prison ministry
Restorative justice with Anselm
The satisfaction theory of atonement offers my incarcerated students something the substitution theory does not: a way to make amends and be restored.
Episode 18: Journalist Chris Hedges, author of Our Class
A conversation with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges about his ordination and prison ministry, White liberals in the church, Jesus and insurrection, and more
Tasting salvation during a fellowship meal at a maximum security prison
None of us wants it to end, because we know we'll never see each other again.
A prisoner for every church
Here in Washington State, there is roughly the same number of churches as there are prisoners.
Do you see this prisoner? Meeting with Sing Sing seminarians
In the context of a seminary class behind bars, Jesus' question to Simon is a probing and challenging one.
Prisoners and the least of these in American Protestantism
American evangelicals and mainliners often seem worlds apart when it comes to engagement with social issues. Take prisons as a case in point. The rhetoric diverges along the lines that one might expect: mainliners rail against the American mass incarceration system, the new Jim Crow that locks away minorities and the poor and is sustained by in-prison private labor and for-profit facilities. They want to fight this sinful system through activism (protests and petitions), academia (lectures and scholarly books), and artistic endeavors (photo essays and poetry).
Evangelicals seek inmate conversion.
Free on the inside
Joshua Dubler shows up at a maximum-security prison as a budding ethnographer. He becomes a man captured by friendships.
New life without parole: Ministry behind bars
When I met Jonah I noticed two things: he was wracked with overwhelming guilt and very much wanted to die, and he knew the Bible.
Jesus’ barrio: Inmates as apostles
Gangs excel at finding the lost, adopting them and sending them out. Therefore, gang youth can be recruited for apostolic ministry.
..... you visited me: The call to prison ministry
When I was a newly ordained pastor, I heard a speech by a federal judge. The judge said that he kept in contact with every person he sentenced to prison. His rationale was simple: he didn’t want his only impact on an individual to be the act of denying his or her freedom. Though as a pastor I visited hospitals almost daily, I had never been inside a jail. Within a few weeks of hearing that judge’s challenge, I made my first visit to the county jail.