Hurrah Words and the Christian Prison Debate

I'm still catching up on grading/administrative duties I missed while away, so I've not yet had a chance to study the "Christian Prison" data more closely.

To refresh, the prison in question is the brainchild of Bill Robinson of Corrections Concepts, Inc. Planned for the small northern Oklahoma town of Wakita, the 600-inmate prison would be run entirely by Christian staff. Inmates, who would volunteer to be transferred there for the final months prior to their release, would have the option of undergoing a number of life skills and faith-building programs.

Certainly faith-based prison ministries are nothing new, and from what I can tell experiments in federally run faith-based prisons and prison units have been tried in Florida and in Texas. These, however, seem to offer faith-based programs staffed by volunteers, and the prison administration and staff themselves are not required to be Christian. Anecdotes from such prisons claim a calmer atmosphere and lower recidivism rates. Scientific data don't yet exist to support those impressions, however. Indeed, research by Florida State University Criminology professor Dan Mears suggests that causal links between religious programs and positive outcomes are often based on shoddy research.

At issue is the vague descriptor "faith-based," which could mean anything from a life skills program run by a religious charity to a Bible study class. The blurry lines here make it impossible to tell if, for instance, convict A owes her benefits to having studied Genesis or to having learned how to manage personal finances. Faith-based programs themselves, however, often claim any and all benefits without bothering to make this distinction.

I think a "Christian prison" built of, by, and for Christians, would run into a similar blurriness problem. Sociologist Anthony Cohen once wrote of "hurrah words"--terms like democracy, freedom, or justice--that summon instant, almost universal support from (at least) people in US culture. They're uniter-words, the vocabulary of common assent that politicians and other leaders can mobilize to encourage people to rally around a cause, putting aside their petty disagreements for a moment.

The problem is, hurrah words only work if they stay safely abstract. Once people start discussing among themselves exactly what democracy means or what justice is, they quickly discover that they hold radically divergent ideas. The uniter word itself becomes then the cause for division.

Christian functions in a similar way for, well, Christians. Just about all Christians can answer yes to the question, "Are you a Christian?" But--as any street evangelist will tell you--once asked "What does it mean to be a Christian?" or "How could I become a Christian?", people give very different answers, answers which most street evangelists are quick to correct according to the dictates of their particular theologies. I joked yesterday about denomination-specific prisons being the next step on the faith-based prison path, but in fact denominations exist due to the fact that "What does it mean to be Christian?" has no single, universally convincing answer--at least, none that mortals can detect as such.

Would the Christian prison affirm the Real Presence in the Eucharist as Roman Catholics do or maintain a symbolic-only understanding of the Lord's Supper as Southern Baptists do? Would it see faith as a matter of a singular conversion event or as a slow process of sanctification and justification? Would it practice the Baptism of the Spirit (glossolalia--speaking in tongues) or ban such a practice as heretical? Would the Bible be approached as the literal, inerrant Word of God or as the inspired-but-human testament to the Living Word that is Christ? Which translation would be used--the New Revised Standard Version? The King James? The Message?

These aren't minor questions; they're the very stuff of schisms, the substance of deeply held denominational boundaries. The theological orientation of Corrections Concepts, Inc., will likely determine how it makes decisions about staffing, inmates, and programs. It's disingenuous, at best, for Corrections Concepts, Inc., to present itself simply as "Christian," as if the term were self-explanatory. Of course, were the organization to specify a faith, to declare itself as, say, Lutheran rather than Christian, it would likely find it even harder to garner popular support (and it's had plenty of difficulty in the numerous other locales it's attempted to convince). Lutheran (or Pentecostal, Baptist, Catholic, or Nazarene) just isn't as powerful a hurrah word as Christian.

I do not mean to infer bad faith (as it were) on the part of Bill Robinson or CCI. The company does not earn my confidence, however, by having its attorney blame past resistance to the project in other towns on Satan. That's the other, propagandist function of hurrah-words; they preempt debate about or criticism of the idea they are called to prop up. Speak out against the invasion of Iraq? You're against national security. Speak out against a public protest? You're against freedom of speech. Speak out against the faith-based prison? You're against Christianity.

It's dirty pool. And it's a flashing red light indicating (perhaps) a weak argument or an agenda with something to hide.

Even aside from the creepy-vague rhetoric used to justify the prison, though, I have other reservations about a Christian prison.

More tomorrow,

JF