God in Captivity ─ The Rise of Faith-Based Prison Ministries in the Age of Mass Incarceration

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 opportunities for prisoners are tied to these ministries, and non-Christians are frequently marginalized and excluded from their benefits. At the same time, Erzen found that many prison ministries make undeniably positive impacts on the lives of prisoners. Men and women who have no hope of ever leaving prison can achieve personal growth, a sense of community, and a degree of liberation through participation.

With both empathy and a critical eye, God in Captivity grapples with the questions of how faith-based programs serve the punitive regime of the prison, and how men and women who live inside use these institutions as a lifeline for self-transformation and dignity.

Tanya Erzen is an associate professor of religion and gender studies at the University of Puget Sound and the executive director of the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, a nonprofit that provides a college education for incarcerated women in Washington State. She was a 2013 Soros Justice media fellow from the Open Society Foundation and a 2015 Hedgebrook writer-in-residence. Her books include Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement, Fanpire: The Twilight Saga and the Women Who Love It, and Zero Tolerance: Quality of Life and the New Police Brutality in New York City. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the American Association of University Women, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.