Crime, violence and the rhetoric of salvation, Timothy Gorringe, Cambridge University Press, 1996, 280 pages
An excerpt:
“This book examines the relationship between the theologies of atonement and penal strategies.” is the description from the inside cover. Its theme is “[t]he question of theimpact of religious sensibilities, or the structure of affect surrounding the crucifixion, on penal practice, and the correlative effects of the development of criminal law on the understandings of the atonement…” Publication of such a book is highly significant to Western readers and all cultures impacted by the West, given the dominance of Christian ideology upon criminal justice practice for a millennium. “…Christian theology constituted the most potent form of ideology in Western society for at least a thousand years, up to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and its ideological importance is by no means dead (p. 7).”
Wayne Northey was Director of Man-to-Man/Woman-to-Woman – Restorative Christian Ministries (M2/W2) in British Columbia, Canada from 1998 to 2014, when he retired. He has been active in the criminal justice arena and a keen promoter of Restorative Justice since 1974. He has published widely on peacemaking and justice themes. You will find more about that on this website: a work in progress.
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