1 Corinthians 6:12–20
The reading from 1 Corinthians this week at first glance seems not to have much to do with abolition — but perhaps there is a liberating truth under the (difficult) surface.
First, though, it is important to name the harm done by this passage, and particularly its problematic treatment of sex workers. Paul filters what it means in practice for our spirits to be united to the Lord (6:17) through his particular cultural and personal opinions about sexual ethics. (Thanks to Rev. Lura Groen for this insight.)
But nonetheless his emphasis on bodies is instructive. Bodies do not only have to do with sex, but with the importance of material realities. If our bodies are made members of Christ (6:15) then the liberation of Christ is intended for our bodies, not only for our souls. This is an essential insight in resistance against the carceral state which derives its power from perceived control over bodies — both physical and social ones. Perhaps the most central concept in doing Christian theology for abolition is that we should not unite our bodies to the carceral state, but that instead we should live out in practice now, with our physical bodies and social bodies, the liberation that we believe Christ has already accomplished for our souls and for the entire creation at the end of history. As Wesley Spears-Newsome wrote last week, we should understand ourselves entirely baptized, not reserving some part of us for the service of empire — or of prisons.
Paul does not only use the language of sex here in relation to bodies, but also the language of food: “[You say] ‘food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.’” We might paraphrase that, in light of our concern for abolition, in terms of justice: “You say ‘the prison is meant for justice, and justice for the prison’ — and God will destroy both one and the other.” But in truth “God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.” The reality of resurrection life is the reality of a justice which leaves no place for prisons, neither here nor in the world to come. God has raised us, our physical and social bodies, to the new life of union with the risen body of Christ. We are members of the liberated social reality of Christ’s body.
A final important concept in an abolitionist reading of this passage is the idea in 6:20 of being “bought with a price,” a reference (as Lee Griffith and André Trocmé have written at length) to God’s role as the “kinsman-redeemer” for God’s people, the one who pays the ransom to liberate them from captivity. God, as kinsman-redeemer, pays the bond to free every one of God’s people. We are “not our own” to rededicate ourselves to carcerality, but are instead committed to the work of abolition that God has started in us. I want to also call out here that this language of bondage, that we are “not our own” in relation to God, remains problematic! But again, I hope that perhaps there is a liberating truth to be uncovered under Paul’s perspective. What I would emphasize here is our own personal commitment to the liberation God has given us, and to the idea of God’s paying of ransom for us as a liberation that has real concrete consequences for how we act. The way we “glorify God in our bodies,” the way we construct our material realities toward liberation, is a response to the liberation accomplished by God who “bought us with a price.”
God has made liberation real, but we are the ones with bodies to put it into practice. The way we use our bodies and the way we construct our social bodies make bodily present the promise of abolition begun by God.
Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons.