page_title: Blood atonement
section_title: "Blood for blood" doctrine and retributive capital punishment
hierarchical_section_title: Blood atonement / Historical and doctrinal background / "Blood for blood" doctrine and retributive capital punishment
caption_attribution_description: English: Last Public Address of Lieut. Gen. Joseph Smith, after John Hafen (1856-1910), no date, original 1888. Albumen silver print of a lithograph. Graphic Arts Collection. GA 2012
context_page_description: Blood atonement is a disputed doctrine in the history of Mormonism, under which the atonement of Jesus alone does not redeem the eternal sin. Instead, to atone for this sin, the sinner should be killed in a way that allows his blood to be shed upon the ground as a sacrificial offering, so he does not become a son of perdition. The largest Mormon denomination, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has denied the doctrine since 1889, with early church leaders referring to it as a "fiction" and later church leaders referring to it as a "theoretical principle" that had never been implemented in the LDS Church.
  The doctrine arose among early Mormon leaders and it was significantly promoted during the Mormon Reformation, when Brigham Young governed the Utah Territory as a near-theocracy. Sins that Young and other members of his First Presidency mentioned as meriting blood atonement, since they fall under the category of the eternal sin, included apostasy, theft, fornication, and adultery.
  Young taught that sinners should voluntarily choose to practice the doctrine, but he also taught that it should only be enforced by a complete theocracy.
context_section_description: Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, was a strong proponent of capital punishment, and favored execution methods that involved the shedding of blood as retribution for crimes of bloodshed. In 1843, he or his scribe commented that the common execution method in Christian nations was hanging, "instead of blood for blood according to the law of heaven." Years before making this remark, however, Smith was quoted as saying that the hanging of Judas Iscariot was not a suicide, but an execution carried out by Saint Peter. In a March 4, 1843 debate with church leader George A. Smith, who argued against capital punishment, Joseph Smith said that if he ever had the opportunity to enact a death penalty law, he "was opposed to hanging" the convict; rather, he would "shoot him, or cut off his head, spill his blood on the ground, and let the smoke thereof ascend up to God." In the church's April 6, 1843 general conference, Smith said he would "wring a thief's neck off if I can find him, if I cannot bring him to justice any other way." Sidney Rigdon, Smith's counselor in the First Presidency, also supported capital punishment involving the spilling of blood, stating, "There are men standing in your midst that you can't do anything with them but cut their throat and bury them." On the other hand, Smith was willing to tolerate the presence of men "as corrupt as the devil himself" in Nauvoo, Illinois, who "had been guilty of murder and robbery," in the chance that they might "come to the waters of baptism
  through repentance, and redeem a part of their allotted time."
  Brigham Young, Smith's successor in the LDS Church, initially held views on capital punishment similar to those of Smith. On January 27, 1845, he spoke approvingly of Smith's toleration of "corrupt men" in Nauvoo who were guilty of murder and robbery, on the chance that they might repent and be baptized. On the other hand, on February 25, 1846, after the Saints had left Nauvoo, Young threatened adherents who had stolen wagon cover strings and rail timber with having their throats cut "when they get out of the settlements where his orders could be executed." Later that year, Young gave orders that "when a man is found to be a thief,...cut his throat & thro' him in the River." Young also stated that decapitation of repeated sinners "is the law of God and it shall be executed." There are no documented instances, however, of such a sentence being carried out on the Mormon Trail.
  In the Salt Lake valley, Young acted as the executive authority while the Council of Fifty acted as a legislature. One of his main concerns in the early Mormon settlement was theft, and he swore that "a theif [sic] should not live in the Valley, for he would cut off their heads or be the means of having it done as the Lord lived." In Utah, there existed a law from 1851 to 1888 allowing persons convicted of murder to be executed by decapitation.
caption: Joseph Smith did not teach blood atonement, but taught a "blood for blood" law of God's retribution, stating that if he could enact a death penalty law, "I am opposed to hanging, even if a man kill another, I will shoot him, or cut off his head, spill his blood on the ground and let the smoke ascend thereof up to God ..."[26]
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