Month: April 2021

1 John 4:7–21, John 15:1–8

Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. (John 15:6)

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. (1 John 4:18)

The chief objection I hear to abolition is rooted in consequences, particularly fear of imagined consequences. What will happen if we don’t have police? What will happen if we don’t have prisons? What will happen if we don’t put children in cages and incarcerate migrants? The unspoken bit of these questions is an assumption rooted in fear — and frequently bigotry toward people of color. The objector’s imagination conjures a lawless world full of unrestrained vagabonds and nerdowells. Punishment is the only barrier between us and this chaotic, dangerous world. 

The first letter of John says that such a mindset is rooted in fear rather than love. The author urges us to pursue lives rooted in the abiding love of God. This love is the very essence of God, it is who God is. With love grounding our lives and beings, we ought to love one another. Anything that falls short of that mutual love is not of God and it does not come from God. 

The carceral system and the police state of the United States of America, whether applied to citizens or non-citizens, is hardly based in love. If perfect love casts out fear, as the author suggests, there is no love at all in such a system. It is entirely based on fear and punishment, precisely the sort of thing Scripture warns us against. 

We should be far more afraid of the consequences of failing to abide in the love of God than we are afraid of what a police-free and prison-free world looks like. John’s Gospel makes that clear enough. Affording to John, Jesus claims that God will remove the branches that do not bear the fruit of the love of God. And branches that do not abide in the love described here and in 1 John, Jesus says “such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” Such divine consequences are a much greater cause of concern than the distorted imaginations that conjure caricatural nightmares of crime and violence as a result of abolition. 

If we must talk about the consequences of abolition, however, we should return to 1 John. Here, the author promises that if we love one another that God will live in us and that the love of God will be perfected in us. We should let our imaginations run wild with what that could mean. A world where abolition has succeeded is a world where we love one another, and a world where God will live in us. This world is one of abundance and peace, and what could be a better consequence than that? 

Indeed, what will happen if we don’t have police? What will happen if we don’t have prisons? 

Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his)is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina. You can find more of his work at wespearsnewsome.com.

1 John 3:16–24

This passage from 1 John — and indeed, the whole letter — offers a wealth of resources for directing our attention to the needs of those who are incarcerated.

The author writes: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”

As we develop relationships of solidarity with those who are incarcerated or criminalized, we see them as our siblings in the human family: we see our siblings in need. The question posed here in 1 John is posed for us allies on the outside, we who have freedom and “the world’s goods,” in relation to the needs we see of those we know who are incarcerated: How does God’s love abide in us who see our incarcerated siblings in need and yet refuse help?

In the anthology Thinking Theologically About Mass Incarceration, Benjamin Hartley, Glen Alton Messer II, and Kirsten Sonkyo Oh write from a Wesleyan perspective about the centrality of prisoner support to Christian life: “We believe that the health of the whole Christian community is measured by its love of prisoners; loving the prisoner was and is constitutive of Wesleyan discipleship…Not everyone will be able to focus as much as the Wesley brothers did on prison ministry, but if one is not seeking out ways to love those who are imprisoned — directly or indirectly even in small ways — or is not active in encouraging those who do so, then we must at least ask if we are taking the demands of Christian discipleship seriously” (231). Visiting the prisoner is for everybody. As we might phrase it here, the work of abolition — the work of “changing everything,” as Ruth Wilson Gilmore puts it, to allow for a world without prisons — is for everybody, and is work that every Christian is called to do. Abolition is “love in truth and action.” There are a variety of ways to get involved! We offer some possibilities for framing your imagination of how to get involved:

But every single Christian is called to do something to love prisoners. The work of abolition and prisoner support is “love in truth and action.”

The authors continue: “We readily acknowledge that most of us fall short of the mark; it is easy to point out all the ways we are not loving prisoners” (231). Here is where 1 John provides comfort: the author reminds us that when our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts. God is already in every prison, in loving solidarity with all who are incarcerated. Whatever work we take on to love prisoners, we are following God who goes before us. In every way we fail, when our hearts condemn us because of the ongoing brutal realities of incarceration and police and state violence in our society, we know that God is greater than our hearts and God is going before us. Our love in truth and action is following in the path of God’s love: the loving power of God that will set all the prisoners free.

Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for Abolition.

Citations from “‘Get on the Cart!’ Wesleyan Discipleship in an Age of Endemic Incarceration” in Thinking Theologically About Mass Incarceration, ed. Antonios Kireopoulos, Mitzi J. Budde, and Matthew D. Lundberg. New York: Paulist Press, 2017.

Luke 24:36b–48

In Luke 24:36b-48 Jesus appears before the apostles, showing off his flesh and bones, his scars, eating and dining — revealing his resurrected humanity to them.

Toward the end of this section Jesus turns to scripture. He instructs them to consider the law, the psalms, the prophets, “all that has been written,” about the Messiah. In opening their minds to understand the scripture, the author of Luke highlights that Jesus said to them 

“Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day…”

Jesus’ suffering is on highlight. The promise of resurrection is before them, but Jesus makes it clear we not forget about the suffering. In the mix of celebrating Easter for a third Sunday, we are mourning the loss of another Black person at the hands of cruel, unnecessary, and evil state violence.

Jesus reminds us that we can hold these realities in tension. This is a reminder that Jesus is in solidarity with the suffering. It’s a reminder that state violence will lose, through the power of Christ, without overlooking the suffering of those being oppressed. For Christians in the United States, it is a reminder that Christ will prevail over prisons, policing, and the legal system that enables and encourages racist violence and oppression. Christ will prevail. God be with us.

Mitchell Atencio is a discalced writer and photographer in Washington, D.C.

John 20:19–31

Thomas was not with the twelve when Jesus first appeared and he didn’t believe them. He wanted to see something more. It is reasonable to want to see something more. Earlier in chapter 20 of John’s Gospel, Peter and John go to the empty tomb but they don’t understand it. Thomas is not wrong. People don’t just come back from the dead. We do not expect it to happen today nor did they 2000 years ago. Let’s say that you read about an old, high school friend who passed away. Let’s imagine a pre-COVID world where you were able to attend the funeral and grieve in your own way. And then, two weeks later, you hear that this same friend was out getting a bite to eat. You should be incredulous about this news. It is not expected. The analogy falls apart fairly quickly, but the point is that we should not be shocked by Thomas and by a desire for confirmation about strange and unexpected news. Miracles like this do not normally happen. 

In our world today, to paraphrase Fredric Jameson, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of prisons. The vast majority of my congregation and Christians in this country and this world have yet to truly imagine an end to the carceral state. It is the way of the world. Its existence is like the reality that people just don’t come back from the dead. 

Easter, though, changes our expectations about what is possible. What is impossible for humans is possible for God. If Christ is risen from the grave, the status quo is not our ruler. What has been is not what always will be. A world without prisons can be imagined within the scope of God’s promise and God’s power. The question for the church today is how far does the good news go? Does go all the way to the structures of society or does it just stop at our comfort level? God is much more concerned with transforming lives than with maintaining the comfortable. 

But what can we do in a world of Thomases who have never dreamed of the possibility that setting the captives free means all of them? We should speak like Jesus: directly, purposefully. Jesus doesn’t leave Thomas behind but brings him along. In this season of Easter, the church has chance to claim how much it believes. Abolition is a faith claim. Abolition is a resurrection claim.

Wilson Pruitt is a Methodist pastor and translator in Spicewood, TX.