventual addiction led him to commit thefts and robberies as well as his involvement with gangs. A day before his 18th birthday in 1987, he was arrested for the first time.

From then until 1998, Ludington says he lived inside California jails and prisons as much or more than he lived outside of them. He spent time at the Soledad Correctional Training Facility, Chuckawalla Valley State Prison and the California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi. Then, as Stanley “Tookie” Williams is said to have done, while imprisoned he found redemption.

For Ludington the day was Dec. 5, 1997. Three months out of prison he had been arrested for parole violations. He was awaiting sentencing in Orange County Jail. Knowing he was going back to prison, he made God a deal: “Fix [my life] and I’ll never leave you.”

God, he says, freed him of his drug addiction then and there. Eight years later Ludington is happily married, a homeowner in Huntington Beach and a minister studying for a master’s degree at Fuller Theological Seminary. When he gets the degree, he’ll be ordained.

“Life has never been greater, never meant more, never had so much to offer than it does with Jesus Christ. I’m a product of divine grace,” Ludington enthuses in a bio on his ministry’s website, www.cpchb.org/college.htm.

He does not, however, think that in 1997 his spiritual redemption and change in character in anyway absolved him of his obligation to serve his prison sentence. And he doesn’t think Williams’s redemption released him from his sentence -- a death sentence -- either.

“Any person who gives any type of Bible answer must deal with the fact that the Bible doesn’t just condone the death penalty in the Old Testament but it commands it,” Ludington said. He quotes from Exodus 21: 23-25: “But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise,” a command he said is repeated in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Genesis, the first book of the Bible, also says, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.”

To those who argue Jesus overruled these teachings when he said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person,” Ludington says Jesus’ intent was not to change the law but to change people’s attitudes toward extending personal forgiveness to those who had injured them.

“He was teaching [the people] the mind of God, who ... was about to start forgiving undeserving people, and in that, he was requiring them to give forgiveness to others,” said Ludington.

He points to the words of Jesus in Matthew 5: 16-18: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

Paul, apostle and early Christian missionary, wrote to the Romans regarding government authorities: “If you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”

As common as it was in his time, there is no evidence that Jesus spoke out against the brutal Roman practice of capital punishment by crucifixion, a means by which he himself would suffer and die.

Unlike Ludington, the Amish and Mennonites and nearly all mainline Christian denominations stand against the death penalty. Many are members of groups such as Religious Organizing Against the Death Penalty (www.death penaltyreligious.org) and People of Faith Against the Death Penalty (www.pfadp.org).

The 212th general assembly (2000) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) called for a “an immediate moratorium on all executions in all jurisdictions that impose capital punishment.” Its general assemblies have opposed the death penalty since 1959, saying, “Capital punishment cannot be condoned by an interpretation of the Bible based upon the revelation of God’s love in Jesus Christ” and “the use of the death penalty tends to brutalize the society that condones it.”

Still, among many mostly conservative Christians in this nation who understand the teachings of their Scriptures in much the same way Ludington does, the death penalty finds strong support. Louai Jalabi, chairman of the outreach committee at Masjid Omar Al Farouk (the Islamic Institute of Orange County) told me that Islam, based on Allah’s teachings conveyed through the Quran, also supports the death penalty in cases where a killing is intentional.

“A Muslim man who professed moral and character change after he has been sentenced to death for his crime should not be spared the death penalty,” Jalabi wrote to me in an e-mail, “but that moral change will keep him from hellfire.”

Next week: More on Islam’s “eye for an eye” and a look at Sikh and Buddhist karma.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.

20060105gzerqeke(LA)