An eye-opening account of how and why evangelical Christian ministries are flourishing in prisons across the United States
Throughout the United States, faith-based prison ministries are flourishing amid an increasingly punitive system of mass incarceration. These predominantly evangelical Christian ministries are mainly concerned with salvaging individual souls: faith-based groups believe that each person is capable of transformation, but only through born-again conversion. While these ministries don't view prisoners as incorrigible, neither are they concerned with the injustice of our prison system.
Tanya Erzen spoke with prisoners and members of faith-based ministries in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, and Washington, at both male and female prisons, to better understand both the nature of these ministries and their effects. What she discovered raises questions about whether these groups violate the separation of church and state; often, educational...