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.