Executing Freedom

Executing Freedom

Author: Daniel LaChance

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-02-09

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 022658318X

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In the mid-1990s, as public trust in big government was near an all-time low, 80% of Americans told Gallup that they supported the death penalty. Why did people who didn’t trust government to regulate the economy or provide daily services nonetheless believe that it should have the power to put its citizens to death? That question is at the heart of Executing Freedom, a powerful, wide-ranging examination of the place of the death penalty in American culture and how it has changed over the years. Drawing on an array of sources, including congressional hearings and campaign speeches, true crime classics like In Cold Blood, and films like Dead Man Walking, Daniel LaChance shows how attitudes toward the death penalty have reflected broader shifts in Americans’ thinking about the relationship between the individual and the state. Emerging from the height of 1970s disillusion, the simplicity and moral power of the death penalty became a potent symbol for many Americans of what government could do—and LaChance argues, fascinatingly, that it’s the very failure of capital punishment to live up to that mythology that could prove its eventual undoing in the United States.


By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed

By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed

Author: Edward Feser

Publisher: Ignatius Press

Published: 2017-05-10

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 1681497689

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The Catholic Church has in recent decades been associated with political efforts to eliminate the death penalty. It was not always so. This timely work reviews and explains the Catholic Tradition regarding the death penalty, demonstrating that it is not inherently evil and that it can be reserved as a just form of punishment in certain cases. Drawing upon a wealth of philosophical, scriptural, theological, and social scientific arguments, the authors explain the perennial teaching of the Church that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate—not only to protect society from immediate physical danger, but also to administer retributive justice and to deter capital crimes. The authors also show how some recent statements of Church leaders in opposition to the death penalty are prudential judgments rather than dogma. They reaffirm that Catholics may, in good conscience, disagree about the application of the death penalty. Some arguments against the death penalty falsely suggest that there has been a rupture in the Church's traditional teaching and thereby inadvertently cast doubt on the reliability of the Magisterium. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, the Church's traditional teaching is a safeguard to society, because the just use of the death penalty can be used to protect the lives of the innocent, inculcate a horror of murder, and affirm the dignity of human beings as free and rational creatures who must be held responsible for their actions. By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed challenges contemporary Catholics to engage with Scripture, Tradition, natural law, and the actual social scientific evidence in order to undertake a thoughtful analysis of the current debate about the death penalty.


Lethal State

Lethal State

Author: Seth Kotch

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2019-01-10

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1469649888

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For years, American states have tinkered with the machinery of death, seeking to align capital punishment with evolving social standards and public will. Against this backdrop, North Carolina had long stood out as a prolific executioner with harsh mandatory sentencing statutes. But as the state sought to remake its image as modern and business-progressive in the early twentieth century, the question of execution preoccupied lawmakers, reformers, and state boosters alike. In this book, Seth Kotch recounts the history of the death penalty in North Carolina from its colonial origins to the present. He tracks the attempts to reform and sanitize the administration of death in a state as dedicated to its image as it was to rigid racial hierarchies. Through this lens, Lethal State helps explain not only Americans' deep and growing uncertainty about the death penalty but also their commitment to it. Kotch argues that Jim Crow justice continued to reign in the guise of a modernizing, orderly state and offers essential insight into the relationship between race, violence, and power in North Carolina. The history of capital punishment in North Carolina, as in other states wrestling with similar issues, emerges as one of state-building through lethal punishment.


Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scripture, Volume 7

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scripture, Volume 7

Author: Lange, John Peter

Publisher: Delmarva Publications, Inc.

Published:

Total Pages: 3643

ISBN-13:

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All sixty-three of the original volumes are included in a nine volumes set. There are two linked indexes in this volume, a main index at the front of this volume that will take you to the beginning each of the books of the bible and another index at the beginning of each book there is a linked scripture index leading to the particular subject. Lange’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, translated, revised, edited and enlarged from the German editions of John Peter Lange and many contributors, and edited by Philip Schaff. Lange’s Commentary on the entire Bible has remained one of the most useful and valuable work of its kind. It is conservative in theology and universal in hermeneutics. Delmarva Publications is proud to make it available in digital format. The original work was completed in 63 volumes, but we have made it available in 9 volumes they are: Volume 1 - Genesis to Ruth Volume 2 -1 Samuel to Esther Volume 3 - Job to Ecclesiastes Volume 4 - Song of Songs to Lamentations Volume 5 - Ezekiel to Malachi Volume 6 - Matthew to John Volume 7 - Acts to 2 Corinthians Volume 8 - Galatians to 2 Timothy Volume 9 -Titus to Revelation


Courting Death

Courting Death

Author: Carol S. Steiker

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-11-07

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0674737423

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Before constitutional regulation -- The Supreme Court steps in -- The invisibility of race in the constitutional revolution -- Between the Supreme Court and the states -- The failures of regulation -- An unsustainable system? -- Recurring patterns in constitutional regulation -- The future of the American death penalty -- Life after death


Theological Territories

Theological Territories

Author: David Bentley Hart

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2020-04-15

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 026810719X

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Publishers Weekly Best Book in Religion 2020 Foreword Review's INDIES Book of the Year Award, Religion In Theological Territories, David Bentley Hart, one of America's most eminent contemporary writers on religion, reflects on the state of theology "at the borders" of other fields of discourse—metaphysics, philosophy of mind, science, the arts, ethics, and biblical hermeneutics in particular. The book advances many of Hart's larger theological projects, developing and deepening numerous dimensions of his previous work. Theological Territories constitutes something of a manifesto regarding the manner in which theology should engage other fields of concern and scholarship. The essays are divided into five sections on the nature of theology, the relations between theology and science, the connections between gospel and culture, literary representations of and engagements with transcendence, and the New Testament. Hart responds to influential books, theologians, philosophers, and poets, including Rowan Williams, Jean-Luc Marion, Tomáš Halík, Sergei Bulgakov, Jennifer Newsome Martin, and David Jones, among others. The twenty-six chapters are drawn from live addresses delivered in various settings. Most of the material has never been printed before, and those parts that have appear here in expanded form. Throughout, these essays show how Hart's mind works with the academic veneer of more formal pieces stripped away. The book will appeal to both academic and non-academic readers interested in the place of theology in the modern world.