I was in prison … The church behind bars

Christian Century, Oct 3, 2006 by Jason Byassee

IN ONE OF those neglected corners of scripture that must scare those brave enough to think about it, Jesus promises an unpleasant future for those who would not visit him in prison: "Just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me" (Matt. 25:45). Threats aside, Lovett Weems of Wesley Theological Seminary has suggested that renewals of the church have usually been accompanied by increased care for those in prison. With well over 2 million people imprisoned in the United States--more than in any other nation at any time in world history--the church has ample opportunity for renewal.

The trouble is that the church is not much interested. Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship recently remarked offhandedly that he has been trying to get people interested in prison ministry for over 30 years, with less success than he'd like. Much of the church seems to agree with the surrounding culture that those in prison deserve to be there, and the more they suffer, the better--end of story.

Think again about the numbers: more than 2 million. Normally when the church takes note of areas of population growth, it plots how to serve the growing community. In the 1990s, the fastest growing category of housing in the U.S. was prison cells, Weems reports (in Leadership in the Wesleyan Spirit). But we rarely see congregations or denominational bureaucrats scrambling to meet the needs of the prison community.

If we are unwilling to go to prison to meet Jesus, Jesus is willing to come from prison to meet us. Many of the 2 million are committed Christians, often with dramatic stories of a conversion that took place behind bars. They want also to serve, and often do. (See related stories by Kenneth Carder and Troy Rienstra on p. 25 and p. 27.)

Jens Soering is an up-and-coming Catholic lay theologian. He is also a convict, sentenced to life for murdering his girlfriend's parents when he was a freshman at the University of Virginia. Imprisoned in Virgina, this son of a German diplomat immersed himself in the riches of Catholic thought and tradition. His first book, The Way of the Prisoner (Lantern, 2003), deals with centering prayer and abounds with examples of how ordinary Christians can practice what ancient monks did in their cells.

Soering's prison context gives his work extraordinary moral energy. Every line matters, for this man's life is slipping away in prison. Unfortunately, his repeated discussions of his own history and conversion begin to feel like a sort of personal advocacy, as though his chief hope in writing is to gain his freedom. (Soering maintains his innocence. A former Virginia state deputy attorney general backs his case, pointing out flaws in the prosecution that Soering's lawyer, since disbarred for incompetence, failed to challenge.)

Soering's book on centering prayer has an evident wisdom about it, as when he writes on how to breathe while praying: "With each inhalation and exhalation, I connect with all of God's beautiful creation, literally taking into myself the same air that swirls through my friends' and my enemies' lungs." He also gives very practical instructions on bodily training, such as: Don't drink coffee. This sort of training is like jogging: initial euphora, subsequent difficulty, then hard practice. Centering prayer is about divestment of self and the infusion of God's Spirit to live an other-directed life--a "reaching out to God" rather than an "emotional grasping for the divinity." Prisoners have a head start on this, he says: "God has done so much of the work already through our agony that we need only finish the job during silent inner prayer."

The most memorable portions of Way of the Prisoner and of Soering's second book, An Expensive Way to Make Bad People Worse: An Essay on Prison Reform from an Insider's Perspective (Lantern, 2004), are the descriptions of prison life. While he was jailed in England where he had gone after the murders and from which he was extradited--Soering's wrist was broken twice by the same prison guard. On another occasion he was shot by a rubber bullet aimed at another prisoner (it was after this that he turned to centering prayer as a way to address his mental and physical pain). He was not surprised to learn that the perpetrators of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison were reservists whose day job was in corrections.

Soering says that he was nearly raped once and that prison guards nearly always look the other way on such occasions, as though prisoners deserve whatever they get. Citing the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Soering says that the prevalence of male rape in prison is such that more men than women are raped in this country. Given the high incidence of HIV, Soering calls this "the death penalty on the installment plan."

Soering vividly describes a weekend that he and a bunkmate spent gasping for air in their cell in a new prison whose ventilation system had been poorly installed. He has watched as prisoners' few amenities have been taken away by legislators, even though physical recreation, such as weight lifting, reduces fighting, and educational opportunities demonstrably reduce recidivism. Prisons are also de facto mental institutions: a sizable percentage of those behind bars are mentally ill. Soering shows the inescapable effect of the political demagoguery in this country that makes "tough on crime" speeches the cheapest way to garner votes and curry public favor. While opinion polls may show it to be popular, get-tough legislation simply is not working: "Prison does not deter crime because criminals are too crazy, too drunk, too high, too uneducated, too unintelligent and too young to fully comprehend what they were doing at the time they broke the law."