The death penalty remains a deeply divisive issue among Christians. Some hold that it is a biblically justifiable punishment, proven by Old Testament endorsements of capital punishment for serious crimes and Romans 13’s affirmation of governmental authority. Others argue against it, pointing to New Testament teachings that emphasize mercy, forgiveness, and the sanctity of life.
This divide was most recently exemplified by the announcement from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that Nidal Hasan — the radicalized Muslim U.S. Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others in a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009 — would be executed by firing squad in December, with initial plans to livestream the event.
Some Christians have condemned the planned execution — especially those initial livestream plans, which President Trump ultimately decided against. Others have publicly supported the public execution on biblical grounds.
BlazeTV host John Doyle, a Catholic, falls into the latter camp. On this episode of “The John Doyle Show,” he not only argues that Hasan should be publicly executed but also that “we should be killing criminals far more often, far more expediently, and far more legally and coolly.”
Doyle argues that conservatives who claim to stand on the principle that “life has infinite value” but oppose the death penalty are contradicting themselves.
“When you murder an innocent person, you have now taken from the world something of infinite value. The only way to approximate righting that wrong would be to take your life from you,” he explains.
“It's to say we can never repair what has been stolen. We can never bring it back. We can never make the balance sheet squared, but we can try; we can get close. And the only way that we can get close is actually taking from you something that is, of course, of infinite value, which is your life,” he continues. “That is the only thing we can do that can approximate justice. Anything less than that … basically says ‘human life doesn't actually have infinite value.”
Those who claim life has infinite value but oppose the death penalty, Doyle says, “have a kind of indignation behind their speaking that they never extend to the murder victims themselves.”
“They concede, ‘dude, yeah, of course murder's wrong. Of course terrorism is wrong’ … but then they go out of their way to use all of their influence and all of their power to basically make it as easy as possible for terrorists and murderers and so on to continue living their lives as they would without any kind of consequence,” he says.
In the next part of the episode, Doyle dives into the “theological weeds” of the Catholic faith when it comes to the death penalty. To hear his full breakdown, watch the episode above.
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