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Life and Death Matters NewSouth Books A white Southerner from a middle-class family, physician Robert Baldwin inherited an outlook on race and criminal justice typical of his segregated society, but gradually began to question these assumptions. Challenged in a public policy class to examine the issues surrounding capital punishment, Baldwin found his views indefensible. The more he learned about inequalities within the criminal justice system, the more he felt compelled to act. A confrontation with his own mortality and his deepening spiritual development led Baldwin into death row ministry. Today, he visits with inmates and teaches people on the outside about the myths and misconceptions about prisons and criminal justice. Baldwin’s memoir details his remarkable spiritual journey from supporter to opponent of the death penalty. In a conversational, first-person style, he lays out the argument against the death penalty, including racial bias in convictions and sentencing, and the debate over rehabilitation versus punishment. Baldwin approaches his topic from a declared Christian perspective, and he often addresses himself directly to other Christians, but his book is thoughtful and provocative and will prove enlightening to persons of all faiths.
Reviews “Robert Baldwin’s book is a timely and valuable examination of the death penalty and the issues it generates. At a moment when there is a tremendous need for reform of sentencing and capital punishment, this book has much to offer.” “This book is the culmination of Baldwin’s personal odyssey into a rigorous, faith-based public policy analysis of capital punishment. He not only provides the reader with a fact-based, faith-guided critique of capital punishment but does so in a personal and engaging manner which enhances the argument he passionately advocates. Every reader, regardless of faith perspective or present policy position, will gain from reading this important contribution to our national debate.” “Life and Death Matters interrogates each argument for capital punishment in the United States, and dismembers it, not with fiery polemic, but by inviting us into the intensely human story of Baldwin’s own journey to transformation. He has lived all his life in the American South, with its interwoven strands of gentility and violence, faith and fear, sentiment and prejudice. With a disarming honesty about his own early complicity in the racial and retributive pathologies of his people, Baldwin writes with a non-judging spirit and an acute understanding of those he seeks to persuade.” “Here is a story of one man’s journey related to capital punishment that is sure to strike a chord in many of our hearts and minds. Robert Baldwin gives us a modern Pilgrim’s Progress. In Robert’s story, I see the hand of a gracious God who leads a person into a new, gracious reality. This is a quite wonderful testimony of one man’s walk with God toward more abundant life.”
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