From here:

You can’t reconcile being pro-life on abortion and pro-death on the death penalty. Almost all the early Christian Fathers were opposed to the death penalty, even though it was of course standard practice across the ancient world. As far as they were concerned, their stance went along with the traditional ancient Jewish and Christian belief in life as a gift from God, which is why (for instance) they refused to follow the ubiquitous pagan practice of ‘exposing’ baby girls (i.e. leaving them out for the wolves or for slave-traders to pick up).

Mind you, there is in my view just as illogical a position on the part of those who solidly oppose the death penalty but are very keen on the ‘right’ of a woman (or couple) to kill their conceived but not yet born child…

From where many of us in the UK sit, American politics is hopelessly polarized. All kinds of issues get bundled up into two great heaps. The rest of the world, today and across the centuries, simply doesn’t see things in this horribly oversimplified way…

While we’re about it, how many folk out there were deeply moved both by the reading of the 9/11 victim names and by the thought that if they’d read the names of Iraqi civilians killed by your country and mine over the last ten years we’d have been there for several days?

To summarise:

1. The execution by the state of a person guilty of the crime of murder is equivalent to the killing of an innocent baby for the sake of convenience. Therefore, the only consistent position is a polarized one where either abortion and capital punishment are both permitted or neither are permitted.
2. The polarization of American politics is all wrong – except for point 1 above where it is obligatory because it is the Wright kind of polarization.
3. If you are moved by remembering the deliberate murder of 3000 of your own countrymen, you must be equally moved by the wartime deaths of enemy civilians, even though you tried your best to minimise such casualties. This may appear to be a yet another polarized viewpoint, but it’s fine since it is an example of a number of issues piled into one great Wright-approved heap, not two.
4. The rest of the world isn’t deceived by American Horrible Simplifications. That’s why, for example, UK sophisticates riot at the slightest pretext, routinely indulge in binge drinking and erect sharia controlled zones  –  all horrible, but at lease not horrible simplifications.

I get the impression that N. T. Wright doesn’t much like America; oops – that’s another hopelessly polarized opinion.