Punitive Justice vs. Restorative Justice

As you may or may not know, I was a sociology major in college and Criminology was one of the memorable courses I took as such. But that was a long time ago, and since then there has been an important change in emphasis (in some circles) from punitive justice to restorative justice. 

My Time in Jail/Prison

The first time I was ever in a prison was when my Criminology class at William Jewell College made a field trip to the United States Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. At that time, it was the largest maximum-security prison in the United States.

Even before that unforgettable experience, though, I was concerned about prisoners in local jails. While still in college, I became pastor of a small mission church, and soon I began taking high school kids from church to the Henry County (Mo.) jail to conduct monthly “jail services.”

Several years after going to Japan, I visited people I knew, or knew of, a few times in detention centers (jails), and then multiple times I went to several different detention centers and penitentiaries to visit one man charged and then convicted of murder.

Since retirement, I have visited one young man held, at separate times, in the Clay County Jail & Detention Center here in Liberty, Mo.

In all these cases, the prisoners were incarcerated as a form of punishment. They were the target of what is often called punitive justice. That is, they were being punished for breaking the law and committing crimes against society.

From the time I took the Criminology course to the present I have always thought that the primary purpose of incarceration ought to be rehabilitation, not punishment. Accordingly, I have long been an advocate of indeterminate sentences.

It has only been in recent years, however, that I began hearing/learning about an alternative to the traditional practice of “penal justice.” This innovative approach is called “restorative justice.”

Meet Howard Zehr

More than any other living person, the new and growing emphasis on restorative justice is due to the teaching and writing of Howard Zehr.

Zehr (b. 1944) is currently the Distinguished Professor of Restorative Justice at Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. He is also the co-director of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice.

Zehr has often been called the father—or the grandfather—of the restorative justice (RJ) movement. His first book introducing RJ was Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice (1990).

Now, The Little Book of Restorative Justice, Zehr’s book first published in 2002 with the revised and updated edition issued in 2015, is more widely known. The current Amazon.com website for the latter indicates that over 150,000 copies have been sold.

Zehr has been a lifelong Mennonite, and his work in developing the concept/practice of restorative justice is in keeping with central tenets of that form of the Christian faith.

The Goal of Restorative Justice

An editorial review of Zehr’s 2015 book states:

Restorative Justice, with its emphasis on identifying the justice needs of everyone involved in a crime, is a worldwide movement of growing influence that is helping victims and communities heal, while holding criminals accountable for their actions.

All the people I have visited in jails and prisons were incarcerated primarily for punitive purposes. They were there to see that “justice was done,” but that was only punitive justice. There was nothing being done, it seems, that would help victims and communities heal.

RJ, though, is designed to promote three interlinking goals: offender responsibility, victim reparation, and community reconciliation.

In my research for this article, I watched “How to Love Your Enemy: A Restorative Justice Story” (2020), a YouTube video of what has been done in Longmont, Colorado, a city of nearly 100,000 about thirty miles NNW of Denver. Their Community Restorative Justice program dates back to 1994.

Their website now states: “Longmont Community Justice Partnership provides restorative justice services to the Longmont community and offers training in restorative practices throughout Colorado and the United States.”

This is the type of program that needs to be encouraged and supported across the country. 

Helping Ukraine: War without Violence?

Today is the twentieth day since the beginning of the unprovoked Russian invasion of the sovereign country of Ukraine. The courage and resilience of the Ukrainian people has certainly been admirable, but their suffering has been great and their short-term future is exceedingly bleak. 

From the 3/5/22 cover of The Economist

President Zelenskyy’s Call for Help

Since the very beginning of the invasion of his country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been widely praised as a courageous leader in his beleaguered country and an exemplary advocate of freedom. He will be awarded the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award for 2022.

President Zelenskyy has repeatedly taken to the airwaves to make zealous appeals for increased military help from NATO and the U.S. He has warned that the refusal to give assistance through such means as declaring a no-fly zone over his country will result in the deaths of thousands of his citizens.

In response to that March 5 appeal, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said, “Let’s be cleareyed about our options: “A No-Fly Zone means sending American pilots into combat against Russian jets and air defenses—in a battle between nuclear powers that could spiral out of control quickly.”

So, how should the U.S. and NATO respond to Zelenskyy’s call for help?

Has President Biden’s and NATO’s Response been Weak?

Some in this country have used the lack of full positive response to Zelenskyy’s call as a sign of weakness on the part of President Biden.

An opinion piece in the March 11 online issue of The Christian Post is titled “The Ukrainian crisis: A catastrophic failure of leadership.” The author is Richard Land, President Emeritus of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

Land asserts that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was “so preventable,” pointing out that 62% of Americans believe that if Trump were still president, Russia would not have invaded.

Apparently, Land is among those 62%. He writes, “Putin feared Trump’s strength, whereas he holds Biden’s invertebrate weakness in disdain.”

He also asserts that “Biden’s weakness is illustrated by his apparent fear of what Putin might do.”

This same sort of criticism is expressed by Wendell Griffen, a progressive Baptist leader for whom I have great respect. I was disappointed, though, by what he wrote in a March 9 opinion piece.

Griffen asserted, “What perturbs Zelensky and delights Putin is the knowledge that world leaders lack the will to bring their arsenals, warriors and other war-fighting resources to bear against Putin.”

The opinion of Daniel Davis, a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army is far better than the two divergent Baptists just cited. Davis’s article in the March 8 post of The Guardian is titled “A no-fly zone means Nato shooting down Russian jets. We must not do that” (emphasis added).

Can there be Significant Help without Violence?

The effectiveness, and even the morality, of the violent resistance of the Ukrainian people is discussed in an article posted March 7 by Religious News Service (here). It is titled “Catholic theologians question the morality of Ukraine’s violent resistance.”

While I agree with much in that significant article, here I am writing only about the morality of help for Ukraine supplied by the U.S. and NATO—and in that regard I strongly believe that the stance taken so far by the U.S. is not a show of weakness but of prudence.

The increasing level of sanctions leveled against Russia will surely in the long run lead to a cessation of violent fighting in Ukraine. Direct military action would, no doubt, be more effective in the short run—but with the distinct possibility of leading to greater escalation of violence.

Greater military help of Ukraine now, could—and perhaps would!—lead to greater suffering, more casualties, and more violent Russian warfare not only against Ukraine but also against other European countries.

Hasty, belligerent acts by the U.S./NATO could—and perhaps would!—provoke Russia to use strategic nuclear weapons. And that could well be the beginning of World War III.

Looking at the bigger picture and the potentiality of unthinkable disaster, I am deeply grateful that the U.S. and NATO are seeking to help Ukraine mostly by non-violent (=non-military) means.

The Supreme Court Then and Now: Reflecting on the Dred Scott Case

In recent years there have been a couple of bad U.S. Supreme Court decisions, namely, “Citizens United” in 2010 and the decision to gut the Voting Right Act in 2013. But it is widely agreed that the Court’s decision on the Dred Scott case 165 years ago, on March 6, 1857, was the worst ever. 

Dred Scott’s Suit for Freedom

Although it is an embarrassment to me, Missouri, the state where I was born and where I have lived again since 2004, was a slave state from its beginning in 1821, and the Dred Scott case was closely linked to Missouri.

Dred Scott was an enslaved man who was born in Virginia between 1795 and 1799. Peter Blow, his enslaver, brought Scott and his other slaves to St. Louis in 1830 and soon sold him to John Emerson, a surgeon serving in the U.S. Army.

Emerson took Scott with him to Illinois and then to Wisconsin Territory, both areas where slavery was illegal. But then the doctor moved back to Missouri in 1840. Scott, though, claimed that since he had lived in free territories, he should no longer be considered enslaved—and he sued for his freedom.

He won his case, but after it was reversed by the Mo. Supreme Court, Scott and his wife took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court—and to their dismay and the dismay of many, the SCOTUS ruled against them by a vote of 7-2.

However, in May 1857, Dred and Harriet Scott appeared in the St. Louis Circuit Court and were formally freed— but he did not live to enjoy his free status very long as he died of tuberculosis in September of the next year.**

The Supreme Court in 1857

Of the nine members on the Supreme Court in 1857—all White men, of course—five were from the South and were slave owners. Two of the Northerners sided with the Southerners in voting against Scott’s freedom.

Roger B. Taney was the Chief Justice and wrote the infamous majority opinion of the Dred Scott decision. Taney (1777~1864) was born into a wealthy, slave-owning family in Maryland. He was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice in 1836 and remained the Chief Justice until his death.

(In an interesting but unrelated Missouri connection, a new county in south Missouri was officially organized in 1837 and named in honor of the new Chief Justice. Many years later the now widely-known resort town of Branson was incorporated in Taney County.)

In his infamous opinion, Taney wrote that the majority held that “a negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S.], and sold as slaves,” whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen and therefore did not have the standing to sue in federal court.

Ironically, as Chief Justice, Taney was forced to issue the presidential oath to Lincoln in March 1861, and to listen to Lincoln’s inaugural address, where he criticized Taney and the Dred Scott decision, but not directly by name.

After the Civil War, in 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment overturned the Dred Scott decision by granting citizenship to all those born in the United States, regardless of color or former enslavement.

The Supreme Court Now

From the beginning to the present, there have been 115 Supreme Court Justices—and all but seven of those have been White men.

It was of the greatest significance when Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as the first African American Justice in 1967, a full 110 years after the Dred Scott decision.

And now Ketanji Brown Jackson will likely soon be confirmed as the first Black woman to be seated on the Supreme Court.

Both Marshall and Jackson, as well as Justice Clarence Thomas, are descendants of enslaved people who were not and could not be U.S. citizens according to the Dred Scott decision of 1857.

But now the Supreme Court needs to act again to ensure that African Americans, whose full citizenship was acknowledged in the 1860s, can exercise their right to vote despite new Jim Crow laws currently encroaching on the voting rights of Black citizens.

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** Here is the link to a lengthy and informative talk about the Dred Scott case that was given by (now) retiring Justice Stephen Breyer in 2009.

Learning from the Mennonites in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine has been the top news story for ten days now. This article, though, is primarily about the nineteenth-century Ukrainian Mennonites and their descendants—and about what Christians can (and should) learn from them. 

Menno Simons (1496~1561)

The Background of the Mennonites

The small Christian denomination known as Mennonites (and there are several church organizations who use that name) grew out of the Anabaptist movement that began in Switzerland in 1525.

It was 495 years ago, on February 24, 1527, during an assembly of Anabaptists in the northern Swiss village of Schleitheim that a statement of the basic principles of the Anabaptists was adopted.

That statement, usually called the Schleitheim Confession, was the first Protestant confession of faith. The more widely-known Augsburg Confession of the Lutherans dates back to 1530.

Menno Simons was a Roman Catholic priest who left the Catholics and joined the Anabaptists in 1536. Simons, who was from the northmost part of the Netherlands, became such a strong leader that the name of the more than two million Mennonites in the world today comes from him.

For quite some time now, most Mennonites have not affirmed or followed all seven of the articles of the Schleitheim Confession.

The first and sixth articles, though, are still followed by most Mennonites today: the affirmation of believer’s baptism (i.e., the rejection of infant baptism) and the affirmation of pacifism or non-resistance (i.e., the rejection of “the sword.”

The Movement of the Mennonites to, and from, Ukraine

The early Anabaptists/Mennonites were regularly persecuted in western Europe, so even in the 17th century some migrated to what was to become the USA, and many others moved east to Prussia, largely to what is Poland today.

Catherine the Great became the Empress of Russia in 1762, and most of Ukraine fell under Russian rule during her reign. She soon invited people from Prussia (and elsewhere) to move to the Ukrainian area of Russia and to farm the unoccupied lands there.

Two of the incentives the Empress offered the Mennonites for settling in Ukraine were self-government and exemption from military service. Since they were pacifists, the latter was especially appealing to them. The largest colonies formed were Chortitza and Molotschna, founded in 1789 and 1803.

When a change in the Russian government threatened to end their military exemption, a Mennonite delegation traveled to St. Petersburg in 1871 to plead their case. When their appeals failed, a third of the Mennonite population—some 18,000 people—emigrated to the U.S. and Canada.

(Although it was first published in 1986, here is the link to “Mennonites Ingrained in Kansas,” an informative article in the Los Angeles Times.) *

Learning from the Mennonites

So, what can we learn from the Ukrainian Mennonites?

Obviously, right now, following their example and moving to other parts of the world where they will not have to fight is not a viable option for most Ukrainians—although, tragically, during these past ten days there have been more than 1,200,000 Ukrainians who have fled their homeland as refugees.

Still, the Ukrainian Mennonites of the past are a good example of the importance of some Christians being leaven in the world. The Anabaptists’ consistent advocacy for pacifism, often resulting in their considerable suffering, has not been widely followed but has often caused others to question violence/war.

There are few Mennonites in Ukraine today, just over 500 adherents in 11 congregations. But they are active advocates of peace and justice.**

And, who knows, perhaps they have had some influence on the Ukrainians who recently befriended a Russian soldier as seen in the following picture from the March 3 issue of Metro, the British newspaper. 

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* More details of the Mennonites in Ukraine and in North America are found in my 5/5/14 blog post titled “In Praise of Ukrainian Mennonites.” In that article, I relate how many of my current church friends, as well as my daughter-in-law, have close ancestors from Ukraine.

** Here is the link to an informative article about Mennonites in Ukraine, past and present, in the 2/22/22 online article in Anabaptist World.

“Listen to the Scientists”: Considering the Limits to Growth

This post is directly related to the one I made on January 25. It is about the possibility of an “ecological Armageddon” (words not used but implied in the 1/25 post), which might occur even before the end of this century. 

Becoming Aware

I have been much concerned about this issue for 50 years, and more. By 1970 or ’71, I had read Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb (1968), or had read enough of and about that book, to be greatly concerned about what was often called “the population explosion.”

Then in 1972, the Club of Rome published another highly significant book. It was titled The Limits to Growth, authored by Donella H. Meadows et al. The New York Times (here) summarized the central thesis of that book succinctly:

Either civilization or growth must end, and soon. Continued population and industrial growth will exhaust the world’s minerals and bathe the biosphere in fatal levels of pollution. As the authors summarize, “if the present growth trends continue unchanged, the limits of growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next hundred years.”

It was, however, many years later before I began to be aware of the serious problem of global warming—and I recently learned that the term “global warming” didn’t even appear in a scientific article until 1975.

In fact, as late as that year, some were still talking of climate change making the world too cold—which is why the term global warming is now much to be preferred to climate change.

In recent years, though, I have been very aware of the danger of global warming, and my 1/5/20 blog post was titled “Climate Crisis: The Challenge of the Decade.”

However, I have only recently become aware of the fact that global warming itself is not the primary ecological problem confronting humankind. Rather, global warming is the result of a network of problems all related to unrestrained growth, which is also called overshoot.

EarthOvershoot.org explains, “Overshoot is when a species consumes resources and generates wastes faster than the ecosystem in which it inhabits can replace those resources or absorb those wastes.”

Further, “Climate change is just one symptom (and a pretty big one) of a much larger ‘disease’ called overshoot. Overshoot is the all encompassing threat to sustainability posed by too many people consuming too many resources and emitting to much waste.”

The concept of overshoot clearly acknowledges the limits to growth—of the world’s population, of the consumption of nonrenewable resources, and of the global standard of living (and the stock market).

Unquestionably, we all need to be deeply aware of this perilous predicament.

Becoming Alarmed

“Listen to the scientists” has been widely used over the past couple of years in the attempt to get people to fight the covid-19 epidemic by getting vaccinations and wearing masks. That is good advice.

But I am afraid that, as William Rees forcefully emphasizes, politicians as well as the general public don’t listen to scientists well when it comes to considering overshoot / the limits to growth.

Rees (b. 1943), who has a Ph.D. in population ecology, was a professor at University of British Columbia from 1969 to 2012. During that time, he coined the phrase/concept ecological footprint (in 1992).

Since his retirement, he has continued to be an active advocate of protecting human life on this planet. Several recent talks are available on YouTube, and in one of them, he wisely emphasizes the great need for politicians and the general public to listen to the scientists.

In February 2020, Rees gave a talk entitled “Will Modern Civilization Be the Death of Us” (see here). I encourage you to watch that video as well as other more recent talks you can easily find under his name on YouTube.

Given the alarming facts that Rees graphically presents, I wonder when, oh when, are we the general public and political leaders going to listen to the scientists about the limits to growth?

And when, oh when, will we (humankind) begin to take more decisive and meaningful steps to limit growth?

“Carved in Ebony”: In Observance of Black History Month

In December, I received a book from my granddaughter Katrina—and I am happy to report that on February 9 she and her husband Ryan became parents of Nina Irene, a beautiful baby girl and Junes’ and my first great-grandchild. But this blog post is about Katrina’s Christmas present to me. 

Observing Black History Month

As is widely known, February is designated every year as Black History Month in the U.S., and I read the book Katrina gave me partly as a way to learn more about Black history. Let me share with you a little of what I learned from that book.

Carved in Ebony (2021) was written by Jasmine L. Holmes, a youngish (b. 1990) Black woman who lives in Jackson, Mississippi, with her husband Phillip and their three young sons.

Author Holmes’s slim book is about ten outstanding African-American women, all born in the nineteenth century, who have largely been unknown by the general public. Indeed, I didn’t remember hearing even one of their names prior to reading this book.

But they were all notable women—and good for me (and you) to learn about during Black History Month.

“God’s Image Carved in Ebony”

While, fortunately, it is not nearly as true now as when he spoke those words fifty years ago, in the Introduction, Holmes cites these words of Malcolm X: “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman” (p. 18).

But writing about ten outstanding Black women of strong Christian faith, Holmes asserts, “black women are made in the image of God. They are that image carved in ebony hues, wrought with a purpose, for his glory” (p. 19). Their exemplary lives should no longer be neglected.

“God’s Image Carved in Ebony,” the fifth chapter, is about Amanda Berry Smith (1837~1915), who even though she was born into slavery, became an evangelist, a missionary to Africa, and the founder of an orphanage for Black children.    

Amanda’s father bought his freedom from slavery and then that of his family when she was still young. But the Berry family was still poor, so Amanda left home to work as a live-in domestic.

She married at the age of seventeen, but that rocky marriage ended when her husband didn’t return from the Civil War. Then her marriage to James Smith ended with his death due to cancer in 1867. Soon afterward, Amanda began to fulfill her calling to be an evangelist.

In 1878, Amanda traveled overseas and preached in Great Britain and in India. Then she served as a missionary in Liberia for eight years, beginning in 1882.

Her final ministry was at the Amanda Smith Orphanage and Industrial Home for Abandoned and Destitute Colored Children, which she founded in Illinois in 1899 and where she served until 1912.

At the end of her long, productive life, Amanda was described as a woman in whom “God’s image was carved in ebony.”

The Example of Charlotte Forten Grimké

Charlotte Forten was born the same year (1837) as Amanda Berry and died about seven months earlier (in July 1914). But their lives were vastly different: whereas Amanda was born into slavery, the Forten family were prominent free Blacks in Philadelphia and active abolitionists. 

Although I hadn’t heard of Charlotte before reading the ninth chapter in Jasmine Holmes’s book, I had probably heard of the man she married in 1878, the nephew of the amazing Grimké sisters, the subject of my Feb. 24, 2016, blog post.  

The same year Amanda went overseas as an evangelist (1878), Charlotte married Francis Grimké, pastor of the prominent Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.

In addition to her position as the pastor’s wife at that church until her death, in 1896 Charlotte helped found the National Association of Colored Women, and she remained an active advocate for civil rights until her death.

Yes, although not widely known, there are many outstanding nineteenth-century Black women—and now in 2022 the U.S. will likely have a new Supreme Court Justice similarly “carved in ebony.”

“God is Dead”: What Did Nietzsche Mean?

The most widely known words of Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century German philosopher, are, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” What did Nietzsche mean by such a statement, and what relevance do those jarring words have for us today?  

What Nietzsche Wrote

Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Leipzig, (now) in the eastern German state of Saxony. His father was a Lutheran pastor, and before his 20^th birthday, Friedrich began studying theology at the University of Bonn with the intention of following in his father’s footsteps.

After one semester, however, Nietzsche lost his faith and stopped his theological studies. He wrote to his deeply-religious sister Elisabeth (b. 1846), ”. . . if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.”

(Sadly, Nietzsche was seemingly unable to grasp the fact that believing and inquiring are not mutually exclusive.)

Many years later, 140 years ago in 1882, Nietzsche authored a book published under the title Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, first translated into English as The Joyful Wisdom, but now, unfortunately, it is generally known by the title The Gay Science.

In that book, the “madman” spoke the above-cited words about God being dead. (They can be read in context on this website.)

Later in Thus Spake Zarathustra (which Nietzsche published in parts over several years, beginning in 1883), the central character exclaims the same words, “God is dead!”

But what did Nietzsche mean by having the “madman” and Zarathustra utter that shocking (at that time, if not now) expression?

What Nietzsche Meant

It seems quite clear that Nietzsche was not writing about the ontological existence (or lack thereof) of a supernatural being commonly called God in Western society.

Rather, Nietzsche was expressing his observation that the Age of Enlightenment had ended the centrality of the concept of God in Western European civilization and that the belief in the pivotal role of God in human affairs had ceased to exist (=been killed).

In other words, we might say that Nietzsche was one of the earliest thinkers to assert that secularism had become victorious over the Christian religion.

He was also a primary progenitor of postmodernism. Since God was now “dead,” he thought that there is no longer any basis for believing in a divinely ordained moral order. There are no absolute moral values. There is no objective truth.

Thus, Nietzsche’s thought led to nihilism, which he sought to counter with an emphasis on the importance of the subjectivity of individual persons. This is why he is also considered one of the most significant early proponents of what came to be called existentialism.

Why Nietzsche was Right/Wrong

In many ways, in his day as well as in this present day, God as the ultimate Being and ultimate concern seems to be “dead” to so many people who were reared in Christian homes and/or in an ostensibly Christian society.

There are many today, as in Nietzsche’s day, who give intellectual assent to the idea of God’s reality, but who live as if God does not exist. So in that sense, God is “dead” to them. This situation is what is sometimes called practical atheism.

There are distinct similarities—and vast differences—between Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard. (Some refer to the two seminal thinkers as if they were contemporaries, but Nietzsche was born the year Kierkegaard published one of his most important books, Philosophical Fragments.)

“Practical atheism” was certainly an apt description for many Danes in the 1840s and Germans in the 1880s—but perhaps no more so than for many North Americans and Western Europeans now. For many, there is religious form with little or no substance.

In the midst of rampant practical atheism, people can choose to follow Nietzsche’s proposal for creation of the Übermensch (Overman), who creates their own future without reference to traditional religious and/or moral beliefs.

Or we can choose, as one scholar wisely wrote, to see the “problem of religious downfall as . . . a chance to embrace the New Testament’s original teaching and return to a dynamic and living faith.”