In her work as an abolitionist, Mariame Kaba reiterates again and again that we must continually push against our own instincts for punishment that are formed in a society where punishing those who have done wrong is normal and expected. When I first heard this idea, I had begun to be receptive to the need to end prison and policing, but had not realized the depth to which punishment had taken root in my own life and interpersonal relationships. As a partner and parent, I began to see the ways in which I was taught punishment in my own family system as a child, and how it was being manifested in the ways I worked through conflict between myself and my husband and daughter, primarily through being unforgiving and disconnected.
When I read this Isaiah passage for this week’s lectionary, I was immediately drawn to verses 7-9. These verses focus on a God who will abundantly pardon because God’s ways are not our ways. I did a little research into these verses and found that they echo a conversation in Ezekiel 18 when God’s saving actions toward the wicked were judged by the house of Israel to be unfair in verse 29. The story in this passage and Isaiah demonstrate twice over the ways in which God’s graciousness and will for the salvation of all can trip up “good people” who see graciousness toward the “bad” as reflective of an unfair God who must not value their own “goodness.”
God’s ways are not our ways. When we thirst for punishment of those who do wrong toward us or the people we love, we are being formed by our environment that says that the way we deal with being wronged is by exercising power over those who have wronged us to cause them harm. As we consider the ways in which we work to dismantle carceral systems in society and in our personal lives, may we do so with an eye toward God’s ways, where all things and people can be saved and abundantly pardoned.
Grace Kozak is an MDiv student at Christian Theological Seminary and under care for ordination with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
One of the great challenges of the church in the modern world, and the church in the United States in particular, is the question of citizenship: where does our citizenship lie? Is it in the place where we were born? Is it in the place we reside? Is it in the place marked on any documents we may or may not have?
Paul was a citizen of Rome. He knew the privileges that that citizenship offered to him. In Philippians 3, though, he offers a radical critique of worldly views of citizenship. With powerful language he describes a group of people who are enemies of the cross. Their end is in destruction. Their god is in their belly. They’re never satisfied. They’re never content. They’re constantly desiring more and more.
In contrast, Paul proclaims that our citizenship is in heaven. This echoes the words of Jesus in the gospels where he says, ‘give to Caesar, what is Caesar and give to God what is God’s.’ It echoes the lines from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21, NRSV)
This citizenship question matters tremendously when we think about society in general and the kind of society Christians should strive for, because if Paul is right, if we are first citizens of heaven and we should first imitate the saints, then we need to strive for a world whose god is not in the belly. A world of radical transformation, where prison abolition is not seen simply as another political plank but as the bellowing call of our Lord and master Jesus Christ to love our neighbors.
It is an act of faith to claim our citizenship in heaven. It is faith like in the words of Hebrews, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1, NRSV). The point of abolition is not found just in its practical effects, even though there are strong arguments to be made there, and there are many secular arguments for abolition that are powerful and valid, but the impetus of the church rests on this claim is that the people in this world around us are our brothers and sisters, wherever they are from, whatever they have done. They are worthy of respect, dignity, opportunity, and transformation.
So may we be imitators of Christ, imitators of love, for the transformation of this world, so that this world can be a little more like the true place where our citizenship resides.
Wilson Pruitt is a Methodist pastor and translator in Spicewood, TX.
On this First Sunday in Lent, we are met with an ancient formula found in Romans 10: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.”
Of course, this passage is about the entire promise of the gospel: resurrection, salvation, abundant life in community with God and one another. The promise of Jesus is a metaphysical promise of abundance in the midst of the ambiguities of existence.*
But if we consider abolition as a sign of resurrection, as I wrote about a few weeks ago, then the promise here is meaningful in our work toward building an abolitionist reality. I am particularly struck by the doubled motion of “believe” and “confess” in this formula in Romans. If we believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, then we also confess that he is Lord. If we believe in the power of God to accomplish resurrection, then we also must confess — in the public sphere as well as in private devotion — Jesus’ victory over the powers of sin and death, which include the death-dealing systems of incarceration and punishment. Our belief in Jesus’ victory over death may justify us but, according to this passage, it is our confession that saves. Salvation is tied to the articulation of Jesus’ lordship, of God’s power to redeem and save us from the powers and systems of oppression in our world, so that, as Paul concludes, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” And in our current context, abolition is one such concrete articulation of what it means that Jesus is Lord. Abolition declares that Jesus’ victory over death is real, that it has concrete consequences for our world today as well as the world to come, and that the nature of Jesus’ lordship promises the transformation of our communities and political systems from systems that bring death to those that give life. Abolition gives us a way of describing in practical and material terms one consequence of saying Jesus is Lord, and a way of expressing that fundamental theological reality in terms that make explicit its consequences which challenge us and our presuppositions about how the world works.
Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for Abolition.
*This is what 20th-century theologian Paul Tillich called the “triumphant union of unambiguous life” — his thought on existentialism has profoundly affected my own thinking, although I cite him here with hesitation because of the allegations of sexual harassment against him which came out after his death.
We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,
“At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see– we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent for the Western Church and services typically focus on our vulnerability and need for repentance. In this passage Paul entreats the Corinthian church to be reconciled with God in order to become “the righteousness of God.” Paul states that there is “no obstacle” put in their way. Even though they are subject to persecution and ridicule, they remain steadfast, patient, loving, and honest. They seem like they have nothing, but they have everything; they are being punished and subject to sorrow, but they are alive and joyful. On Ash Wednesday this passage raises these questions: How does God make the way for reconciliation? Why does our reconciliation make us “the righteousness of God?” What does it mean to refrain from putting obstacles in the way of reconciliation? And finally, what is so counter-intuitive about what the Christians are steadfastly offering and embodying?
Beginning with the call to repentance on Ash Wednesday as a step towards being reconciled–that is put back into right relationship–we might highlight the way that dehumanizing punishment represented by prison and policing stands in the way of accountability and repentance. When the wages of sin are akin to death, even taking accountability and repenting can not lead to reconciliation. God makes the way for reconciliation by God’s faithfulness to offer grace in order to remove the obstacle of death-dealing punishment. In Romans 3:25, Paul says that it is God’s grace that demonstrates God’s righteousness. When we place our faith in that grace and are willing to honestly face the ways in which we are involved in harm in our communities, then we can begin to embody God’s righteousness in the world.
This is only true when it is made real in the world and in our communities, but the work of making it real is an uphill battle. Grace and repentance can be used by those who are strong in a community to revel in the freedom to abuse the weak. We regularly see today how grace and a concern for harsh punishment is invoked for young white male rapists, whereas law and order is invoked for Black women who have defended themselves against abuse. The call to remove the obstacle of incarceration through an emphasis on grace must never be used to remove the need for real repentance (turning away from harming behavior) and accountability (seeking to repair the damage done as much as possible). Grace, appropriately applied, makes way for the things necessary for reconciliation. It does not remove the need for honesty, behavioral change, and accountability.
What then is “God’s righteousness” and how does it relate to the “ill-repute” that Paul speaks of? God’s righteousness is not demonstrated by ignoring our sin, but by a commitment to remain in relationship with us, working for our healing and restoration. In a world where harm is so great, the commitment to remain in relationship on a societal level and work for the healing of both victims and perpetrators of harm (both of which is all of us) seems vulnerable and foolish. We are left open to feeling deep sorrow, to being further harmed or punished, to pouring out our monetary and energetic resources into a fruitless endeavor. Any individual who is not able to experience healing and restoration remains an indictment against God’s faithfulness to reconcile. We must remember then, that even the work of transformative justice, the work of seeking to abolish prisons and build new systems of accountability and reconciliation, is commended in and of itself because it builds our capacity to be people who are able to transform harm. This is what Paul means when he says that “they have commended themselves in every way.” Though the work seems foolish and leaves them vulnerable to harm, the work at the same time makes them more resilient and able to be a reconciling people.
On Ash Wednesday, we must remember that the call to trust in God’s grace and repent of sin is only the beginning of the work. It is a foundation for an entirely different way of achieving justice that stands opposed to any form of justice that relies on punishment and death. If we are to be reconciled with God and become “God’s righteousness,” then we are also called to do the work that “commends ourselves” in the face of great harm. We must work to abolish punitive systems and put in place systems of accountability that allow us to remain relationally connected.
Sarah Lynne Gershon (she/her) is an MDiv/MTS student, DOC pastor, and lives at the Bloomington Catholic Worker.
In jails and prisons, there are plenty of Bibles. The fat paperbacks line chapel bookshelves, dozens of translations. New boxes arrive every month. Guys I knew in a super-max facility used stacks of these hefty volumes to lift inside bedsheets when weights were taken away.
The problem with these phonebook-like bricks of recycle paper is that the wild variety of witnesses in our tradition’s collected scriptures gets flattened, reduced to: The Holy Bible (Book, from the Latin). For my friends reading and trying to pray in jails and prisons, the most radical and liberating voices in the scriptures can merge into a murkier “The Bible Says” — where often, the interpretation of what “The Bible Says” upholds the carceral, punitive status quo.
This is a bummer, a scriptural boxing and caging—which the gospel story of the Transfiguration brilliantly abolishes.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus’ disciples follow him up the mountain where they see his divine glory unleashed, shining through his flesh, his face, his clothes. Then mystical apparitions of scriptural heroes Moses and Elijah show up. The disciples witness the embodiments of The Law and The Prophets talking with their living lord and rabbi, Jesus.
Peter—so often the mirror of our human impulses—in his thrill offers to build three dwellings, or shelters, sukkot, for these three holy teachers. Maybe it was an act of honor, sacred hospitality. Maybe it was to commemorate this epiphany, to contain the mystery, as we do, with altars and memorials. Either way, Peter “Bibles” them: he wants to put a familiar religious structure around these voices.
This is when a larger cloud of the Divine wraps around them all and says to all of them—not just the disciples but to Moses and Elijah as well: “This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to him!”
Here, the voice of God resists our containment, our boxes. The voice of God exalts the person and message of Jesus as the fulfillment of all biblical voices. In this moment of radical reorientation, both those before Jesus (the Law and the Prophets) and after (the Apostles) are instructed by God to listen to Jesus.
No matter what we and our incarcerated friends read in the scriptures, no matter what images of God or human actions may seem to support systems of oppression, none of it can overrule or cancel out—or even be held in debate with—the liberating words and mission of Jesus.
May we all hear God’s loud preference here—and so join Moses, Elijah, Peter, James and John as we all learn let go of what we thought we knew and listen with greatest attention to God’s chosen, liberating, healing, forgiving, Hades-abolishing, execution-undoing embodiment in Christ.
Chris Hoke is the creator and director of Underground Ministries in Washington State, which equips churches and businesses to practice resurrection and abolition through re-entry relationships alongside men and women returning from prison.
I never found it difficult to love my enemies until I had some. I grew up in a cozy suburb with little police presence and not a prison in sight. The most I saw of police was the inexplicably present “School Resource Officer” at my public high school. Raised among evangelicals, I remember being taught that my enemies were people whom I didn’t like or with whom I didn’t get along. The most dramatic enemy was an abstract foe in a culture war. These are not the kind of “enemies,” I think, of which Jesus spoke.
In my first years of ministry under the Trump Administration, I finally made some real enemies. One of our church members was kidnapped by law enforcement while attending what was supposed to be a routine check-in regarding his immigration paperwork. As I waited for him to come out after doing his biometrics, I received a panicked call from him that they’d put him in handcuffs and were taking him away. Then the line cut out.
I made a list of enemies over the next 45 days as we fought a losing battle against his deportation. Kelly. Kunde. Gallagher. Nielsen. Trump. Officials all up and down the authoritarian ladder, from case officers to paper pushers to the ones dictating the policy that got our friend incarcerated and ultimately deported.
The 45 days our church member spent in immigration detention should be enough to convince anyone that abolition is necessary. He was hospitalized several times because of negligence toward his medical conditions. He spent time in at least three prisons and not a care was given to his struggling body in most of them. For most of his detention, he was isolated in a remote notorious prison designed to alienate immigrants from support in rural Georgia.
But the Scripture passage this week isn’t about that. It’s about the people who made that world possible and continue to maintain it (because it did not leave office with the former administration). I can’t tell you exactly what it means to love those people. I’m still struggling to figure that out myself. But what I can say is that this passage demands we don’t wish the same depraved system of incarceration on them, even though they made and maintain it. And if we don’t wish prison on the only people who we really might think deserve it, we certainly can’t maintain that status quo for people who aren’t our enemies and certainly don’t.
For all the focus we put in this passage on turning the other cheek, I believe the answer to the vexing questions here may lie elsewhere. In v. 30, Jesus makes a remark that seems out of place when talking about enemies. “Give to everyone who begs of you.” The response to a cruel and shattered world is not to wield its own weapons against it and against your enemies. The response is abundance. The response is to make plain God’s provision and love to the world.
The project of abolition is not merely the ending of incarceration or the abolition of police. The project of abolition must necessarily involve the creation of a world that obviously has no need for such things, where the existence of these systems would seem absurd to everyone present. We need to recognize and distribute the abundance that God has given us in this world so that everyone has what they need. Then everyone can thrive and not just attempt to survive.
Even our enemies.
Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his) is a Baptist pastor and writer in North Carolina.
In this passage from 1 Corinthians, Paul writes, by logical syllogism, to combat the belief that there would be no general resurrection of the dead. For Paul, the resurrection of Christ points to the resurrection of all; to the promise of life beyond death, the vindication of those denied justice in life, and the renewal of the creation.
Of course, Paul’s insistence on resurrection here is about victory over death and life beyond our deaths in this world. But — as in Daniel 12:2 and Jürgen Moltmann’s interpretation of that passage in The Crucified God — resurrection also points to justice and vindication. The resurrection is also the resurrection to judgment: not the criminal legal system of punishment that passes for “justice” in this world, but God’s true judgment of accountability. Belief in the resurrection of the dead is hope that justice can be done — that is one reason why, as Paul writes, if there is not resurrection “we are of all people most to be pitied” (15:19).
Resurrection of the dead is victory for those who have perished (and vindication for those who have perished due to injustice and oppression). Resurrection of the dead is also what frees us from remaining “still in our sins” (15:17). The divine judgment at the resurrection of the dead is linked by faith, in 15:17 to our freedom from our sins, to the transformative possibilities of real accountability and divine compassion.
Lee Griffith, in The Fall of the Prison, also reminds us that prisons in the Bible are identified with the powers of death — so resurrection is opposition to the power of the prison, and abolition is an act of resurrection. Resurrection is the freedom of those bound by death and the grave. Resurrection empowers the promise of freedom for those subject to the civil death of incarceration, too.
And this resurrection is not only a promise for the world to come but a present reality. As Paul writes in 15:20: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.” While the resurrection of all, victory over death, hasn’t come about yet, it has started. Paul’s faith in the resurrection of the dead is based on the reality of the vindicated Jesus who lives. And for us, living in the presence of the living risen Christ, in a world where the resurrection of the dead has already begun, abolition becomes a sacramental act of making-present the living Jesus. The risen Christ comes close to us in every act of liberation that resists the powers of death and brings forth transformative and creative community and accountability. Abolition flourishes in the already-risen presence of the living Christ and anticipates the promise of the divine judgment of real accountability — for in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead.
Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for Abolition.
In Luke’s first “call to discipleship” narrative, Simon Peter has spent the whole night fishing with no luck. Jesus asks him to cast out his nets again and Simon Peter notes his objection: “‘Master, we’ve worked hard all night and caught nothing. But because you say so, I’ll drop the nets,’” (5:5 CEB). He casts his net and it is suddenly overflowing with fish. Simon’s response is “‘Leave me, Lord, for I’m a sinner!’” This is often read as a righteous humility and Jesus’ “Don’t be afraid” as divine mercy. Is this a merciful response to Simon’s appropriate humility or is it a correction to a logic of shame and fear? It might be both, and in both ways it speaks against the logic that undergirds our prison and policing system.
On one level, carceral logic relies on the idea that some people deserve to be dehumanized through violence, exile, or withholding of necessary resources. Ultimately this logic flows from fear: the fear that there won’t be enough, that we need to protect ourselves from the pain that comes from mistakes, that a lack of due-deference for another person should result in condemnation. This fearful logic legitimizes the policing and prison system, which exists to force the most vulnerable populations to bear the weight of the consequences of economic austerity and dysfunctional social systems. From that perspective, Jesus’ miracle and response undermine carceral logic and the dysfunctional, austerity system it upholds. Jesus creates overabundance, corrects Simon when he attempts to exile himself (after his mistake of objecting to Jesus’ request), and asserts that his authority should not evoke fear in Simon Peter.
On another level, there is a sense that Simon’s response is appropriately humble and Jesus’ response a show of mercy. Dysfunctional systems are, at their heart, dysfunctional relationships. Dysfunctional relationships, at their heart, arise from misplaced fear. They result from imbuing temporal things and relationships with ultimate weight or what Paul Tillich calls “ultimate concern.” When we relate to experiences of suffering or acts of harm as ultimately defining experiences, then we create a reality in which a victim of harm is universally a victim and a perpetrator of harm is universally a perpetrator. The dichotomy of victim/perpetrator is also a part of carceral logic and at its heart is the fear of being either. We want the police to protect us from being victims by isolating and punishing perpetrators. We dehumanize perpetrators because we do not want to identify with them. We go to great lengths to analyze “what went wrong” that created a victim, often to the extent of victim-blaming. This is a dysfunctional reality because it is based on placing our ultimate concern on the avoidance of being a victim or perpetrator.
From this perspective, Simon Peter’s confession “Leave me, Lord, for I’m a sinner” represents a transitional space from the fear I described above. Simon can avow his identity as a sinner, but if Jesus does not show mercy he will be stuck in that identity. Jesus does immediately show mercy: “Don’t be afraid.” If Simon has placed his ultimate concern in the appropriate place, God’s regard for him, then he can be free of all the fears that perpetuate dysfunctional relationships. Consequently, Simon Peter must recognize Jesus’ ultimate authority as the only rightful object of fear. Only then will he internalize Jesus’ merciful “Don’t be afraid” and his identity will be transformed. When this is realized within himself he can also become a mediator of God’s “Don’t be afraid,” and begin to “catch” people into life-giving relationships.
From a transformational justice perspective, we must also be able to acknowledge the reality of harm that we do and harm that we experience, but we must also hear and relay God’s response: “Don’t be afraid.” Only through courageously facing the reality of harm (and our role as victim and/or perpetrator) and believing in the possibility of transformation, can we build a system that nurtures life-giving relationships.
Sarah Lynne Gershon (she/her) is an MDiv/MTS student, DOC pastor, and lives at the Bloomington Catholic Worker.
We typically relegate 1 Corinthians 13 to the province of sentimentality, using it at weddings and even funerals to do the emotional heavy-lifting for us. While Paul’s exposition on the significance and nature of love is entirely appropriate for those occasions, limiting it to those type of events is not. The understanding of love in 1 Corinthians 13 is a radical ethic that we need to embrace in every part of our lives — it’s not just the proprietary of loved ones gained and lost.
Abolition is an ethic of love, one that rejects patterns of retributive violence and vengeance that dominate much of the world. The entire police state and prison industrial complex is based on an ethic of punishment, fear, and profit. Punishment because the system believes (or teaches us to believe) that punishment will satisfy the demands of justice and somehow make up for whatever crime the system claims has been committed. Fear because the system believes (or teaches us to believe) that police and prisons deter criminality rather than create and expand it. Profit because the system knows (and wants us not to know) that there’s money to be made in prison beds, militarized police, and complex legal systems.
1 Corinthians 13 rejects all of those things: punishment, fear, and profit.
In particular, Paul rejects rejoicing in punishment, itself a “wrongdoing” (v. 6 NRSV) meant to correct another “wrongdoing.” Instead of an ethic of punishment, an ethic of love rejoices in telling the truth (again, v. 6), being patient and kind (v. 4), and not embracing resentment (v. 5). Systems and ethics of punishment obscure the truth of what people need to change and create a culture of resentment toward those who have experienced the systems of police and prisons.
Elsewhere, Scripture says that love is the rejection of fear, the currency of police and prisons. “There is no fear in love,” 1 John says, “but perfect love drives out fear, because fear expects punishment” (4:18, CEB). Fear reinforces the things that love is not. Fear is rarely patient (v. 4), it does not prioritize kindness (v. 4), and it certainly does not hope (v. 7).
Paul’s ethic of love here, too, presumes that profit is not the point. Before you can even entertain the idea of love, Paul presumes that acts of charity are second nature (v. 3). Systems of fear and punishment do not presume the sharing of resources, mutual aid, or any sort of generosity. Yet these things seem to be part and parcel of the culture of love Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13.
Love is eternal, according to Paul. It never ends. If that’s true, we can have hope that love will outlast systems of punishment, fear, and profit. We exist in an imperfect world dominated by these ethics, but Paul promises that we will fully see love in time (v. 12). In the meantime, with that hope we need to act with love and that means letting every aspect of our lives (both individually and collectively) be governed by love. That means police and prisons have to end.
Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his) is a Baptist pastor and writer in North Carolina.
The gospel appointed for this week is one of the texts most often used by Christian prison abolitionists, to show how Jesus, in declaring his mission, points to the liberation of captives as essential work for which he has come. Many Christian abolitionists written on this extensively elsewhere, so for this week I will just point you to a couple of resources:
“Prisons and the Bible,” an excerpt from Lee Griffith’s book The Fall of the Prison, made available by Black and Pink, which goes into great detail about the context and interpretation of this passage
The key questions abolitionists ask are these: why are we quick to apply Jesus’ words in this passage to spiritual captivity and not also to material ones? And — without restricting the broader vision of liberation from both material and spiritual powers presented in this text — how do we see the spiritual forces of sin, captivity, and death playing out in real material ways in our current systems of policing and prisons? The point is not to restrict Jesus’ message to the issue of abolition, but to allow Jesus’ promise of new creation and the coming reign of God to really “dwell richly” in our current material reality.
