Biblical Justice and Restorative Justice

The Bible was a source of inspiration for many who constructed the institutions of contemporary criminal justice. It was also a resource for some of the early practitioners of restorative justice. Its influence on both groups continues. The following articles examine the relationship between biblical justice and restorative justice.

A chance to heal unholy wounds: from Bronwyn Pike's article in the National Times: For many years, religious organisations have grappled with the need to improve the ways they deal with abusive behaviour by their own clergy. In my previous role as director of social justice in the Uniting Church during the 1990s, I worked with my colleagues to develop sexual abuse complaints procedures. In that task I gained an appreciation of just how challenging and complex this issue can be.
The measure with which we measure: from the article by Andrew Skotnicki in Baylor's Christian Reflections issue on Prison: The decisive factor in overturning not only the ordeal, but the fear of Christians to will the punishment of others, was the inauguration of systems of law—first canon law which began its development in the late eleventh century and, in its wake, secular legal systems. With this epic turning of the moral tide, a third factor was brought into the equation of viewing human weakness: an offense was not only an affront to God and to the victim, it was also an affront to the law. In light of this legal revolution, perhaps the most influential revolution in Western history, the meaning of human acts against their fellows took on a new appellation and gravity. They were not only sins that required forgiveness by a priest in confession, they were also crimes, and the offender had to be punished because he or she had broken the law.
Christian critiques of the penal system: from the article by L. Lynette Parker in Baylor's Christian Reflections issue on Prison: ....While approaching the issues from different theological and philosophical traditions, the above authors nevertheless agree on the problems with contemporary criminal justice and together begin to trace the outlines of a solution. The problems: institutional forces benefit from a destructive status quo; the public view of prisoners makes citizens indifferent to their plight; and an emphasis on individual responsibility fails to take seriously the systemic injustice that prisoners face. The solutions: remember that prisoners, too, are made in the image of God; address the systemic causes of crime; and learn to love the people touched by crime.
Doing justice honourably: From Janet Sim Elder's post on Per Crucem ad Lucem: A crucial question in this election year is how do we do justice honourably with both victims and offenders? How can recidivism continue downwards and how do public attitudes change to being solidly evidence-based? How do we face the challenge of changing the justice landscape? Can we provide the moral courage to help our society take steps towards a more just and merciful society?
Forgiveness scholar opens up on role of faith: from Francis X. Rocca's article in The Christian Century: Today, at least 1,000 academic researchers and "countless therapists" specialize in forgiveness studies, Enright said, but at the time, a library search turned up not a single piece of scholarship on the subject in any of the social sciences. Enright found himself drawn to the area and began leading a seminar on forgiveness at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he was a tenured professor. Among the assigned readings for the seminar were selections from the scriptures of various religious traditions. Those texts raised questions that led Enright back to back to Christianity: first to what he describes as a liberal Methodist church, then to an evangelical Protestant congregation, and finally back to Catholicism.
Peace Studies programmes: from the entry on PCPJ Blog: Michael Westmoreland-White compiled this.... As a service, I thought I would list all the U.S. colleges and universities that have programs with names like “peace studies,” “peace and global studies,” “peacebuilding and conflict resolution studies,” etc. I found there were enough that I decided just to list the church-related ones and do the others in a separate post. Typically, such programs are multi-disciplinary involving faculty from several departments including international studies, history, philosophy, religious studies, international law, economic development, and/or political science or sociology. The earliest such programs in the U.S. were in institutions related to the “historic peace churches” (Mennonites, Church of the Brethren, and Friends/Quakers), but it has spread beyond them.
A justice that reconciles -- new study guide from Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand
Harris,Scott. Learning to Live with Evil.: N.T Wright’s latest book, Evil and the Justice of God, is an invitation to the Christian community at large to revisit the problem of evil. As a response to his own theological journey as well as the relatively recent barrage of international examples of evil, Wright enters into an open-ended academic dialogue wherein he tables his own well-reasoned reflections on the topic. More importantly, though, the pastoral quality of his writing solicits various potentially broader audiences to consider, for themselves, whether evil is real and how scripture informs our understanding and response to the issue. He proposes both a renewed Christian rubric for understanding and talking about evil and teases out the implications for Christian action in three areas.
Turner, Martin. David -- Restored at a Cost.: This sermon uses 2 Samuel 12:1-25 to discuss the consequences of harmful actions and the difficulties of restoration.
Hough, Katherine Lorelle. Restorative Justice and Restorative Theology: A Dialogue.: This paper explores restorative justice in criminal law and proposes a restorative theology for Christianity. It focuses on the process and practice of restorative in each discipline, noting the similarities, disparities, and where one discipline might borrow, with integrity, from the other. (author's abstract)
James Samuel Logan. Good Punishment? Christian Moral Practice and U.S. Imprisonment: "...this book will suggest that a Christian social ethics of "good punishment" focused on the contemporary United States practice of imprisonment can be developed through a re/constructive critique of the "Anabaptist Methodist" Stanley Hauerwas's theological ethics of punishment. To focus Christian social ethics on the contemporary United States practice of imprisonment, which is now employed on an unprecedented scale, is to foreground a major obstacle to the transformation and restoration of offenders in community as well as society at large. An assumption underlying the effort that follows is that incapacitating and controlling socially destructive persons is a legitimate social aim for any society wishing to preserve itself. Indeed, it would be naive to deny that in a highly complex society at least some minimum system of justice is necessary. This includes police, courts, and other institutions set up to adjudicate justice claims whenever some fair distribution of goods and/or rights has been "criminally" disrupted. In addition, society must continually secure effective ways of addressing criminal breaches of responsibility that threaten the cohesion of the nation. Central to Christian perspectives on criminal justice is the requirement of discerning the difference Jesus makes for Christian participation in society's understanding and carrying out of punishment. Christian must continually struggle with how best to embrace the praxis of criminal justice while demonstrating a politics of better hope for society. This better hope should connect the Christian worship of God to a radically reconfigured reality of justice ushered into human history by God's self-unveiled love and justice in the person of Jesus Christ." (excerpt)
Clapsis, Emmanuel. Violence and Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Conversation: "What is the relationship of our Christian faith to the violence we see in the world? How do we respond to violence in a manner that is rooted in our faith and our relationship to God? In this relationship with a God of peace and justice, how do we experience peace and justice in our own lives and labour so that they may be realised in the lives of others, in our communities, and in our world? These are some of the questions addressed by a number of theologians and lay people from different Christian traditions when they met in 2005 for an ecumenical conversation on Violence and Christian Spirituality. Edited by the Orthodox theologian, Fr. Emmanuel Clapsis, their papers cover issues such as Christian witness in overcoming violence, including reference to the World Council of Churches' Decade to Oversome Violence (2001-2010), the churches; response to domestic violence, religious freedom and human rights, and contributions towards an ecumenical spirituality for a culture of peace." (Editor's Abstract)
Townsend, Christopher . An eye for an eye? the morality of punishment.: The moral foundation of punishment is a problematic issue which has prompted several competing views. A biblical perspective is anchored in the principle of retribution: punishment is deserved in proportion to the seriousness of an offence. However, the biblical endorsement of retribution is qualified and carefully nuanced. The fundamental aim is not to inflict suffering on offenders but to reassert the existence of the moral order that governs human life. That moral order emphasises the connections between justice, right relationships and seeking after community well-being. For this reason, punishment should normally aim both at making reparation to victims and at restoring offenders into the community. Taken together these priorities highlight shortcomings in our criminal justice system and suggest directions for reform. (excerpt)
Schluter, Michael . How to create a relational society: Foundations for a new social order: In an earlier Cambridge Paper (September 2006), a biblical ‘Charter for Humanity' was proposed within a ‘relational framework'. This second paper seeks to answer the question, ‘How do we move towards relational well-being?' The place where the Bible sets out the foundations required to create a society of right relationships in terms of structures, resources and processes is primarily in the law which God gives to Israel when it is first established as a nation. The paper explores how these institutional norms, as deepened and extended by the rest of biblical teaching, provide the basis for social transformation today. (excerpt)
Smith, Patrick J.. A Method for the Maddness: Restorative Justice as a Valid Mode of Punishment and an Advancement of Catholic Social Thought.: Part I of this article will discuss the traditional justifications of punishment and their comparative strengths and weaknesses. Part II will then explore a relatively new approach to punishment known as restorative justice, analyze to what extent it is justified by traditional concepts of punishment, and examine its compatibility with principles of Catholic Social Thought. (excerpt)
Manley-Tannis, Richard. Faith Based Mediation: A Discussion.: Contemporary mediation within our Western context is perceived as something that is new or innovative. The birth of the current model, and the ADR field in general, can be pinpointed to the late 1970s and early 1980s. This was a time when the need for alternatives to the existing judicial mechanisms was increasing due to overload and the realization that the equity of the system was often over-shadowed by procedure and form. What has been lost, however, or has remained on the periphery of most discussions, is that mediation has an ancient divine origin. To discern this ancestry, therefore, as the Midrash story goes, the image of God as present in the mud with us offers a humbling, yet invigorating, reminder that our creative sense does not exist in isolation. Mediation has been and is a metaphor of the potential of our own transformative relationship with one another and in turn with God. (excerpt)
Winter, Bruce. Punishment as Remedy: Bruce Winter is a scholar of early Christianity in the Greek and Roman worlds. In this article he reflects on a what a Christian vision of punishment looked like at the time of the early church, in contrast to the practice of imprisonment in the Roman world. Winter begins with a sketch of the nature and use of imprisonment in the Roman world before and at the time of the early church. This leads to a discussion of principles from the apostle Paul’s letters that provide a basis to reflect on the purpose of punishment. Winter concludes from Paul’s letters that punishment is not to be an end in itself; it is meant to achieve a purpose. Specifically, punishment within the Christian community is meant to be remedial for the offender and for the community. In this perspective, the ultimate intention or aim is to restore fractured relationships
Claassen, Ron. A Peacemaking Model: A Biblical Perspective: Building upon his prior paper – “A Peacemaking Model" – Ron Claassen extends his development of a peacemaking model for dealing with conflict, wrongdoing, injustice, and violence. He notes at the outset several key words in this model: peace-shalom; love-agape; forgiveness; confession; atonement; repentance; and trust. These words are used in both the faith and the secular worlds, but with a variety of meanings. One of Claassen’s strategies then in this paper is to use stories and traditions from his faith tradition (he identifies himself as a Christian-Anabaptist-Mennonite) to help clarify his understanding and use of each idea. His overall aim is that this peacemaking model and article will contribute to a dialogue regarding restorative justice in communities.
Bulmer, Garth. Restorative Justice: A Reflection of the Reign of Christ: In this sermon, the Reverend Canon Garth Bulmer reflects on restorative justice and Restorative Justice Week, beginning with his own experience as a prison chaplain as a young man. That experience changed his life and shaped his ministry. Thus he considers in brief the nature of restorative justice; issues and problems related to the use of incarceration; restorative justice and liberty, equality, and fraternity; circles of support and accountability; and restorative justice as a contemporary model of the reign of Christ.
Marshall, Christopher D.. Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment: In Beyond Retribution, Christopher Marshall explores the New Testament for teaching on crime and justice. He first explores the problems involved in applying ethical teachings from the New Testament to mainstream society. He then surveys the extent to which the New Testament addresses criminal justice issues, looking in particular at the concept of the justice of God in the teachings of Paul and Jesus. He also examines the topic of punishment, reviewing the debate in social thinking over the ethics and purpose of punishment-including capital punishment-and he advocates a new concept of "restorative punishment." The result of this engaging work is a biblically based challenge to imitate the way of Christ in dealing with both victims and offenders

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Navigation More Rooms Work Place Family Room Community Centre Class Room Chapel Pew Biblical Justice and Restorative Justice Faith Communities and Restorative Justice Victims and Faith Offenders and Faith Bible Studies and Meditations on Biblical Themes Sermons on Restorative Justice Living Restoratively Denominational Resources Peace Commission	Info Biblical Justice and Restorative Justice The Bible was a source of inspiration for many who constructed the institutions of contemporary criminal justice. It was also a resource for some of the early practitioners of restorative justice. Its influence on both groups continues. The following articles examine the relationship between biblical justice and restorative justice. A chance to heal unholy wounds from Bronwyn Pike's article in the National Times: For many years, religious organisations have grappled with the need to improve the ways they deal with abusive behaviour by their own clergy. In my previous role as director of social justice in the Uniting Church during the 1990s, I worked with my colleagues to develop sexual abuse complaints procedures. In that task I gained an appreciation of just how challenging and complex this issue can be. The measure with which we measure from the article by Andrew Skotnicki in Baylor's Christian Reflections issue on Prison: The decisive factor in overturning not only the ordeal, but the fear of Christians to will the punishment of others, was the inauguration of systems of law—first canon law which began its development in the late eleventh century and, in its wake, secular legal systems. With this epic turning of the moral tide, a third factor was brought into the equation of viewing human weakness: an offense was not only an affront to God and to the victim, it was also an affront to the law. In light of this legal revolution, perhaps the most influential revolution in Western history, the meaning of human acts against their fellows took on a new appellation and gravity. They were not only sins that required forgiveness by a priest in confession, they were also crimes, and the offender had to be punished because he or she had broken the law. Christian critiques of the penal system from the article by L. Lynette Parker in Baylor's Christian Reflections issue on Prison: ....While approaching the issues from different theological and philosophical traditions, the above authors nevertheless agree on the problems with contemporary criminal justice and together begin to trace the outlines of a solution. The problems: institutional forces benefit from a destructive status quo; the public view of prisoners makes citizens indifferent to their plight; and an emphasis on individual responsibility fails to take seriously the systemic injustice that prisoners face. The solutions: remember that prisoners, too, are made in the image of God; address the systemic causes of crime; and learn to love the people touched by crime. Doing justice honourably From Janet Sim Elder's post on Per Crucem ad Lucem: A crucial question in this election year is how do we do justice honourably with both victims and offenders? How can recidivism continue downwards and how do public attitudes change to being solidly evidence-based? How do we face the challenge of changing the justice landscape? Can we provide the moral courage to help our society take steps towards a more just and merciful society? Forgiveness scholar opens up on role of faith from Francis X. Rocca's article in The Christian Century: Today, at least 1,000 academic researchers and "countless therapists" specialize in forgiveness studies, Enright said, but at the time, a library search turned up not a single piece of scholarship on the subject in any of the social sciences. Enright found himself drawn to the area and began leading a seminar on forgiveness at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he was a tenured professor. Among the assigned readings for the seminar were selections from the scriptures of various religious traditions. Those texts raised questions that led Enright back to back to Christianity: first to what he describes as a liberal Methodist church, then to an evangelical Protestant congregation, and finally back to Catholicism. Peace Studies programmes from the entry on PCPJ Blog: Michael Westmoreland-White compiled this.... As a service, I thought I would list all the U.S. colleges and universities that have programs with names like “peace studies,” “peace and global studies,” “peacebuilding and conflict resolution studies,” etc. I found there were enough that I decided just to list the church-related ones and do the others in a separate post. Typically, such programs are multi-disciplinary involving faculty from several departments including international studies, history, philosophy, religious studies, international law, economic development, and/or political science or sociology. The earliest such programs in the U.S. were in institutions related to the “historic peace churches” (Mennonites, Church of the Brethren, and Friends/Quakers), but it has spread beyond them. A justice that reconciles -- new study guide from Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand Harris,Scott. Learning to Live with Evil. N.T Wright’s latest book, Evil and the Justice of God, is an invitation to the Christian community at large to revisit the problem of evil. As a response to his own theological journey as well as the relatively recent barrage of international examples of evil, Wright enters into an open-ended academic dialogue wherein he tables his own well-reasoned reflections on the topic. More importantly, though, the pastoral quality of his writing solicits various potentially broader audiences to consider, for themselves, whether evil is real and how scripture informs our understanding and response to the issue. He proposes both a renewed Christian rubric for understanding and talking about evil and teases out the implications for Christian action in three areas. Turner, Martin. David -- Restored at a Cost. This sermon uses 2 Samuel 12:1-25 to discuss the consequences of harmful actions and the difficulties of restoration. Hough, Katherine Lorelle. Restorative Justice and Restorative Theology: A Dialogue. This paper explores restorative justice in criminal law and proposes a restorative theology for Christianity. It focuses on the process and practice of restorative in each discipline, noting the similarities, disparities, and where one discipline might borrow, with integrity, from the other. (author's abstract) James Samuel Logan. Good Punishment? Christian Moral Practice and U.S. Imprisonment "...this book will suggest that a Christian social ethics of "good punishment" focused on the contemporary United States practice of imprisonment can be developed through a re/constructive critique of the "Anabaptist Methodist" Stanley Hauerwas's theological ethics of punishment. To focus Christian social ethics on the contemporary United States practice of imprisonment, which is now employed on an unprecedented scale, is to foreground a major obstacle to the transformation and restoration of offenders in community as well as society at large. An assumption underlying the effort that follows is that incapacitating and controlling socially destructive persons is a legitimate social aim for any society wishing to preserve itself. Indeed, it would be naive to deny that in a highly complex society at least some minimum system of justice is necessary. This includes police, courts, and other institutions set up to adjudicate justice claims whenever some fair distribution of goods and/or rights has been "criminally" disrupted. In addition, society must continually secure effective ways of addressing criminal breaches of responsibility that threaten the cohesion of the nation. Central to Christian perspectives on criminal justice is the requirement of discerning the difference Jesus makes for Christian participation in society's understanding and carrying out of punishment. Christian must continually struggle with how best to embrace the praxis of criminal justice while demonstrating a politics of better hope for society. This better hope should connect the Christian worship of God to a radically reconfigured reality of justice ushered into human history by God's self-unveiled love and justice in the person of Jesus Christ." (excerpt) Clapsis, Emmanuel. Violence and Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Conversation "What is the relationship of our Christian faith to the violence we see in the world? How do we respond to violence in a manner that is rooted in our faith and our relationship to God? In this relationship with a God of peace and justice, how do we experience peace and justice in our own lives and labour so that they may be realised in the lives of others, in our communities, and in our world? These are some of the questions addressed by a number of theologians and lay people from different Christian traditions when they met in 2005 for an ecumenical conversation on Violence and Christian Spirituality. Edited by the Orthodox theologian, Fr. Emmanuel Clapsis, their papers cover issues such as Christian witness in overcoming violence, including reference to the World Council of Churches' Decade to Oversome Violence (2001-2010), the churches; response to domestic violence, religious freedom and human rights, and contributions towards an ecumenical spirituality for a culture of peace." (Editor's Abstract) Townsend, Christopher . An eye for an eye? the morality of punishment. The moral foundation of punishment is a problematic issue which has prompted several competing views. A biblical perspective is anchored in the principle of retribution: punishment is deserved in proportion to the seriousness of an offence. However, the biblical endorsement of retribution is qualified and carefully nuanced. The fundamental aim is not to inflict suffering on offenders but to reassert the existence of the moral order that governs human life. That moral order emphasises the connections between justice, right relationships and seeking after community well-being. For this reason, punishment should normally aim both at making reparation to victims and at restoring offenders into the community. Taken together these priorities highlight shortcomings in our criminal justice system and suggest directions for reform. (excerpt) Schluter, Michael . How to create a relational society: Foundations for a new social order In an earlier Cambridge Paper (September 2006), a biblical ‘Charter for Humanity' was proposed within a ‘relational framework'. This second paper seeks to answer the question, ‘How do we move towards relational well-being?' The place where the Bible sets out the foundations required to create a society of right relationships in terms of structures, resources and processes is primarily in the law which God gives to Israel when it is first established as a nation. The paper explores how these institutional norms, as deepened and extended by the rest of biblical teaching, provide the basis for social transformation today. (excerpt) Smith, Patrick J.. A Method for the Maddness: Restorative Justice as a Valid Mode of Punishment and an Advancement of Catholic Social Thought. Part I of this article will discuss the traditional justifications of punishment and their comparative strengths and weaknesses. Part II will then explore a relatively new approach to punishment known as restorative justice, analyze to what extent it is justified by traditional concepts of punishment, and examine its compatibility with principles of Catholic Social Thought. (excerpt) Manley-Tannis, Richard. Faith Based Mediation: A Discussion. Contemporary mediation within our Western context is perceived as something that is new or innovative. The birth of the current model, and the ADR field in general, can be pinpointed to the late 1970s and early 1980s. This was a time when the need for alternatives to the existing judicial mechanisms was increasing due to overload and the realization that the equity of the system was often over-shadowed by procedure and form. What has been lost, however, or has remained on the periphery of most discussions, is that mediation has an ancient divine origin. To discern this ancestry, therefore, as the Midrash story goes, the image of God as present in the mud with us offers a humbling, yet invigorating, reminder that our creative sense does not exist in isolation. Mediation has been and is a metaphor of the potential of our own transformative relationship with one another and in turn with God. (excerpt) Winter, Bruce. Punishment as Remedy Bruce Winter is a scholar of early Christianity in the Greek and Roman worlds. In this article he reflects on a what a Christian vision of punishment looked like at the time of the early church, in contrast to the practice of imprisonment in the Roman world. Winter begins with a sketch of the nature and use of imprisonment in the Roman world before and at the time of the early church. This leads to a discussion of principles from the apostle Paul’s letters that provide a basis to reflect on the purpose of punishment. Winter concludes from Paul’s letters that punishment is not to be an end in itself; it is meant to achieve a purpose. Specifically, punishment within the Christian community is meant to be remedial for the offender and for the community. In this perspective, the ultimate intention or aim is to restore fractured relationships Claassen, Ron. A Peacemaking Model: A Biblical Perspective Building upon his prior paper – “A Peacemaking Model" – Ron Claassen extends his development of a peacemaking model for dealing with conflict, wrongdoing, injustice, and violence. He notes at the outset several key words in this model: peace-shalom; love-agape; forgiveness; confession; atonement; repentance; and trust. These words are used in both the faith and the secular worlds, but with a variety of meanings. One of Claassen’s strategies then in this paper is to use stories and traditions from his faith tradition (he identifies himself as a Christian-Anabaptist-Mennonite) to help clarify his understanding and use of each idea. His overall aim is that this peacemaking model and article will contribute to a dialogue regarding restorative justice in communities. Bulmer, Garth. Restorative Justice: A Reflection of the Reign of Christ In this sermon, the Reverend Canon Garth Bulmer reflects on restorative justice and Restorative Justice Week, beginning with his own experience as a prison chaplain as a young man. That experience changed his life and shaped his ministry. Thus he considers in brief the nature of restorative justice; issues and problems related to the use of incarceration; restorative justice and liberty, equality, and fraternity; circles of support and accountability; and restorative justice as a contemporary model of the reign of Christ. Marshall, Christopher D.. Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment In Beyond Retribution, Christopher Marshall explores the New Testament for teaching on crime and justice. He first explores the problems involved in applying ethical teachings from the New Testament to mainstream society. He then surveys the extent to which the New Testament addresses criminal justice issues, looking in particular at the concept of the justice of God in the teachings of Paul and Jesus. He also examines the topic of punishment, reviewing the debate in social thinking over the ethics and purpose of punishment-including capital punishment-and he advocates a new concept of "restorative punishment." The result of this engaging work is a biblically based challenge to imitate the way of Christ in dealing with both victims and offenders Next 20 items » [1] 2 3 Document Actions RSS feed Send this Print this	Africa Asia Europe Latin America Middle East North America and Caribbean Pacific Search 10528 publications on restorative justice Recent RJOB Comments conference May 07, 2012 conference May 07, 2012 Agreement to participate May 04, 2012 More… Slide Show: What is Restorative Justice Click to view a slideshow discussing the definition of restorative justice. Apr 25, 2012 Sycamore Tree Programme from Prison Fellowship England and Wales Apr 13, 2012 PF Swaziland volunteer brings victims and offenders together Apr 13, 2012 PF Nicaragua providing legal services for prisoners Mar 12, 2012 Restoring Peace Feb 29, 2012 Sycamore Tree Project® from a Victim’s Perspective