A Sign of Pastoral Excellence, behind a Prison Wall
One of the most rapid population booms taking place in the United States today is going unnoticed by most local churches and pastors. And that is strange, considering how closely Jesus identified with those who are in this group. Indeed, to Jesus, presence with them is presence with Him (Matthew 25). They are among the people at the center of Jesus’ announced mission in his inaugural sermon at Nazareth (Luke 4).
I’m talking, of course, about prisoners, whose ranks are growing at an alarming rate in prisons, jails, and detention centers across the nation. At the end of 2006, more than 2.25 million people were being held in federal and state prisons and local jails, up 3 percent from 2005. Since 1995, our prison population has grown almost 3.5 percent a year on average. In 2006 alone, 501 people were incarcerated for every 100,000 in the United States. These increases are not limited only to men; in 2006, the number of women sent to prison grew 4.5 percent from the previous year.
Just last week, the Pew Center on the States in a new report announced that our inmate population continued to experience explosive growth last year. Now, for the first time in U.S. history, more than one in 100 American adults are behind bars, according to the Pew researchers.
As prisons have become a growth industry, an increasing number of correctional facilities are being privatized as profit-making ventures, raising serious ethical and moral questions. Such facilities are often located in rural and remote areas, further isolating inmates from families and support networks.
At its heart, this increase in our prison and jail population is driven in many ways by society’s preoccupation with and commitment to retributive justice as our primary response to crime. Retributive justice presupposes that vengeance and punishment extracted by the state or federal government is the appropriate and effective means of dealing with offenses against persons and property.
Restorative justice, however, is at the heart of the church’s message. Restorative justice takes seriously the mandate of the Christian gospel that reconciliation and restoration of community is the appropriate and effective response to offenses against persons, communities, and property. Creative alternatives to incarceration, reconciliation between offender and victim, and redemptive presence with those who are imprisoned are at the center of restorative justice.
Many congregations and pastors are involved in ministries with inmates, correctional officers, and victims of crime. Yet, those congregations are the exception rather than the norm.
In 1966, not long after graduating from seminary, my concept of pastoral ministry was radically transformed when I heard a federal district judge say that all pastors should be as familiar with “the inside of the local jail and prison as the local hospital.”
“The people in the jail need you worse than the people in the hospital,” he said.
What if we as pastors considered visiting the local detention facilities as much a part of our pastoral routine as hospital visitation?
Believe it or not, prisons can be places of extraordinary pastoral excellence. Many times, I have seen pastoral excellence take place behind prison walls.
Recently, I saw it embodied in a chaplain and inmates at a Sunday afternoon worship service attended by more than a hundred prisoners at the Federal Correctional Medical Facility in Butner, N.C. The singing was joyous as the prison choir lined out the hymns and lifted their voices with exuberance, both in praise and lament. Inmates verbalized the prayers of intercession, thanksgiving, confession, and praise. A Latino inmate read Luke’s story of the father and the two sons with particular pathos.
Chaplain Anthony Oakley recounted and personalized the Story of the Prodigal Son. With exceptional sensitivity, self-awareness, and insight, he connected the experiences and feelings of the son who went into the far country with the lives of the inmates.
“You know what it’s like to be in the far country, don’t you?” he asked.
The nodding heads and shouts of “yes” and “amen” clearly indicated that his listeners found this to be much more than an interesting ancient story.
“I suspect that all of you would like to return home,” he continued. “But I know for many of you, that is not possible, and if you did your family would not greet you with open arms. Am I right?”
Again, it was evident that the chaplain knew his audience, as they responded, many with tears and bowed heads.
Then the service took an especially dramatic and profound turn. As the chaplain described the scene of the father embracing the wayward son, he called an inmate to join him at the front. Removing his suit coat, the chaplain placed it on the inmate, covering his prison-issue shirt. Then he removed a ring from his finger and gently slid it onto the finger of the inmate.
There followed a potential violation of acceptable prison practice! Chaplain Oakley embraced the inmate!
When the tears subsided, Rev. Oakley said something like this: “The Father in this story is your Father! This is God! And you are welcome home! Take courage and live as one received back home.”
A chorus of “Amens” reverberated around the concrete and steel walls. Men, cut off from their families and communities, suddenly risked violating a prison rule and began to embrace as members of a new family. A possible violation of standard practice seemed inconsequential in the exuberance of a parable coming alive. No “older brother” put a damper on this welcome home celebration.
Behind the hard, cold walls of a prison, I saw pastoral excellence. . . . And, I met Jesus. Blessings await those who consider the prisons as part of their parishes and a context for pastoral excellence.
Kenneth L. Carder is the Williams Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School and a senior fellow with Pulpit & Pew: The Duke Center for Excellence in Ministry. He was bishop of the Mississippi Area of the United Methodist Church from 2000 to 2004 and the Nashville Area of the UMC from 1992 to 2000.
