"I contend that it's impossible to read the Sermon on the Mount and not come out against capital punishment"
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Campolo’s line is less an argument than a dare: go ahead, read Jesus at full volume, and see if you can still sign off on the state’s right to kill. The verb “contend” signals he knows he’s stepping into a fight, but the punch comes from the phrasing “impossible to read.” He’s not merely claiming the Sermon on the Mount leans merciful; he’s framing support for capital punishment as a reading failure, a kind of selective literacy where “love your enemies” gets honored in the abstract and quietly waived in policy.
The intent is pastoral and polemical at once. Campolo, an evangelical leader with a long history of progressive social witness, is speaking into a Christian culture (especially in the U.S.) where “biblical values” are often invoked to justify toughness: law-and-order politics, retribution dressed up as righteousness. By anchoring the debate in the Sermon on the Mount, he chooses Christianity’s most disarming, least militarizable text: turning the other cheek, refusing retaliation, blessing the condemned. It’s a strategic move that bypasses proof-texting and goes straight to moral atmosphere.
The subtext is a rebuke to compartmentalization. Campolo implies you can’t claim Jesus as moral authority while outsourcing vengeance to the government and calling it justice. The line works because it presses on the discomfort many believers feel but rarely articulate: the gap between an ethic of radical mercy and a civic appetite for punishment that feels satisfying, final, and clean.
The intent is pastoral and polemical at once. Campolo, an evangelical leader with a long history of progressive social witness, is speaking into a Christian culture (especially in the U.S.) where “biblical values” are often invoked to justify toughness: law-and-order politics, retribution dressed up as righteousness. By anchoring the debate in the Sermon on the Mount, he chooses Christianity’s most disarming, least militarizable text: turning the other cheek, refusing retaliation, blessing the condemned. It’s a strategic move that bypasses proof-texting and goes straight to moral atmosphere.
The subtext is a rebuke to compartmentalization. Campolo implies you can’t claim Jesus as moral authority while outsourcing vengeance to the government and calling it justice. The line works because it presses on the discomfort many believers feel but rarely articulate: the gap between an ethic of radical mercy and a civic appetite for punishment that feels satisfying, final, and clean.
Quote Details
| Topic | Bible |
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