Today I’m really excited to announce that I’ve been awarded a Louisville Institute Pastoral Study Grant! This grant provides folks with financial support to undertake a research project. From their website: “awards grants to individual or collaborative study projects on Christian life, religious practices and institutions, and possibilities and ideas for the church, our communities, and the wider world. Grants are awarded to skilled and innovative clergy, lay leaders, and staff working in diverse Christian contexts in the United States and Canada.”

I’ll head to Louisville next month for our group consultation and after that the project will really ramp up. This grant is such a gift because so often writing work involves a ton of research and all of that time is unpaid. And if you want to do site visits? Forget about it! Book advances might cover some of it, but once you’ve signed a contract you’re on a tight timeline. And sometimes you need to do the research before you figure out if you even have a project. So a grant like this is indispensable. 

My project is called “Why have we abandoned Jesus in prison?” I want to explore why there are so few progressive organizations and denominational initiatives supporting people who are incarcerated. What’s the history of progressive/mainline prison programming? Did progressive folks abandon prison work or get shut out of it? And for the few congregations and organizations that are doing good work in the space, how have they managed to get it started and sustain it? 

Through historical research, interviews, and site visits I want to dive deep into what’s happening and what more can be done. 

While I know there are some great churches, individuals, and small organizations that are doing incredible and vital work inside prisons and jails, the overwhelming number of organizations doing this work are conservative evangelicals. They have nationwide (sometimes worldwide) ministries that are heavily funded, employ hundreds of people, and have thousands of volunteers. These organizations are also anti-queer and trans. 

Three years ago I got an email from a transgender man who’s been incarcerated for over 30 years in Minnesota. We struck up a correspondence that has turned into a friendship. He’s told me stories about the supports that are (and mostly are not) available to him. The more we’ve talked, the more I realized that while I knew a lot about the overall criminal justice system, I didn’t really know much about what it was like for someone who is incarcerated. I started looking into more ways to get involved (especially now that I’m no longer in Minnesota) and at every turn I found organizations that were conservative and anti-queer. I’ve shown up to some events, and even events that aren’t explicitly religious had an evangelical tint to them. So what happens if you’re not Christian? Or if you’re a progressive Christian? What happens if you’re queer or trans?

I talked to one higher up in a progressive denomination and was told they leave prison ministry to their “ecumenical partners”. So I looked up the partner; they’re anti-trans and have been known to make volunteers sign anti-trans statements as a condition of their volunteer service. This denomination who sending people to this ministry IS queer affirming. Why is this disconnect so large? 

As I’ve talked with my progressive friends (both inside the church and out) many of them don’t know what incarceration is like either. They had no idea of the difficulties of communicating, of visiting, of trying to access education. These are folks who care deeply about justice. Who are paying attention to the world around them, and yet this piece, these individuals, are hidden away. 

Then I heard about a queer affirming church that holds a queer affirming service in the middle of Oklahoma. And a queer affirming church planted inside a women’s prison in Colorado. So there ARE people doing the work. There ARE pockets of good things happening, but why aren’t they more widespread? 

My sense is there is something in the history that has led us to here and I want to find out what. I’ve already got some clues and I’m chasing down answers as fast as I can read. I also have a feeling this is about a lot more than prisons. It’s about politics and evangelicals and power and proselytization and theology and so much more. But all of it is having very real impacts on very real people, right here and now. 

My hope is this project will highlight the amazing people and organizations that are doing good work and inspire other people to get involved as well, whether as pen pals or in more direct ways, while also providing some theological reflections to anchor this work.

In tandem with this research work, I’m also working on doing more direct service work with incarcerated folks. If you want to stay up on all that I’m learning and what I’m doing, make sure you’re on the Empathy Into Action list. I’ll be sending out a monthly update with stories, essays, and book reviews. I might share things periodically here, but the EIA mailing list is going to be where the bulk of it is.