Latest Shane Claiborne Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I'm excited we can be part of making the death penalty history.

  Shane Claiborne

  Death Penalty, Excited, Penalties

  Source: medium.com

• A lot of times people say whatever the government touches, they don't do that well, so why would we trust them with the power over life and death? Do we really believe the system is that perfect that it won't make any mistakes? You can't reverse these mistakes.

  Shane Claiborne

  Mistake, Believe, Government

  Source: medium.com

• I would love to see the Church on the right side of history.

  Shane Claiborne

  Church, Sides

  Source: medium.com

• It's not that hard to say slavery is wrong after we've abolished it.

  Shane Claiborne

  Slavery, Hard

  Source: medium.com

• It's unilaterally true that it costs more to maintain the death penalty than the alternatives to it, and we can leverage more resources to victims families. We can do all sorts of creative ways of healing the pain that people have done by channeling the energy and resources to other more redemptive forms of justice.

  Shane Claiborne

  Pain, Healing, People

  Source: medium.com

• When you poll snake person Christians, Christians born after 1980, it's like 80% of them are against the death penalty. It's not because they've thrown out their faith, but it's because of their faith they can't reconcile the death penalty with Jesus and their commitment to Jesus.

  Shane Claiborne

  Christian, Jesus, Commitment

  Source: medium.com

• There are some  -  called 'death fatigue'  -  people who just grow so tired of death, so they don't want to keep perpetuating death and creating more victims and more anger and more pain. They want to heal from that, and I think that's exactly what God wants to do. And, interestingly enough, that's part of what God's original law was doing with the 'eye for an eye' thing. It was actually to limit the patterns of retaliation and then to begin to heal from that.

  Shane Claiborne

  Pain, Tired, Eye

  Source: medium.com

• I think in the end, God's justice is redemptive, it's restorative, it's about giving life, not taking life.

  Shane Claiborne

  Thinking, Giving, Justice

  Source: medium.com

• We think of justice sometimes as getting what you deserve, you know  -  what crime was committed and what is the punishment for that crime. That's how a lot of the criminal justice works. But God's justice is restorative, so it's not as interested in those same questions of "What did they do wrong?" and "What is the punishment for that?" It's more about what harm was done and how do we heal that harm, and that's a much more redemptive version. So, it definitely doesn't turn a blind eye to harm, but it does say we want to heal the wounds of that.

  Shane Claiborne

  Eye, Thinking, Deserve You

  Source: medium.com

• This is the company we keep when it comes to the death penalty: China, the number one executing country; Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, those are the top 4, and number 5 is the US. And those are not countries that are known as champions for human rights, you know.

  Shane Claiborne

  Country, Rights, Iran

  Source: medium.com

• A lot of the world looks to the United States, whether we like it or not.

  Shane Claiborne

  United States, Looks, World

  Source: medium.com

• The Catholic understanding has been that the death penalty has been become, like, outdated because in industrialized countries. We have other ways of protecting societies from dangerous people without killing them. And in fact, it's important to remember that much of the world has done away with the death penalty.

  Shane Claiborne

  Country, People, Catholic

  Source: medium.com

• There are people who are dangerous, and evil is real.

  Shane Claiborne

  Real, People, Evil

  Source: medium.com

• David, Moses, Saul of Tarsus, these were all people who did terrible terrible things  -  they were murderers. The Bible would be a lot shorter without grace.

  Shane Claiborne

  People, Grace, Would Be

  Source: medium.com

• I believe you know Jesus said "a doctor doesn't come to the healthy, but the sick, and it's not the righteous but the sinners that I've come for," so I think that that's the scandal of God's love and grace that no one is beyond redemption, and we can see that all through scripture, you know.

  Shane Claiborne

  Jesus, Believe, Thinking

  Source: medium.com

• I think a lot of people view the death penalty as a debate class or something. The cost and what's at stake is really, really a big deal.

  Shane Claiborne

  Thinking, Views, Class

  Source: medium.com

• The more you look at the death penalty, that's where you see that we're actually not killing the worst of the worst. We're killing the poorest of the poor. Where actually one of the biggest determinants of who gets executed is how many resources they have to defend themselves.

  Shane Claiborne

  Looks, Death Penalty, Killing

  Source: medium.com

• When we really began executions rather than lynchings, black folks were 22% of our population in 1950, for instance, but they were 75% of the executions. Now, African-Americans are 13% of the population, but they're still almost half of death row, and over a third of the executions. 34% of the executions are black folks. So, like, I mean, things like the race of the victim is one of the biggest determinants of who gets executed.

  Shane Claiborne

  Mean, Race, Lynching

  Source: medium.com

• I think we've misinterpreted some of the scriptures to justify the death penalty. So whereas a lot of folks in America feel like we can do far better justice  -  it's more expensive to do the death penalty than the alternatives  -  there's so many reasons that people come to the conclusion to abolish the death penalty.

  Shane Claiborne

  Thinking, America, People

  Source: medium.com

• It's impossible to separate our contemporary practice of the death penalty from our history around race and slavery, and specifically, lynching. Where lynchings were happening 100 years ago is where executions are happening today. And that's a haunting and eerie thing.

  Shane Claiborne

  Race, Lynching, Years

  Source: medium.com

• The death penalty has succeeded in America, not in spite of Christians, but because of us. The Bible Belt is the Death Belt. Wherever Christians are most concentrated is where executions are happening, and that's deeply troubling to me.

  Shane Claiborne

  Christian, America, Execution

  Source: medium.com

• Because you can poke someone's eye out legally doesn't mean you should and that it's right. The Bible teaches us a more perfect justice.

  Shane Claiborne

  Mean, Eye, Perfect

  Source: medium.com

• I found that the death penalty  -  and I'm not a hot-button issue person, you know, I'm not a single issue person  -  but what I think drew me to the death penalty is because it raises some very deep, fundamental questions like: Is anybody beyond redemption?

  Shane Claiborne

  Thinking, Issues, Buttons

  Source: medium.com

• When you look at the Bible, and I read the Bible very seriously, for a lot of my life, I believed the Bible ordained the death penalty, and the Bible seemed to be very clear about that. But the more I look, the more troubled I became because it's not that simple. In the Bible, there's some 30 death-worth crimes, like working on the Sabbath, or disrespecting your parents. Are we that fundamental that we should bring back that death penalty?

  Shane Claiborne

  Simple, Parent, Looks

  Source: medium.com

• I'm a Tennessee boy. I grew up in East Tennessee most of my life, then came up to Philly to go to college and fell in love with this city, and particularly, my neighborhood on the north side of Philadelphia.

  Shane Claiborne

  Boys, College, Cities

  Source: medium.com