This is part of our series of posts on the texts appointed for the Revised Common Lectionary readings.
by Rev. Wilson Pruitt
John 3:1 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.
John 3:2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
Nicodemus comes by night so as not to be seen. When we start to explore the full extent of God’s power of reconciliation, it can move against the wisdom of the world that often portrays itself as ‘christian.’ Nicodemus was a faithful Jew, a Pharisee, a student of Torah. He saw something amazing in Jesus, but he also knew that there were others in Jerusalem who would feel threatened by Jesus.
The status quo always has its defenders. The status quo of criminal justice is literally filled with millions in this country who think that their ideology of good guys and bad guys is all that is saving our children from suffering. This does not even get into those who explicitly profit from the status quo system, but people whose ideology is trapped in this manichaean good vs. evil that cannot see how far God’s grace can go.
Jesus spoke in the public square the truth of God’s love. He was not ashamed of who he was or what God was doing. Yet he also met with those who had to come in the night. He did not berate Nicodemus for coming at night. Jesus welcomed him and explained the reality of new birth. He answered questions again and again, even to the point of the radical claim of John 3:16, a claim that the carceral state cannot abide. Some may come in the night. Some may come in the day, but God’s radical love and reconciling mercy is there for all, whether those currently in prison or those currently impersonating others. God’s mercy is there and we must offer it, in the night and the day.
This is the first Lenten post in our continuing series of meditations on readings from the Revised Common Lectionary.
As we enter into Lent, the Old Testament lesson tells the story of the fall of humankind in the garden of Eden, and the epistle brings the response to that from the letter to the Romans:
5:15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.
5:16 And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.
The beauty of this passage is the all-encompassing nature of Christ’s free gift of forgiveness: the gift of justification rather than condemnation.
Our current criminal legal system is a system of condemnation. The fact that the only response we can envision to crime and harm is one of punishment and prisons is an effect of the “one man’s trespass”—it is a feature of a fallen reality. Judgment itself, following the one trespass, has been perverted in our reality and our understanding, so that judgment is seen as something always to do with punishment.
But the promise of Christ is that the free gift turns judgment into justification. This does not mean that those who do harm are left unaccountable, or that no amends are made! It means that our view of judgment and justice should be one rooted in love and restoration.
Fleming Rutledge translates the term “justification” as “rectification,” making right. Our current paradigm for “criminal justice” does not make space for rectification, but replaces it with retribution and punishment. Yet the promise of the free gift of grace is the promise that the appropriate, godly, redeemed response to crime and harm is a response of rectification: of making the situation as right as possible. The story of the gospel, the rectification promised by God and effected by Christ, is about the transformation of our conception of justice from being primarily about punishment to being primarily about restoration.
Prisons, in other words, are an effect of the fall of humankind. Prisons are one of the many brokennesses of our reality from which Christ came to redeem us. Prisons, in other words, cannot be redeemed in the service of justice. Rather, in the kingdom of God that is already appearing around us, they are being abolished so that human justice can be redeemed, transformed and rectified into the healing, compassionate reality intended by God. The free gift of Christ is the end of retribution and incarceration!
Psalm 99:4 Mighty King. lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.
What is the limit of the justice of God? Too often, the church in the world is presented as navigating the Scylla and Charybdis of Realism and Idealism, but this is a deeply unfaithful dichotomy. And I mean ‘unfaithful’ in the literal sense of “lacking faith.” Is the justice of God limited by the Overton Window of our political institutions? This is one of the first responses to any language of prison abolition. The theological and biblical account is clear throughout. No biblical author ever writes in favor of chains. What is left is the limit of the Christian imagination of God’s justice and for too long the limit has been narrow. People have not seen God as a lover of justice for all but for some. We can see this contrast between limited justice verses expansive justice with Matthew’s account of the transfiguration.
Matthew 17:1 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.
Matthew 17:2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.
Matthew 17:3 Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.
Matthew 17:4 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.
Peter misses the point. Peter wants to stay on the mountain. He thinks the vision is for him. Should we stay on the mountain or go back down? Are visions of God offered for the select few or all? Is justice offered for few or for all? Christian Abolition is a claim of faith about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that God’s justice demands the chains be broken and that human notions of justice are passing away. Even the justice Paul describes in Romans 13 that is often held up to justify state authority is positioned next to the Justice of God. Authority comes from God, as all things come from God, but Paul is not telling the Church in Rome to be complacent or blindly follow but to “get rid of the actions that belong to the darkness and put on the weapons of light” (Romans 13:12b). Chains are an action of darkness. Freedom and reconciliation are weapons of light.
Matthew 17:7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.”
We do not need to fear being faithful. We need not fear stretching God’s justice beyond the limits of current human institutions. Instead, we should be afraid of being unfaithful to the fullness of God’s justice and love.
This is part of our series of meditations on the texts of the Revised Common Lectionary.
The gospel lesson appointed for this week dives into some of the difficult teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. From an abolitionist point of view, perhaps most immediately striking is the discussion of prisons in 5:25: “Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison.”
We certainly do not need to read into this an acceptance of the necessity of prisons on Jesus’ part. He is not saying, “If you do wrong, you should be thrown into prison.”
Instead, what Jesus is doing here is presenting a sort of “two kingdoms” cosmology: he is offering a vision of a new way of being in community characterized by reconciliation, and contrasting it to the earthly, fallen system of addressing harm with imprisonment and punishment.
It is true that this is a hard teaching, however we read it. But perhaps its sting is that Jesus promises us that we will get what we ask for, and will be measured by the values we practice.
If we aim to build the community of reconciliation, then we will live in a community characterized by inclusion and peace. But if we refuse to take part in the new community of reconciliation and accountability that he is describing, but instead insist on relying on prisons and punishment to address harm, then we will be “given up” to the powers of the world, in the form of the community of vengeance and punishment that we have built for ourselves. Compare this to 1 Corinthians 5:5, and the idea that a member of the church doing continuous harm should be given up to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Our Christian communities are places of reconciliation, but when we insist on nevertheless building structural systems of punishment and incarceration, we run the risk of becoming liable to them ourselves.
What this can show the church, perhaps, is an insight of transformative justice communities, who have by necessity found ways to do justice independently of the criminal-punishment system that has failed them: we must build structures of accountability and reconciliation that are in line with our values, rather than accepting the dominant values of our punitive culture. The church should not accept the necessity of prisons, policing, and punishment as a stand-in for justice. Rather, we should name those, as Jesus does, as tools of the dominant powers of this world, which are captive to sin. We should seek, instead, to establish a community of accountability and reconciliation, and to understand our lives and our communities to be governed by the logic of the kingdom of heaven, not the logic of this world.
Editor’s note: Today’s Lectionary post, on Isaiah 58:1-9 and Matthew 5:13-20, is written by guest contributor Rev. Wilson Pruitt.
58:3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.
58:4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.
58:5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
58:6 Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
Who should fast and why? The fast Isaiah speaks of is not for self-actualization. In fact, Isaiah transfigures fasting from an action of the self to act of societal transformation. Isaiah challenges the ways private fasts have been distorted in verse 5:
58:5 “Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?”
The prophet then shifts swiftly to a proclamation of abolition in verse 6:
58:6 “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?”
This is the heart of the matter. Christians have allegorized away the language of bonds and yokes in order to soften Isaiah’s call. And thus to use the language of Jesus in the reading from Matthew 5, Christians have made the salt of the kingdom of heaven lose its flavor; we have put the bushel over the light.
Matthew 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
5:14 “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.
5:15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
The prophet’s call is clear, the consequence is tremendous but not impossible. The call is to transform society by loosing the bonds of injustice, letting the oppressed go free, and breaking every (single) yoke. This is the fast God chooses for us. This is how to shine. But sometimes, the darkness of a bushel basket provides more comfort than the exposure of light. To shine, to break chains, takes faith beyond the status quo. Faith in a world beyond the world we have today. Faith in a God whom we can trust:
Isaiah 58:11 The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.
Rev. Wilson Pruitt is a Methodist pastor and translator in Austin, Texas.
Part of our series on abolitionist readings of texts from the Revised Common Lectionary frequently used in mainline churches.
Micah 6:8 is one of the most-commonly-quoted calls to justice in the Bible: “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
While the doing of justice is essential to the abolitionist project, the earlier verses in this passage make it even clearer the liberatory shape of the justice God proposes.
First, God rises up to “contend with Israel” (6:2): “O my people, what I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!” The root of his contention is Israel’s forgetfulness of their history: “For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery” (6:3).
As James H. Cone, among others, has written, the call to justice, and particularly to freedom, in Israel is a direct response to God’s act of liberation in the Exodus. The foundational act of freeing captives in the Exodus is determinative of what justice means now, for Israel.
This is the context of Micah’s call to us in 6:8, to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly: doing justice means continuing God’s work of Exodus, of setting captives free. By remembering God’s work and God’s story in Israel, we see the pattern of our own justice turned toward abolition.
Editor’s note: This is part of a series of meditations based on passages in the lectionary used by many mainline churches, intended as a prompt for preachers and an ongoing project of reading unexpected passages with abolitionist eyes.
4:13 He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali,
4:14 so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
4:15 “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles
4:16 the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”
4:17 From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
This week’s lectionary readings present the great and familiar promise of Isaiah, “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” While the gospel lesson quotes only a portion of the passage—a promise of hope and redemption to those in the darkness of prisons and jails, to be sure—the Old Testament reading presents the full passage from Isaiah and makes its promise of freedom to prisoners even more explicit:
9:2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined.
9:3 You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder.
9:4 For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.
The yoke, the bar, the rod—all symbols of captivity and oppression—are broken. In the kingdom of God, prisoners are set free.
Last week’s reading presented to us the question of where Jesus was “staying;” of where he was abiding in our world—leading us to think of his presence with those most marginalized including the incarcerated.
This week’s passage, from the beginning of a different gospel, begins in the same place—here is where Jesus “made his home”—and then makes explicit that his dwelling or staying with those who are oppressed is not only for their comfort but for their freedom, by showing that his “making his home in the territory of Zebulun and Naphthali” is precisely fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy of their freedom from captivity.
It is from the position of solidarity, dwelling with those who sit in darkness, and towards the liberation of all the captives, that Jesus proclaims the nearness of the kingdom of God, and calls us all to repent of our support for structures of oppression, including those we cling to in the name of false “justice.” Jesus dwells in darkness to set the prisoners free.
The disciples said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.—John 1:38–39
One challenge for the abolitionist theological project is to develop our imaginations to “see” the language of liberation and abolition for prisoners throughout the whole arc of scripture.
To that end, and as a Christian in a liturgical tradition that uses a lectionary, where set texts are read each Sunday, this is the start of a series to provide meditations on selected lectionary texts, for study (and to help preachers) in advance of the coming Sunday.
(I say selected because I don’t think I can promise to get one up EVERY week – but I will do my best! The goal is to see abolition in as much of the lectionary as we can. And if you, a reader of this blog, have an idea for a meditation for this series, please contact me, at least a week in advance, and I’ll be happy to run it!)
In the Gospel reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for Sunday, January 19, 2020, we are faced with the disciples following Jesus, whom John the Baptist has just identified as the Lamb of God. Their first question to him is “Where are you staying?”
The concept of “staying” or “dwelling” already has great resonance in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, where we have just read that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” and that “the Spirit descended upon him and remained on him.” For the disciples to look for where Jesus is staying is not just a practical request but an opening of their eyes to see where God is abiding and illuminating the world.
What the abolitionist perspective brings to this story is an answer to the question “Where are you staying?”—we know that the place where God dwells is in the darkest places in our world, in the darkness with the captives, in our jails and prisons. God is present in and with everyone who is incarcerated, bringing liberating power to “those who sit in darkness” (Isaiah 9:2).
The disciples ask Jesus, “Where are you staying?” and Jesus responds, “Come and see.” Come and see the conditions in our prisons and jails, and be radicalized. Come and see the presence of God even in the midst of this horror, and find hope in God’s ongoing work against prisons. Come and see the place where God dwells in the midst of our prison nation.
Editor’s note: We welcome Micah Herskind to the blog today, with a guest post about prison ministry from an abolitionist framework.
by Micah Herskind
“Remember
those in prison, as if you were there yourself.”
From
the book of Hebrews, this reminder to remember has been largely forgotten by Christians—as
have those in prison themselves. In fact, far from advocating for those in
prison, American Christians have historically been vocal supporters of
imprisonment, and even the death
penalty.
There
are certainly exceptions to the rule of Christian ambivalence toward those in
prison. Prison chaplains have worked
in prisons for centuries, acting as spiritual advisors,
counselors, and listening ears. More recently, however, another group of
Christians has taken an interest in those behind bars, comprising a growing
cohort of evangelical Christians entering prisons through large not-for-profit
prison ministry organizations.
Several
of these organizations have achieved significant prominence, and none more than
Prison
Fellowship. As the largest prison ministry organization
in the United States, Prison Fellowship works in hundreds of prisons across the
country, offering various programs behind bars with a focus on Christian
conversion. When those in my Christian communities learn that I’m engaged in
work around prisons and criminalization, they nearly always send me an article
about Prison Fellowship. “Isn’t this so great?!” they ask. Surely, I would be
thrilled about two of my worlds — my faith and my work — coming together.
I’ve
never responded with the enthusiasm they expected. Something has always rubbed
me the wrong way about evangelical prison ministry. But it wasn’t until a
recent trip to Prison Fellowship’s website, and the more extensive digging into
Prison Fellowship’s history that this visit prompted, that I am able to identify
the fundamental flaws in Prison Fellowship and similar organizations.
Backed
by massive budgets and armed with a very specific theological understanding of
criminality, these organizations have come to represent Big Prison Ministry:
the network of evangelical prison ministries that view those in prison as both
uniquely sinful and wholly responsible for their imprisonment, and capitalize
on incarcerated people’s captivity to advance individual conversions at the
cost of communal freedom.
Chuck Colson and the Founding of
Prison Fellowship
Prison
Fellowship was founded in 1976 by Chuck Colson, also known as President Nixon’s
‘dirty tricks’ man. Before his seven-month stint
in prison for obstruction of justice in the midst of the Watergate scandal,
Colson worked as a top aide to Richard Nixon, impressing the President with his
political ruthlessness and win-by-any-means attitude — exemplified by Colson’s
famous declaration that he’d “walk over [his] own mother” to ensure Nixon’s
reelection.
But
after years of acting as Nixon’s “hatchet man,” and several months before he
would land in prison, Colson had a come-to-Jesus moment. A friend lent him C.S.
Lewis’ Mere Christianity, prompting a conversion that led Colson to
plead guilty to, rather than contest, his criminal charges when Watergate
broke. Colson was “born again” — a phrase that would become the title of his
best-selling autobiography upon his release from prison.
Colson’s
conversion experience turned him into a missionary, and his prison experience would
provide him a mission field. As the story goes, one day as Colson was writing a
letter in prison, another incarcerated man named Archie approached and asked,
“What are you going to do for guys like us when you get out?” Colson promised
Archie that he would never forget the men; he would fulfill that promise upon
his release by founding Prison Fellowship.
Colson’s
theological and political convictions regarding the nature of crime would significantly
shape Prison Fellowship’s mission and programming. For Colson, the actions
that landed him in prison were the result of his personal lack of faith and his
untransformed heart—and by extension, his internal moral deficit.
As
Colson explained in a 2010 interview, “crime is not caused by
environment or poverty or deprivation. It is caused by individuals making wrong
moral choices.” Citing the work of James Q. Wilson, a political scientist who
advocated deploying battalions of police officers into poor Black neighborhoods,
Colson concluded that crime is “caused by a lack of moral training during the
morally formative years…it’s a character issue and it’s a family issue.”
He
continued, doubling down: “Crime is caused by people making wrong moral choices. The answer to crime
therefore is the conversion of the wrongdoer to a more responsible lifestyle.”
Redemption for those in prison could come only through Christian conversion, or
leaving “a wrongful style of life behind and [realizing], if you want to follow
Christ, you have to live a different way…That’s the answer to the crime
problem.”
For
Colson, crime is caused by a moral failing which requires moral fixing. And to
be fair, he was probably right about this insofar as his own actions were
concerned. But Colson didn’t limit this conclusion to his own behavior.
Instead, he extended his analysis to everyone behind bars, concluding that
people go to prison because they are bad, and that bad people can become good
people by converting to Christianity. Through moral transformation and
religious conversion, people could leave prison and go on to live a “crime free
lifestyle.”
Many
Christians reading this might be nodding their head right now. Many of us, and
especially white and wealthy Christians, grew up with the messaging that people
are in prison because they’re bad, and that it is only through personal moral
transformation that people can no longer be “criminals.”
Plainly
stated, this is a view that Christians must leave behind — not only because
sequestering people in cages runs directly against Christian notions of
forgiveness and grace, but also because it’s simply incorrect.
Indeed,
the elephant in the room here is that Colson’s post-prison success had very
little to do with personal transformation during his time in prison. As a
politically-connected and wealthy white man, Colson came out of prison and back
to a world of resources and power. Within a year of his release from prison,
Colson published his autobiography, which sold
millions of copies. Resources, connections, and power — these are the
things that facilitate reentry, and in general are the things that keep people
from going to prison or being arrested in the first place.
Colson
didn’t succeed post-prison because he converted to Christianity. He succeeded
because his access to power gave him little choice but to succeed.
For
most who cycle through America’s punishment system, the story is drastically
different. As is increasingly well-known, the U.S. punishment system warehouses
2.2 million people, most of whom are poor
and/or Black, and controls many millions more through probation and parole. It
is a system that pervades the lives of the poor, while remaining an abstract
depository of bad people for the rich, whose closest encounter with prison is Law
and Order: SVU.
Countless
historians have unearthed the histories of how the
anti-Black logics of slavery morphed and took new form in the criminal justice
system. Black people are vastly overrepresented in the criminal legal system,
and along with poor white people bear the brunt of policing and police violence
in the United States. In the U.S, those who are born poor and Black are essentially
born into pipelines toward the criminal justice system—a reality that runs in
direct contrast to Colson’s crime-as-moral-failing theory.
Indeed,
as a rule, people enter prison poor and leave poorer. In 2014, those who
entered prison had an annual income that was 41
percent lower than non-incarcerated people of the
same age — and upon their release from prison, formerly incarcerated people
face an unemployment rate that is five
times higher than the rate for the general
population, due to a combination of policies and public attitudes that bar
formerly incarcerated individuals from work. Similarly, those leaving prison
are nearly ten times more likely to be
homeless than the general public, with rates of homelessness especially high
for Black women.
White,
Ivy-league educated, and a familiar face in the halls of power, Colson faced
none of these barriers. And yet, Colson managed to boil down his societal upper
hand to personal redemption. While winning a game rigged in his favor, Colson
proclaimed that the game’s losers were losers because of their inner failings,
rather than the many external barriers to their success.
This
is the philosophy that guides Big Prison Ministry.
Prison Fellowship’s Work
In
her book God in Captivity: The Rise of Faith-Based Prison Ministries in the
Age of Mass Incarceration, Tanya Erzen writes, “Faith-based prison
ministries are often concerned with salvaging individual souls, rather than
asking why they are there in the first place.”
Nearly
every element of Prison Fellowship’s work proves Erzen’s argument. The
organization’s signature program, the Prison
Fellowship Academy, seeks to “build good citizens and
brighter futures behind bars”: by “using biblically based materials, the
Academy specifically targets criminal thinking and behavior, life skills,
addictions, victim impact, and prosocial culture change.”
In
other words, the Academy proceeds from a deficit model of those in prison:
people are in prison because they think and behave criminally, because they
lack life skills, and because they are addicted. Prison Fellowship wants to
build good citizens — because, we’re meant to gather, those who go to prison
are bad citizens.
Here,
we see Colson’s convictions translated into Prison Fellowship’s work. Rather
than considering the systemic drivers of incarceration, imprisonment becomes a
matter of bad citizenship—despite the reality that 70
percent of the U.S. population has committed a jailable offense,
and yet are not considered bad citizens. Indeed, just step foot on an Ivy
League campus, where you’ll see students openly using drugs, protected by a
college campus rather than made vulnerable in a heavily-policed neighborhood. We
don’t look on these law-breakers as bad citizens—in fact, we elect them to
office and promote them to the heads of Fortune 500 companies.
Instead
of recognizing this, Prison Fellowship treats those in prison as uniquely-flawed
bad citizens, placing the weight of our system’s failures squarely on the
shoulders of individuals. Rather than people who lost a game they were never
meant to win, those in prison become pariahs whose only hope is individual
salvation, not societal transformation.
Prison
Fellowship is not the only organization to prioritize inner change of hearts
and minds over broader change of the systems that keep people down. Kairos hopes to “impact the hearts and
minds of incarcerated [people]…to become loving and productive citizens of
their communities.” Crossroads Prison Ministries aims to “connect prisoners with
mentors in Christ-centered relationships so that lives, prisons, and churches
are restored through the Gospel.” Push
the Rock looks to
take “the Rock of Ages to the hearts” of men in prison.
To be
clear, there’s nothing wrong with offering Christian resources and teaching to
those in prison who are interested in exploring Christianity, and there’s
nothing wrong with being motivated by one’s faith to offer various services in
prison. But as those such as Erzen have documented, Big Prison Ministry
has—quite literally—a captive audience, and knows it. For prison ministries
like Prison Fellowship, the “services” and incentives to participate in
programming, such as separate prison wings with better conditions and more
activities, are bundled with the evangelization.
When
prison ministries enter prisons offering various services and opportunities,
why should displaying an interest in faith be a prerequisite for accessing
improved conditions? Why condition one’s deservingness of a less violent time
in prison on their willingness to adopt the Christian faith?
Just as importantly,
what if, instead of only ministering to those who are captive, these
organizations also challenged the dehumanizing basis of captivity itself?
To
its credit, Big Prison Ministry has become more politically active in recent
years. In particular, Prison Fellowship has pursued political advocacy around
incarceration, as well as undertaken efforts to aid those who are released from
prison. But to its detriment, these efforts are generally milquetoast,
exhibiting the same individualizing flaws of Prison Fellowship’s Academy. For
example, Prison Fellowship was a vocal supporter of the First Step Act, which
has been hailed by many as significant criminal justice reform. However, as many critics have pointed out, the First Step Act is ultimately a
step in the wrong direction, benefitting very few while doubling down on
punishment for many more. Likewise, Prison Fellowship’s “Second Chance
Month,” in collaboration with President Trump, is an effort
that once more places the burden on individuals, offering second
chances “for those who have worked to overcome bad decisions earlier in life” and for those “who are willing to
work hard to turn their lives around.”
To understand why Prison Fellowship’s advocacy doesn’t seem to benefit the bulk of those in prison, we might look to the overwhelmingly white team doing the advocating, pictured below. How can we trust Prison Fellowship to work toward transformation when so little of its staff looks like the people they claim they are trying to help?
What sustains staff members like these? No discussion of Big
Prison Ministry is complete without considering the money flowing through
organizations such as Prison Fellowship. In 2018, Prison Fellowship raked in nearly $50 million
in donations. The organization’s president, James Ackerman, made over $400,000;
the next highest-paid employees made over $200,000 each.
Everyone
deserves enough money to live well. But when so much money flows through an
organization—and when those at the top benefit significantly from it—it’s worth
asking the question: does Prison Fellowship hope to see fewer people behind
bars, or simply to keep making Christians out of the many people who languish
there?
Just as importantly, how else might $50 million be used to improve the lives of those in prison, and stop people from going to prison in the first place? Three thousand people participated in the Prison Fellowship Academy last year; what would redistributing that money to them and their families look like?
At
the very least, Prison Fellowship’s dollars would be better spent pursuing a
just system than participating in the manufactured immorality of the people it
claims to serve. Instead of using its resources to tell people that they’re in
cages because they’re bad, Prison Fellowship might consider deploying its
millions toward unlocking the cages that hold people.
Fulfilling
the Promise
In
1974, Chuck Colson promised Archie that he wouldn’t forget his incarcerated
companions. And upon his release, he fulfilled that promise. But what matters
in this story is not so much that Colson fulfilled his promise, but
rather how he fulfilled it. Colson remembered those in prison by
substituting his experience — that of a rich and powerful man whose
imprisonment was the anomaly — for the much more common experiences of the millions
who cycle through the punishment system every year.
Have
Prison Fellowship and the organizations that make up Big Prison Ministry improved
the lives of some incarcerated people? Undoubtedly. But questioning whether these
organizations have improved some lives misses how the same resources
devoted to different ends might have improved significantly more lives, and
stopped people from becoming incarcerated in the first place.
Too
often, the bar for whether a reform is good is whether the reform does anything.
Many Christians seem to praise Prison Fellowship’s work simply because it
exists under the banner of Christianity, without asking why it exists or
what exactly it does.
How
else might Colson have fulfilled his promise to Archie? He could have studied
deeply, learning about the roots of incarceration and reform’s failure to “fix”
it. He could have taken seriously Jesus’ message of liberation for the poor and
oppressed, and his admonition against the accumulation of wealth. He could have
questioned the very premise of incarceration, of locking people away instead of
addressing the roots of harm and centering forgiveness and healing.
At
the very least, he could have taken a closer look at his own savior, Jesus—a
prisoner who was ultimately executed by the state against which he spoke
out. Perhaps this would have led him to oppose, rather than continue
to be a vocal supporter of, the death penalty.
As
Christians, we need to ask some basic questions. Is it good to put people in
cages? And in a world full of cages, would Jesus have focused on telling people
in cages that they needed to be better people, or on tearing down the cages
themselves?
In
the Book of Common Prayer, the first psalm appointed for daily prayer on
the First Sunday of Advent is Psalm 146:
4 Happy are they who have the God of
Jacob for their help! *
whose hope is in the LORD their God;
5 Who made heaven and earth, the seas,
and all that is in them; *
who keeps his promise for ever;
6 Who gives justice to those who are
oppressed, *
and food to those who hunger.
7 The LORD sets the prisoners free; the
LORD opens the eyes of the blind; *
the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
8 The LORD loves the righteous; the LORD
cares for the stranger; *
he sustains the orphan and widow, but
frustrates the way of the wicked.
9 The LORD shall reign for ever, *
your God, O Zion, throughout all
generations. Hallelujah!
The
first thing we do, as we enter into the season of Advent, praying and waiting
for the coming kingdom of God, is to pray God’s promise of liberation for
prisoners.
The
challenge for abolitionists during Advent is to see around us the world we are
waiting for. After all, at the center of the Christian argument for prison
abolition is the claim that freedom for prisoners is not only a promise for the
world to come, but also for the world as it is now. Anglican theologian Fleming
Rutledge talks about Advent as a time of “apocalyptic transvision,” when we see
our world, into which Christ was born, and the world to come simultaneously. “Apocalypse”
means revelation. Our apocalyptic imagination is our way of revealing God’s
world to come in the midst of history. Where do we see the future without
prisons that we await? How can our revolutionary imagination reveal it to us in
the midst of our world of oppression and incarceration?
Micah
Herskind recently shared thoughts
from the “Making and Unmaking Mass Incarceration” conference. Over and over, he
recounts, speakers shared the same point about the role of abolition in the
present:
Ruth Wilson Gilmore: “abolition is
about building and what we build together”
Ashon Crawley: “abolition is not an
identity to claim, but about doing”
Mariame Kaba: “Abolition is in the
present…It’s not just a horizon we’ll arrive at some day. It’s constantly being
made.”
Elizabeth Hinton: “practicing
abolition means creating communities of care”
What
this means for us, as Christians, is that our Advent is not just about waiting
for liberation “on the horizon” but about building as we wait. Perhaps, for
abolitionist Christians, our apocalyptic transvision is not just about seeing
the world to come alongside the world as it is, but about seeing the world to
come already present in our world in the structures we are building
together.
Psalm
146 places the liberation of prisoners (v. 7) at the center of God’s work:
between God’s creation of heaven and earth (v. 4), and God’s promised reign forever
(v. 9). As St. Paul writes: “Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of
salvation!” (2 Cor. 6:2). What our apocalyptic transvision reveals to us, in showing
us the coming reign of God, is in fact, the truth of the world as it is now;
the truth of the world—this world, our world—as a place of
liberation where prisoners are set free, as we build abolition together.
Perhaps
the most important thing for us to see, this Advent, is not the world to come
but the world around us. No matter how much we wait and prepare in Advent, the
dawn of redeeming grace at Christmas is always received as a surprise. Perhaps
this surprise ties together the world we imagine and the world we know. How can
we look at the world around us and see with surprise the seeds of liberation in
it? How can we be surprised by the abolition we are building, by our own
capacities for healing and liberation?
Abolition
is not just a future promise. We see it, in this in-between Advent of waiting,
in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our love for one another, in the welcome
and reconciliation of our Christmas celebrations. Every part of our community-building
and care for one another can be turned toward the liberation of all. Abolition,
like the Christ Child, is “born in us today”.
All
holiday blessings to you, and thanks for your support of Christians for the
Abolition of Prisons in 2019.
