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Theology in carceral context

 

Willie Dwayne Francois III, senior pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church of Pleasantville, New Jersey, directs the master of professional studies program at New York Theological Seminary, which is the oldest master’s degree program offered by a theological institution in a US prison setting. The program is active in two New York State prisons: Sing Sing men’s prison and, as of last year, Bedford Hills women’s prison.

 

How did you become interested in the intersection of theological education and the incarceration system?

David Bentley Hart s apocalyptic view of tradition

David Bentley Hart does not get out of bed in the morning to take on small projects. In his most recent volume (which is, as usual, mischievously polemical, dauntingly erudite, and verbose), he sets his sights on John Henry Newman’s conception of tradition as expressed in his landmark work, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845, revised 1878), the publication of which precipitated the Victorian scholar’s conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism and arguably now serves as a major pillar of the Catholic Church’s self-understanding.

Believing in the future

My only thought as I sat in rush hour traffic once again: I was promised flying cars. I grew up watching The Jetsons, the reboot that aired in the 1980s. The Saturday morning cartoon embodied everything that I thought the future would hold: there would be flying cars, colonies in outer space, robots who did all the cleaning, and good-paying jobs that consisted of pressing buttons all day. I couldn’t wait to experience an entire meal by popping a single tablet into my mouth, just like they did on the show.

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