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A Christian Perspective
on Prisons
--An interview with Stan Moody
By Angola 3 News
Stan Moody has served in the Maine State House of Representatives both as a Republican and a Democrat, pastors a small country church in Central Maine and served as a Chaplain at the maximum security Maine State Prison, where he ministered to inmates in the Supermax unit. He has authored several books on the state of the evangelical church in America, including No Turning Back: Journal of an All-American Sinner, Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship: A New Look at the Second Coming of Christ and McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry.
Moody has written several recent articles focusing on prison issues, including A Suspicious (and Lonely) Death in Maine State Prison's Lockdown Unit, At Angola Prison, Does Jesus Christ Save?, and Maine's New Capital Punishment Law: Solitary Confinement.
Angola 3 News: The Bible uses the word "prison" 116 times, and Psalm 69:33 reads, ". . . the LORD heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners." Throughout the Bible, prison and executions are identified as tools of oppression against the underclass and dissidents, including the early Apostles and Jesus himself. The Bible presents the liberation of prisoners as a social good, as illustrated by the following noteworthy passages:
"Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners." (Psalm 146:7)
"I the LORD have called thee in righteousness . . . to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house." (Isaiah 42:6-7)
"The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me . . . to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." (Isaiah 61:1).
US popular culture often proudly makes reference to the Judeo-Christian traditions so prominent in US history, yet "Get tough on crime," is still the winning political slogan of the day. How did society come to view incarceration as a social good, as something necessary to keep society safe?
Stan Moody: First, we have ghettoized ourselves into white, suburban group-think that builds on self-righteousness. We are probably the most self-righteous nation on earth, which precludes us from contemplating, "There but for the grace of God, go I." Tragically, the greatest social good in America has become the acquisition of wealth through "legitimate" means, such as self promotion and corporate empire building, where greed becomes an acceptable virtue. Those who take shortcuts to the American Dream are pariahs to be banished from the kingdom of us pedestrian wannabees who, in frustration, quietly cheat on our taxes and on our spouses.
Jesus makes it clear that His followers are to love their enemies, do good to those who hate them, leave vengeance and retribution up to God and visit Him in prison. "Inasmuch as you have or have not done it to the least of these my brothers, you have or have not done it to me."
A cursory examination of our nation's history will satisfy that the founders had no Christian theocracy in mind and, in fact, crafted a document that expressly ensured otherwise. Yet, people who advocate for the theocratic view are not listening. The best evidence that we are not a Christian nation is not in the actions of government but in the actions of our erstwhile evangelical state church that has embraced the Republican Party as God's instrument for redemption. The vehicle for that redemption is a moral code rather than divine grace. Getting tough on crime is just another version of an anti-Christian moral code.
A3N: Why do you suppose prisons and prisoners' living conditions are so far removed from the popular US consciousness today? How do US popular culture and the corporate media present the issue of human rights in prison?
SM: Very simply, as the nation with by far the highest incarceration rate in the world, neither the public nor the mainstream news media wants to know anything about prisons. Prisons are the depositories of our social programming and education failures. "Get them out of our sight." The ultimate driver is cost. Only as the public becomes aware of the enormous cost of the revolving door of incarceration will they begin to pay attention to what is going on inside and how we might change the dynamic. Corrections has taken full advantage of this denial by essentially saying, "You cannot possibly understand what we are up against." They have built incarceration into a growth industry that is sapping our national strength and shredding our decency.
