Book Recommendation: Thinking Theologically about Mass Incarceration

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It's hard to imagine a more urgent and timely topic: How can Christian churches understand and address the problems of racism, especially in its most current manifestation, mass incarceration?

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Thinking Theologically about Mass Incarceration, Biblical Foundations and Justice Imperatives.  Churches, seminaries, social action groups and other concerned Christians: This is a fantastic book for any Christian who wants to better understand—and take action on—racism in the U.S in its contemporary form: Mass incarceration.

26 writers—representing nearly as many Christian denominations—contributed brave essays, prophetic sermons and top-notch scholarly pieces on this very topic as part of the Faith & Order Commission of the National Council of Churches. It was the fruit of a multi-year process of vigorous discussion and discernment. The essays are powerful. 

Topics covered include racism, white supremacy/privilege, prison ministry and the main focus, mass incarceration.

Full disclosure: I am one of the authors who has a piece in this volume.

YOU CAN PURCHASE IT HERE.

This book is a great volume for prayer, study and action on this extremely important, contemporary issue! It's a "must have" for libraries, seminaries as well as personal and group reflection! It is academically robust, but it’s written in an accessible style so that non-experts can engage.  Thanks, Paulist Press!

What is mass incarceration?

If you talk about what racism was like before the Civil War, you couldn’t do that without talking about slavery—it’s most sinister manifestation. For 100 years after the Civil War, you couldn’t talk about racism without mentioning the way Jim Crow laws in the U.S. South institutionalized segregation and, along with it, racism. Today, you can’t really get a full grasp on the reality of racism without understanding how it manifests itself in the phenomenon of mass incarceration and the selective bias and privilege which fuel it.

Mass incarceration is the disproportionate treatment of people of color in all aspects of the criminal justice system—everything from shopkeepers being overly suspicious of black patrons to the statistics that say that people of color are more likely to be questioned by police (such as in a traffic stop), more likely to be searched, more likely to be arrested, and more likely to be convicted and, once convicted, more likely to have the harshest sentences. And the only factor that seems to correlate to these differences is skin color. I’m only restating what has been said so well in Michelle Alexanders seminal book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

A young African American kid is shot and killed for sporting a water pistol in Cleveland, Ohio. A white man who was arrested after shooting 9 black people in Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, is taken to the drive-thru at Burger King immediately after the incident. Perhaps a single incident could be excused for any number of reasons, but there are hundreds and hundreds of comparable examples all across the nation.

The end result is that African Americans have a familiarity with the criminal justice system that most Caucasian Americans will never have. This leaves empty spots in the pews, a gap in father-child relationships, a permanent mark on one's work history and a lifetime ban from voting. While some individual African Americans may fare well, the overall result of this is a permanent 2nd class caste system for African Americans in general.

What can we do about this?  And more specifically, what can our churches do about it? I recommend Thinking Theologically about Mass Incarceration, Biblical Foundations and Justice Imperatives to help with that.

YOU CAN PURCHASE IT HERE.