Author: Hannah

James 5:13–20

“Are any among you suffering? They should pray.” James 5:13

A consistent theme in this week’s lections is trust in God over and against other sources of security. Psalm 124 extols the saving power of God, claiming that death would have become Israel “if it had not been the LORD who was on our side” (v. 1, 2). One of the Old Testament readings sees the Israelites weeping at the lack of some foods, ignoring the manna right in front of them (Numbers 11:6). In the story from Mark’s Gospel, the disciples’ insecurities lead them to question others doing good deeds in Jesus’ name, instead of trusting in God’s power apart from them. In James, most of all, we have a litany of instances in which we should trust God. 

From the first commandment to this passage toward the end of the New Testament, Christian faith always involves trusting God. Carceral systems, however, do precisely the opposite. Particularly in the United States, the carceral system is an intricate and formidable complex of retributive punishment designed to keep us apart from one another. The prison-industrial complex, too, justifies this labyrinthine monstrosity with the claim that it keeps us safe. 

We could spend hours dissecting exactly how that claim is a lie. We could consider the destructive effect incarceration has on families and communities, demonstrating that it probably does more harm than good. We could wonder about the studies that show incarceration is associated with an increase in recidivism.[1] We could address the study that found sentencing someone to prison had “no effect on their chances of being convicted of a violent crime within five years of being released from prison.” We could question, too, how much money (tens of thousands of dollars per year) it costs to imprison someone compared to how much other methods of justice-seeking would cost. [2]

We could spend hours dissecting all those things to realize that “prisons make us safer” is a lie, but Christian faith shouldn’t even need to go that far. Any promise that pledges safety and security in exchange for brutalizing other human beings is not a promise of God. Instead, we should trust in God for what we need, not a sprawling profit-seeking industrial complex. Prison is an idol, one in which we cannot afford to place our trust. 

James puts forth a brief glimpse of a model of community justice. He proposes that when your sibling wanders from truth, that you bring them back (v. 19). You don’t hide them away in a capitalist’s modern plantation. You don’t inflict suffering on them, supposing that more injustice will right a wrong. No, you bring them back. And bringing them back “will cover a multitude of sins” (v. 20). 

Restorative justice and other models of justice-seeking are obviously more complex than two verses in James; however, many of the passages in the lectionary for this week propose an alternative starting point every Christian should consider. Trust in God for safety and justice, not prisons. 

[1] https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2021/04/19/prisons-dont-make-us-safe

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-prisons-make-us-safer/

Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his) is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina.

Mark 9:30–37

Jesus catches his disciples in the middle of an argument. He has just told them what is going to happen. He has just shared about his coming arrest and execution, but also how death will not contain him. They did not understand and began squabbling among themselves about who is the greatest. The disciples missed the point. They were focused on Jesus being a good teacher among other teachers. They wanted to position themselves in the school like kids focused on their class ranking before college. They think they are setting themselves up for important positions in the world when the world is about to be turned upside down and they have already been told this directly.
Jesus says, “whoever wants to be first must be last of all.” In this passage in Mark, Jesus uses the example of a child. A child was deemed unimportant by society. A child was forgotten, ignored until they came of age. Out of sight, out of mind. In our day, those suffering within the prison-industrial complex are out of sight, out of mind.

Since the days of Constantine, Christians have struggled with what to do with criminal justice in light of Jesus Christ. Justinian’s codes brought many systems together. Some rulers have taken Romans 13 to justify anything they want to do. Christians were a major part of the development of the modern prison system, many with the best of intentions. Each trying to show how great they are at reform or justice — or whichever phrase they wish to use. All of it seems a bit like arguing about who is the greatest after Jesus just spoke of resurrection. We miss the fact that the world has been turned upside down and God is calling us to live into a new reality. God is calling us to welcome even a child. God is calling us to welcome even those who are currently in prison. God is calling us to not jockey for position in a self-righteous crusade, but to serve and receive in light of resurrection.

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

Mark 8:27–38

In this famous passage from Mark’s gospel, Jesus first admits that he is the messiah — and then immediately declares his intention of solidarity with those who are criminalized.

Perhaps we are used to seeing Jesus’ injunction to “take up your cross” in more spiritualized terms, as a call to self-giving love or selflessness. Yet what Jesus is describing is his imminent imprisonment and execution. As Dr. Nikia Smith Robert puts it: “Jesus died a criminalized person — but transcended criminality on the cross.” It is the truth of his criminalization, conviction, punishment, and death, that causes Peter to rebuke him — solidarity with the incarcerated, perhaps, unpopular then as now. (You can read a deep dive on Robert’s “liberation theology for lockdown America” here.) Solidarity is dangerous, and powerful.

What does it open for us in the text to read this familiar line about “taking up the cross” in light of solidarity with incarcerated people? How might it help us resist the ways this notion has been used to promote “redemptive suffering,” especially for marginalized people? What if solidarity is the fundamental reality behind the words of Jesus that so many are “ashamed of” (Mark 8:38)?

This is the inversion of the gospel, the inversion of every sort of respectability politics and the insistence on divine solidarity with the criminalized, punished, incarcerated — whether innocent or guilty, likeable or not. Divine solidarity with those who are punished and imprisoned is the basis of Christian support of abolition and the shocking truth about the messiah.

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

Proverbs 22:1–2, 8–9, 22–23 and James 2:1–17

This week’s lectionary passages from Proverbs and James focus on God’s justice for the poor:

“Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the LORD pleads their cause and despoils of life those who despoil them” (Provers 22:22–23).

The rich and the poor have this in common: the LORD is the maker of them all” (Proverbs 22:2).

“My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?…You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors” (James 2:1, 8–9).

These passages condemn partiality against the poor, and reiterate that impartial justice, justice which avoids favoritism toward the rich, must look first to the needs of the poor. The reason that the church must live out a “preferential option for the poor” (in the terms of the Latin-American liberation theologians), is because the status quo, the system as it currently works, is stacked against the poor. Seeking impartial justice requires recognizing that the current power dynamics of our society will always treat the rich preferentially, and so nothing less than an option for the poor can avoid favoritism and truly treat rich and poor on equal terms.

This favoritism is evident in our criminal legal system. As Bryan Stevenson puts it, “We have a system of justice that treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent.” Mass incarceration is driven by what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls “organized abandonment followed by organized violence”: first, the “organized abandonment” of poor communities, in which the interests of state and capital collude to disinvest in those communities, “robbing the poor because they are poor and despoiling them at the gate.” Then, “organized violence” in the form of policing and prisons, which disproportionately target individuals in poor and marginalized communities, usually along racial lines. (This is what Chris Hayes describes as “a colony in a nation” in his book of the same name.) In other words, the “organized violence” of policing and prisons, targeted against poor communities, is the sort of “favoritism” and “partiality” the author of James condemns.

What these passages remind us is that the prison-industrial complex is not separable from (racial) capitalism — a connection made heartbreakingly clear this week as Hurricane Ida took out power in southern Louisiana and city governments and police rushed to prevent “looting,” protecting property, rather than meeting the needs of those affected by the disaster. This is what police are FOR. Abolition requires the questioning and restructuring of the ways our society is built to disenfranchise and disempower the poor.

Ada María Isasi-Díaz insists that the church’s option for the poor must not be described as “preferential” because “a preferential option is an oxymoron, for to prefer is not the same as to opt: the two are mutually exclusive.…When the moment of option comes, one opts for this, and in doing so one opts not for that. The option for the oppressed, as is true of all options, cannot be qualified…To claim to have a preferential option is a way of rejecting the demands of what it really means to opt for the oppressed and the impoverished” (in Decolonizing Epistemologies, 57).

What does it look like for us as a church to opt for the oppressed and impoverished? What does it look like to resist, fully and wholeheartedly, the organized abandonment and organized violence of policing and prisons? The author of James tells us: anything less than such an unqualified option for the poor is a failure to obey the law to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are complicit in the partiality to the rich which forms the status quo.

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

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

When the disciples receive judgment for eating without hands thoroughly washed, Jesus transforms the judgment into a reminder that the way we live into tradition is nothing compared to how we tend to our souls.  Jesus said, “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

In this shift of thought, we are reminded of the ways in which tradition, including our laws, can be used to exact judgment against people around us, even when the inner heart of the accuser — or the systems that bring accusation — are acting outside of the ethical ways to tend to the souls of those around us.  If the seat of evil intentions comes from the human heart, then there are not people who are innocent and people who are guilty, judged and held on opposite ends by a system stewarded by people with those same evil intentions.  There are only people, each containing the same capacity for goodness and sin.  This gospel invites us into understanding the universality of our human hearts, how we are bound to one another by each having that seat of evil intentions inside of ourselves, that possibility that we could go against the laws and traditions that were not created for our flourishing.  This is not to bring judgment, like judgments were brought against Jesus and the disciples, but instead to offer compassion that is worthy of sin that we all hold in our human hearts.  

If we each have a human heart capable of evils, then we would be wise to look at those in front of us — especially those being judged as guilty alongside Jesus and the disciples — as people just like us, people who have the same capacity for both goodness and sin as we do.  If these evils come from within the heart, they are all something we are capable of, and yet the gift of grace is that God can only understand our guilt in relationship to our belovedness, because that is what we receive in salvation.  We, then, have the opportunity to share that same grace of God with those around us, choosing to see in those who are judged “guilty” a face of belovedness, knowing that any capacity they have for evil is a capacity we hold in common, and all evil is deemed defeated and resurrected by Jesus Christ.

We are all guilty, we all house that same seat of evil intentions, and yet only some of us — and usually those on the margins — bear the societal pain of systems of punishment.  In order for our world to ever feel like the kingdom of God, we will have to offer compassion to the universality of what we are capable of, begin to treat the actions of others in relationship to their belovedness, and entrust it all to the God who defeated and resurrected evil.

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.

John 6:56–69

In the sixth chapter of the gospel of John, Jesus covers a lot of challenging topics. That is, topics that have challenged the church over the last 2000 years. What goes on with communion? What is the bread of life? Who is the church? In response to the words of Jesus, many disciples say “This teaching is difficult. Who can follow this?”

The Greek word translated as difficult is σκληρός, it more often means hard or strong. For instance, in the middle of the parable of the talents, the servant who buries his talent, does so because he knows the master is a hard (σκληρός) man. The problem for the servant is that he doesn’t understand who the master is so he assumes the master is hard.

When we read the words of the prophet Isaiah tell us to break every chain, we today may also think, “This is a difficult teaching.” We may think to ourselves, “This is impractical. Isn’t the status quo good enough?” We may think we understand more than Jesus the bounds of God’s mercy in this world.

The response of Jesus to his disciples is telling. “Does this offend you?” For many Christians today, abolition does offend them. Their worldview has been shamed by a Manichaean expectation of good guys and bad guys and a just society separates the good guys from the bad guys. “Does this offend you?”

Jesus doesn’t soften the teaching on communion. John says that many disciples turn away, but Peter does not. Peter says, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Abolition is a crucible for the modern church as the Eucharistic controversies of the past have been. Does Jesus have the words of eternal life? Is mercy truly offered by God? Should we break the chains? 

“Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

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

1 Kings 3:3–14

It is not in the aesthetic of abolitionists to be complimenting and praising kings and rulers. But here, as we attempt to learn from this week’s lectionary, we find ourselves in the position to learn from Solomon in 1 Kings.

God shows up in Solomon’s dream, asking what he should give Israel’s new king. Solomon, as the story goes, requests wisdom and is granted it (along with riches and long life, evidently because he passed the ethics test and asked for wisdom rather than riches or long life). 

Whether we choose to accept this literally or not is somewhat besides the point for the purpose I hope to utilize this story. As I look at this story, I see a specific reason for Solomon’s pursuit of wisdom that I had previously overlooked: the people.

The role Solomon embodied as king of Israel was a fundamentally political one. For curse or for pleasure, he held the task and ability to rule the operations of a nation. And Solomon, in the throes of this new task, turned to God for guidance. 

“Your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people,” Solomon asks God.

Here, we see a wisdom worth replicating. (In other areas of Solomon’s story, this is not the case). The wisdom is to seek out God’s guidance and discernment as we love and care for our neighbors, a great people — God’s people.

As we consider the political power we wield in a democratic republic, or even simply as people with some sense of agency, we must seek out God’s wisdom and direction and we must seek it not because we have a necessity to be right or correct, but because we love the people around us. 

Loving those around us, believing in their best and believing that they are fundamentally worthy of the best is at the root of the work we do as abolitionists. No one is to be thrown away or dismissed, all are God’s people, and we are to love them with our political activity.

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

Ephesians 4:25–5:2

The reading appointed for this week from Ephesians offers suggestions for what it looks like to live in a community established by the abolitionist values of mutual aid, accountability, and compassion, as opposed to a community governed by carceral ideals of surveillance and punishment. Looking at these instructions line by line reflects multiple facts of abolitionist praxis in our communal life:

“So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.”

Central to an understanding of building what Connie Burk of NW Network calls “accountable communities” is truth-telling and honesty: both with ourselves and with each others. Accountability is a practice of radical honesty with ourselves, including the honest recognition of when we have done harm to others. It also requires vulnerability, as we listen to the truths of others. Building spaces for compassionate, vulnerable listening and exploration of difficult truths with transparency requires that we remember the holiness of our relationships with each other. As we hold space for one another to take accountability and be vulnerable because we have built a foundation of trust, we prove that we are “members of one another.” I have explored the role of honesty/truth-telling and of the concept of the body of Christs in our practice of accountability further, in our Accountability Toolkit.

“Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.”

What is the difference between being angry and making room for the devil? I wonder if one answer to this difficult question is to interrogate our desire for vengeance and retribution. To be angry at harm is natural, just, and good. But to turn that legitimate anger into structures of punishment and retribution is, I think, answering harm with further harm. Such structures become the demonic institutions of policing and prisons that we see acting as forces of death in our society. Characteristic of abolitionist community is to be angry, but not turn to retribution. Or, as Mariame Kaba and Rachel Herzing write, provocatively, “Abolitionism is not a politics mediated by emotional responses. Or, as we initially wanted to title this piece, abolition is not about your fucking feelings.”

“Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy.”

In the response to thieves, we see the most concrete example in this passage of a restorative-justice response. There is no thought of punishment or incarceration for thieves — instead, the importance is living a new, accountable life in Christ. Repentance means that theft must stop, but there is no response of punishment. Instead, penitent thieves give back to the community, caring for the poor. Such care for the needy from their own labor is not only an actualization of mutual aid in the community, but also a form of reparations for theft.

Particularly given the ways the early church fathers wrote about wealth as theft, this injunction to thieves also reminds us that redistribution of wealth, mutual aid, and concrete care for those in need are an essential part of abolitionist politics. Those who have wealth should turn to labor for the sake of the needy. Instead of shame or punishment, the response to theft is reparations and care for one another so everyone will have enough.

“Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

Compassion is a hallmark of communities of abolition and accountability. The language of “tenderheartedness” or forgiveness here is not, I am convinced, intended to preclude legitimate anger. Nor can forgiveness be commanded of those who are survivors of harm, nor can reconciliation be insisted upon when there hasn’t been accountability for harm done. At the same time, a process of accountability begins with an openness to recognizing the humanity in those who have done harm to us — what Miroslav Volf calls the “will to embrace,” or what we might think of as compassion for the common humanity of all. It is because of this compassion that our demands for accountability and justice must not rely on degradation, retribution, or exclusion for those who have done harm. Perhaps forgiveness — although it cannot be commanded — can find a beginning in this compassion, a baseline desire to seek transformation of harm done rather than retribution for it.

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Ultimately, we are reminded, the mutual, everlasting love of the persons of the Trinity is at the basis of our Christian communities of accountability and abolition. To follow the example of God and to participate in the triune compassionate being of God insists that our way of living — communally, materially, and practically — is characterized by love. To structure our communities by such love means to structure them around honesty and accountability to one another in our relationships, the rejection of retribution, reparations and amends for harm done and mutual aid and care for one another, and compassion for everyone’s inherent humanity.

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

Ephesians 4:1–16

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.

Psalm 14

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.