Presbyterian Peace Fellowship and partners offer a summit on incarceration
The half-day webinar focuses on ministering to and advocating for people in prison
LOUISVILLE — Last week, Presbyterian Peace Fellowship teamed with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and Underground Ministries and its One Parish One Prisoner Program to hold a half-day webinar on incarceration, with a focus on ministering to those who have completed their sentences and advocating for just policies and laws to protect people who are still incarcerated.
The webinar began with worship, with Isaiah 61:1-4 and John 21:15-19 as the texts. The Rev. Joe Morrow, associate pastor for evangelism and community engagement at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, said during his meditation that the John passage describes “an awkward encounter” between Jesus and Peter following Peter’s three-time denial of Jesus, who was soon crucified and resurrected following those denials.
“I have to imagine there were some words of hurt and pain exchanged: ‘how could you?’ and ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’” Morrow said.
Jesus launches Peter into a new vocation, and “restorative justice does that too. It helps us heal from a broken past.”
Who is my neighbor? Showing up as the church
Three panelists — the Rev. Deanna Gemmer of Hagar’s Community Church, a new worshiping community in Olympia Presbytery, and Alvin Shim and Candice Baughman of Underground Ministries — discussed ministering to incarcerated people. Hagar’s Community Church is inside Washington state’s only women’s prison. About 60 people attend weekly services and Bible study there.
Shim, Underground Ministries’ program manager, said the One Parish One Prisoner program works with 78 church partners in Washington state and a handful of others across the nation. “The best thing we can do,” Shim said, “is put people in prison in contact with people outside.”
Baughman attended Hagar’s Community Church when she was incarcerated. “I decided I believed in God and the idea that somebody loved me even in the darkness of what I’d done,” Baughman said. “I thought I could probably use some friends when I get out.”
She worshiped at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Olympia the first Sunday following her release from prison, where members had written her numerous letters in the months leading up to her release. Over the next six months or so following that initial service, “I went through a lot of struggles, but the [church] team stuck with me,” she said.
Gemmer described the prison chapel that Hagar’s Community Church uses for worship. “The walls are sterile and the chairs aren’t all that great. But it’s still a place of sanctuary,” Gemmer said. “Everyone is welcome, and everyone belongs. You are not defined by your worst day, your worst mistake or your biggest shame.”
“I so appreciate being loved by people who feel the gospel is real,” Gemmer said of the women she serves. “They cling to it and they need it to get out of bed in the morning.”
Shim said a training slide for the One Parish One Prisoner program lets folks know what to expect: “Warning,” the slide says. “This will break your heart.”
Religious communities as partners in activism and policy
The Rev. Ron Stief, executive director of the National Religious Coalition Against Torture, pointed out that among the 122,000 people currently in solitary confinement, 90% are serving sentences in state or local jurisdictions.
“We are committed to ending extreme sentencing especially for young people,” said the Rev. Lindsey Hammond, policy director for Restore Justice in Chicago, which is working to get the Nelson Mandela Act passed in the Illinois Legislature and signed by Gov. JB Pritzger. The bill would boost transparency on solitary confinement and enact the Nelson Mandela Rules identified by the United Nations.
Yosef Moore, diversion and reentry policy analyst at Access Living in Chicago, advocates especially for people with disabilities.
“Solitary confinement is torture. There are no two ways about it,” Moore said. “There are decades of research on the harm it causes.”
Brian Beals of Restore Justice is also executive director of the Mud Theater Project, which plans an Oct. 16 staging of its play “Jabril’s Chains” at Fourth Presbyterian Church. Beals served a 35-year sentence before he was exonerated.
“We use art to speak to people and show them in ways and words that can move them, inspire them and motivate them,” Beals said. “People can relate to the characters they see.”
Johnny Perez, U.S. prisons director for the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, said people placed in solitary confinement are seven times more likely to die by suicide and three times more likely to commit homicide.
“Faith communities have a unique role” advocating for an end to solitary confinement, Perez said. “Faith leaders hold moral authority. When clergy speak, policymakers listen differently.”
Perez said that congregations “have built-in organizing networks of voters, leaders and people. Faith communities are trusted safe havens for healing and supporting survivors and families.”
Over the past six years, more than a dozen states have limited the use of solitary confinement, Perez noted. Clergy “have led vigils in statehouses, framing solitary confinement as a moral and spiritual crisis, not just a corrections issue.”
The Rev. Bev Brewster, a former human rights attorney who’s now a member of Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, said more than 100 California congregations are working on the Golden State’s version of the Mandela Act. “I have realized it’s important to have people stand by and bear witness and listen,” Brewster said. “When you tell your story, you get more respect when there’s a minister in a collar standing nearby.”
“Plus, a lot of survivors need pastoral care,” Brewster said. “There’s room for all of us in this movement.”
The Rev. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain, executive director of Live Free Illinois, said the organization’s main job is “to get the church organized.” Live Free Illinois has organized more than 120 congregations in 50 cities “at the intersection of public safety and criminal justice reform.”
“We at Live Free Illinois work at deconstructing the lie of punishment,” Bates-Chamberlain said. “We have been discipled to think that cages are normal. Our job as a faith community is to cast out those lies.”
“We believe in the leadership of those most impacted by the work,” Bates-Chamberlain said, “so they can be the architect of change in these spaces.”
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