Evangelicals Part 6 (Evangelicals and Politics)

This essay discusses the role of Evangelicalism in the public space, specifically as a it pertains to religious programs within secular federal prisons.

As the name of the movement would suggest, a key component of the Evangelical worldview is the necessity of evangelism. Evangelism often takes the form of missions – programs designed to specifically target a certain group. While most missions provide some sort of material or social benefit to their targets, the key goal of most missionary activity is the conversion of non-Christians. Due to its unique history of incarcerating criminals, the United States is replete with a very specific type of missionary activity – prison ministries.  (Sullivan 2). While prison ministries can be beneficial to both prisoners and cash strapped state correction facilities, they are also criticized for potentially violating the disestablishment clause in the US Constitution. Prison ministries are an example of Evangelical missions because, though they provide many ancillary benefits to prisoners, their primary purpose is win converts to Christianity. They are controversial because this conflation of religious practice and secular rehabilitation can be seen to violate the separation of church and state, as well as to unfairly deny treatment to prisoners.

            Sullivan’s Prison Religion: Faith Based Reform and the Constitution focuses specifically on Iowa’s Newton Correctional Facility and the prison ministry InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI). After winning a bid to provide pre and post release care for inmates in the Newton Correctional Facility, IFI began to operate its ministry out of a specific unit within the prison, Unit E. IFI provided prisoners with a “values-based” rehabilitation program. The program provided education, more prisoner access to families, a more comfortable prison environment, and the potential for a sympathetic voice at parole hearings. IFI also provided more explicitly Christian services, like Bible studies and revivals.

 In fact, despite the potential for good present in the non-religious aspects of IFI, the main focus of the group is on proselytization. Charles Colson, in a solicitation for funds for IFI, writes, “It is almost unimaginable – with all the resistance to Christian truth – that we should be running a prison that is, by the grace of God, turning hardened criminals into disciples of Christ.” In a brochure for the program, IFI describes itself as “a 24-hour-a-day Christ-centered, biblically based program that promotes personal transformation of prisoners through the power of the gospel… a joint effort between Prison Fellowship and the state… confronting prisoners with the choice of embracing new life in Christ and personal transformation or remaining in the grip of crime and despair.”

This literature is reminiscent of the rhetoric of many conservative Evangelicals. It is not the program that has the power to change the hardened criminal; rather, it is the transformative power of a relationship with Jesus Christ. As it has often been for the Evangelical mind, programs that attempt to put a stop to sin are doomed to fail, and it is only through the individual religious encounter that true transformation can be actualized.

It is easy to see how a secular thinker might be rankled by IFI, particularly when it is described as “a joint effort between Prison Fellowship and the state.” It’s decidedly muddy water. On one hand, it’s a very clear religious presence within a state institution, and on the other, it’s providing a valuable service that the state does not have the resources to provide for itself. IFI is upfront about its Evangelical leanings. It is also one of many private programs that operate within the state institution. This protection afforded by being “one of many” disappears if a group starts to become discriminatory, which IFI appears to have been. Bryan Chandler, a prisoner who underwent IFI’s orientation, decided not to join the program because it conflicted with his Catholic beliefs. He was transferred out of Unit E, and into the general population. In this way, IFI prevented prisoners who did not buy into their belief system from receiving the benefits of the program. This is, of course, their prerogative, but raises the question of whether or not a religious program should be able to dictate who receives treatment in a secular prison.

In essence, this is a microcosm of a larger debate about the role of religion in public life, and whether the religious and the secular can truly exist as discrete groups. Sullivan argues that they cannot, and I am inclined to agree. Various social, rhetorical, and institutional fixtures prevent any intelligible conversation about the two spheres from happening, much less any action.

Sullivan devotes a large portion of the introduction of her work to this very issue. How can real dialogue about the value of prison ministries and similar programs occur when Christians and secularists have very different ideas about what disestablishment means? For the Evangelical, disestablishment means that the government must not meddle in religious matters, but the religious are free to engage in public matters; whereas, for the secularist, disestablishment means that neither sphere should intersect. Obviously, both of these positions are unrealistic. Sullivan’s solution is to abandon the word “religion” in a legal context (also unrealistic).

Unlike Sullivan, I see no real way of resolving the religious/secular dichotomy in any appreciable way, particularly not with rhetorical cop-outs. At the risk of acquiescing to the Modern, it may be more useful to look at the results of various programs, rather than attempt to puzzle out their inner ideological workings.