Ephesians 4:1-16, a reading from this week’s lectionary, is full of abolition-adjacent imagery. Paul calls himself “the prisoner in the Lord,” he quotes scriptures declaring “he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.” And he alludes to the ascension and descension of Christ.
But it’s the imagery of the body, Christ’s body, that is perhaps most compelling to me in this moment. “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”
It is the declaration that Christ is above all, through all, and in all, that ought to compel us as Christians and abolitionists. Where others see outcasts, we are to see Christ, and ourselves. Where others drive to division and dissension, we see that we are connected. And we understand that this connection is not a false harmony built on centrism, but instead a declaration of our mutual benefit when we live together under the Lord.
“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All [people] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny,” Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
“Abolition is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions,” abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore declared.
It is my hope that we will take this lesson and seek to better love and care for those imprisoned, as we are intimately connected and dependent on them, through Christ, and through our commitments to God.
Mitchell Atencio (he/him/his) is a discalced writer and photographer in Washington, D.C.
There are atheisms of the mind and atheisms of heart. The psalmist points to atheisms of the heart. “Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good.” We see quickly what is implied by an atheism of the heart: doing abominable deeds, going astray. Christians in the United States have focused so much energy on atheism of the mind that we have lost sight of the atheism of the heart. This is especially clear in the relationship between the Church and the Prison Industrial Complex. The Church has been complicit in narratives of “good guys” and “bad guys” that ignore the teachings of Jesus and Scripture around the image of God, reconciliation, conversion, and the possibility of justice and righteousness here and now.
The justice of God is not found in punishment. Jesus never said, “well, he got what was coming to him.” And yet the complacency with the reality of sin that is our contemporary system of Justice echoes the words of the Psalmist: “fools say in their heart, ‘there is no God.’” This is what we say by ignoring injustice. This is what we say by turning from the sins of which we are complicit.
Psalm 14 does not end with its powerful first words but reminds us that God is not a bystander in the ways we treat others. “You would confound the plans of the poor, but the LORD is their refuge.” No matter what we say in our hearts, God is the refuge of those who are spurned by society. No matter what we do with our actions, God is the deliverer who will restore true justice. Where do we hope to be? Whose side do we hope to be on?
Rev. Wilson Pruitt is a Methodist pastor and translator in Spicewood, TX.
The second chapter of Ephesians is one of my favorite passages in the New Testament because it provides an alternative framework to how I’d often heard the work of Jesus characterized. The writer takes on a metaphor of citizenship to explain salvation rather than a metaphor of retribution. “Remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,” they write, “and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (v. 12). The letter continues, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God” (v.19). The foundation of God’s salvific work is in what we today call might amnesty, the granting of citizenship regardless of status under existing legal frameworks.
While I’ve found this passage illuminating in work concerning migrants and the immigration system in the United States, it applies equally well to the carceral system in my country. Preaching about our salvation through the lens provided in Ephesians 2 rather than various metaphors that use retribution and punishment as their base can help us provoke our imaginations when it comes to the prison system and conceiving of its abolition.
Often, when Christians speak of the role of Jesus, they do so in terms (consciously or unconsciously) of a punishment avoided. Salvation is not about the construction of a new world and new relationships, but of Jesus absorbing the punishment we deserved. Penal substitutionary atonement theory certainly has some strong roots in the New Testament (e.g., Romans 3), but it is far from the only biblical metaphor to explain the work of Jesus. Additionally, speaking constantly and exclusively in these terms bolsters our (again, conscious or unconscious) support of systems of incarceration. Penal substitution elevates a retributive theory of justice, which (along with white supremacy) is at the heart of justification for the American penal system. Ephesians elevates a different way of speaking.
The author mixes a few metaphors, one of citizenship and one of architecture. In the first, in salvation, Jesus provides a legal status that was not afforded to us under the existing law. We become citizens not through existing provisions, but by the “amnesty of grace” (a phrase borrowed from theologian Elsa Tamez). If our own salvation depends on rejecting legal frameworks and overturning the existing system, how might imagining the abolition of prisons become more reflexive and natural for us?
The second metaphor is one of architecture. God’s work in Jesus destroys and builds—it destroys the wall that divides citizens and non-citizens and rebuilds a structure that is a “dwelling place for God,” in its place. In the United States, the prison system often strips people of many of their rights as citizens, creating a “dividing wall” between people who have endured the caceral system and those who have not. If our own salvation depended on the destruction of these kinds of walls, again, how might imagining the abolition of prisons become easier for Christians? Further, salvation does not simply destroy (or abolish, a term Ephesians even uses in the NRSV) the systems that create “the hostility between us”, salvation requires the building of something new. In Ephesians’ vision of salvation, our relationships are righted and we are “built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” Many Christians conceive of their salvation individually, but the author of Ephesians resists that impulse. Instead, our salvation results in a righted arrangement of our relationships with one another. The prison industrial complex consistently and persistently disrupts our relationships with one another and actively dehumanizes those within its walls. Such a system is diametrically opposed to Christian salvation as conceived in Ephesians (as opposed to receiving some support through a penal substitution metaphor). How much easier would it be to bring Christians to the gospel of abolition if we actively spoke of salvation, justification, and grace as Ephesians does from our own pulpits?
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.
This week’s gospel from Mark, a flashback to the murder of John the Baptist, provides a complex picture of pain wrapped up in death at the hands of political power. The story of the murder of John the Baptist sets John against kings and those that influence kings, and in equal measure, people willing to use manipulation to commit grievous acts. The ultimate killer of John the Baptist is tangled up in layers upon layers of relationship, muddying the water of guilt so much so that guilt touches everyone involved. Years later, as evidenced by the flashback, John the Baptist’s death haunts Herod so much so that the stories of Jesus shame him with the decision he made to kill a prophet.
Ironically, the person in prison – John – is not the person in the story committing murder, an important feature of the story that can call us to remember the “crimes” of those imprisoned versus the criminal actions of those who, on the “outside,” determine their fate. While King Herod fears John, he fears John because John spoke the truth to him. Again, it is John – the imprisoned – who names that King Herod’s actions are not lawful, a voice of truth coming from behind the proverbial bars to incriminate power. The fate of John – death at the hands of a King who pleases the people inside his ear – is not unlike the fate of imprisoned people who, even in speaking truth, are only further incriminated and forbidden the freedom offered to the people on the “outside.” The people of power who hold them captive are often able to engage in criminal activity, because it comes from a place of unjust power that serves to preserve their own freedom.
Aside from the obvious power dynamics at play between King Herod and John, this gospel text also calls to mind the dire decisions that can be made when power concedes to people pleasing and manipulation. King Herod has somewhat of a respect for John, and the gospel notes that he knew “he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him.” However, whatever affection he had for John is rendered useless when Herod feels bound to an oath to Herodias, an oath specifically made out of old grudges that, again, are based only in John’s propensity to tell the truth. Even as King Herod is “deeply grieved” he continues with his action of holding to an oath born out of a grudge, rather than care for the life of a one who he believed was a righteous and holy man. In this specific dynamic of the gospel we are shown with startling clarity the cost to human life and dignity that is paid when power pleases the voice of the people, the voice of the masses, with an oath to preserving the grudges of humans over truth professed by prophets. King Herod serves as a reminder of what happens when politics and the highest givers allow their grudges to become death sentences for the very people who, like John, are left to the fate of kings more occupied with their standing in the public square than to their oath to serve anything resembling the justice of God.
Abolition requires the acknowledgement of these dynamics in our world and a resistance to the ways we might feel called to people please. If we live as King Herod, with the voices of grudges in our heads speaking against human dignity, then we have aligned ourselves with injustice and, in time, we will face the same haunting memories of the ways we silenced prophetic voices in service to our own power.
Erin Jean Warde (she/her/hers) is a priest, writer, spiritual director, and recovery coach in Austin, TX with more writing at www.erinjeanwarde.com.
