God in Captivity
The Rise of Faith-Based Prison Ministries in the Age of Mass Incarceration. By Tanya Erzen
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8201521 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jennifer Graber (0000-0003-2229-5703, The University of Texas at Austin, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 85 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 841-844 |
| Publication date | 2017-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jaarel/lfx033 |
| OpenAlex | W2728762569 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Based on fieldwork in men’s and women’s prisons across the United States, Tanya Erzen explores the growth and impact of faith-based ministries (FBMs) provided by conservative evangelical Christians. The chapters describe individual ministry programs and considers them in light of several themes, including religious experience, gender, race, and politics. From her observations, Erzen argues that FBMs have arisen alongside—and their success has relied upon—the sharp rise in the severity of drug-crime sentencing, the dearth in state-funded rehabilitation programs, and a widely held theology of redemptive suffering that considers prison part of God’s response to individual lawbreakers. She contends that FBMs have found a unique foothold within prisons starved for resources and swelling with occupants as a result of fiscally and socially conservative political agendas. Indeed, Erzen argues, FBMs have succeeded insofar as they provide a way for under-resourced prisons to run more smoothly. As many scholars have noted, America’s prison population has boomed in recent decades even as budgets for medical care, basic education, and counseling for addictions and mental health have withered. FBMs within prisons not only provide services that are often otherwise unavailable, but also serve to reinforce the punitive approach of American disciplinary institutions. As a result, Erzen observes, inmates and volunteers participating in FBMs have little reason to question the underlying causes of crime, the nation’s goals in criminal sentencing, and what reconciling offenders to their communities might look like.
Christian ministry · Criminology · Faith · Mass incarceration · Political science · Politics · Prison · Punitive damages · Sociology · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Religion, Society, and Development
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2021 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |