An eye-opening account of how and why evangelical Christian ministries are flourishing in prisons across the United States
It is by now well known that the United States’ incarceration rate is the highest in the world. What is not broadly understood is how cash-strapped and overcrowded state and federal prisons are increasingly relying on religious organizations to provide educational and mental health services and to help maintain order. And these religious organizations are overwhelmingly run by nondenominational Protestant Christians who see prisoners as captive audiences.
Some twenty thousand of these Evangelical Christian volunteers now run educational programs in over three hundred US prisons, jails, and detention centers. Prison seminary programs are flourishing in states as diverse as Texas and Tennessee, California and Illinois, and almost half of the federal prisons operate or are developing faith-based residential programs. Tanya Erzen gained inside access to many of these programs, spending time with prisoners, wardens, and members of faith-based ministries in six states, at both male and female penitentiaries, to better understand both the nature of these ministries and their effects. What she discovered raises questions about how these ministries and the people who live in prison grapple with the meaning of punishment and redemption, as well as what legal and ethical issues emerge when conservative Christians are the main and sometimes only outside forces in a prison system that no longer offers even the pretense of rehabilitation. Yet Erzen also shows how prison ministries make undeniably positive impacts on the lives of many prisoners: men and women who have no hope of ever leaving prison can achieve personal growth, a sense of community, and a degree of liberation within the confines of their cells.
With both empathy and a critical eye, God in Captivity grapples with the questions of how faith-based programs serve the punitive regime of the prison, becoming a method of control behind bars even as prisoners use them as a lifeline for self-transformation and dignity.
“For those who operate within the carceral complex, this book is an important read. For those who seek to better understand the complicated ways in which religion and incarceration mingle, it is a required read.”
—The New York Journal of Books
“Tanya Erzen’s writing shines light on the history of American prisons, on the role of religion within these desolate locales, and also on the lives lived by the prisoners she profiles. Her work is both illuminating and deeply, intimately, human, exploring the impossible situations lived in by hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens, and the ways that people try to salvage something out of the most soul-destroying environments imaginable. In an era of brutality, Erzen’s empathic voice is needed more than ever.”
—Sasha Abramsky, author of The American Way of Poverty
“Tanya Erzen’s God in Captivity offers an exceptionally nuanced and often heartbreaking picture of the role religion plays in the US prison system, both today and from its founding. As Erzen writes, the escape from brutalization that prison ministries provide can be, simultaneously, a lifeline for people attempting to wrest back a portion of their humanity, and state-sanctioned bigotry; a new chance at family for those who’ve been disowned, and a biased system that methodically shepherds desperate inmates into the most restrictive of faiths; and the offer of inner freedom in a purgatory without parole, and the sanctification of a deeply racist system descended directly from slavery. In prison, as in the outside world, all of these things are true at once, and it takes empathy, integrity, and skill to give them full voice. An important book for our times.”
—Kathryn Joyce, author of The Child Catchers and Quiverfull
INTRODUCTION
Redemption and Punishment
CHAPTER 1
The Convert’s Heart: The Quiet Stasis of Faith
CHAPTER 2
The Penitentiary and the Farm: A History of Redemption and Control
CHAPTER 3
The Missionaries: Governing the Prison
CHAPTER 4
The Chapel: The Predominance of Christianity in Faith-Based Prisons
CHAPTER 5
The Father and Son and the Limited Power of Forgiveness
CHAPTER 6
Mothers and Servants in the Savior Prison
CHAPTER 7
The Reformers: The Religious Politics of Prison Reform
EPILOGUE
Captivity and Freedom
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
- Political Research Associates, original piece, 8/17/2017
- The Gist/SiriusSM Progress 127, interview, 6/29/2017
- The Seattle Times, quoted in piece on inmate graduation in Washington state, 6/24/2017
- Reading Religion, review, 6/21/2017
- C-SPAN BOOKTV, Cities Tour Book Event, 6/5/2017
- The Public Eye, essay, Summer 2017 (print issue)
- Progressive Spirit/KBOO, interview, 5/26/2017
- Viewpoints Radio, taped interview, 5/7/2017
- Chronicle of Higher Education, review, 4/30/2017
- Patheos/The Friendly Atheist (blog), excerpt, 4/10/2017
- The Humanist (American Humanist Association), Q&A, 4/3/2017
- Medium, cross-posted Columbia Law School blog Q&A, 3/30/2017
- Columbia Law School blog, Q&A, 3/30/2017
- Literary Hub, excerpt, 3/24/2017
- AlterNet, excerpt, 3/14/2017
- The Revealer, excerpt, 3/8/2017
- Publishers Weekly, review, 3/6/2017
- University of Washington/Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, book publication announcement, 2/28/2017
- The Record/KUOW (NPR Seattle), interview, 2/2/2017