Changes

==An introduction==

:''"I know about you" Kappler said. "People have told me you can't pass a beggar without giving him money, that you will help anyone - Americans, British, Jews, Arabs, all the same. They say you believe in brotherly love."

Kappler's family did escape to Switzerland. However, Kappler was captured and tried. He was given a life sentence for his crimes instead of the death penalty. He had only one visitor for the next 14 years but that visitor came consistently every month. In 1959, Kappler confessed his [[sins]] and repented and he was baptized by his visitor. That visitor was O'Flaherty. Kappler had become a Christian and received [[forgiveness]] of sins and eternal life through [[Christ]]. Imagine if he had been executed after the war without knowing Christ and forgiveness.

The death penalty, or capital punishment as it is otherwise known, is a topic that creates heated debate among both Christians and non-Christians. Among Christians there is no consensus about whether it is ever justified, and whether our governments should implement it or not. There are no clear trends in attitudes that can be attributed to Christians based on denomination or conservative or liberal beliefs. Whether or not Christians are for or against the death penalty seems to be more related to geography than anything else. Christians in the southern states of America tend to be pro capital punishment, whereas Christians from the northern states of America, Europe and Australia tend to be against capital punishment, although these trends are by no means universal. It's hard even to find trends in opinions of Christians from South America, Asia or Africa.

:''Anyone who kills a person is to be put to death as a murderer only on the testimony of witnesses. But no-one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.''

[[Mennonites]] belong to Christian [[denomination]] who fled to the United States in the seventeenth century. They are conservative, biblically based Christians, who seem to live in the past. The Amish Mennonites in Ohio for example, continue to use horse and carts, and do not have the household comforts of modern life. They are also pacifists and will not fight in wars and are opposed to the death penalty. In a declaration of 1965 they urged the Canadian Government to discontinue capital punishment, stating

Paradoxically, the most ardent detractors of abortion in the United States are often the most vocal supporters of capital punishment.

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''An unfinished article by [[Graham Llewellyn Grove]]''

{{returnto}} [[Death penalty]]