Stan Moody

Manchester, ME 04351
207-626-0594
www.stanmoody.com

Prison Reform: Where Is The Church?

Author: Stan Moody:

Stan Moody of Manchester, ME, former Maine State Representative and most recently a Chaplain at
Maine State Prison in Warren, is advocating for transparency and accountability in Maine’s prison
system…A prolific and published writer, Dr. Moody is pastor of the Meeting House Church in
Manchester and has been a speaker on human rights issues at conferences around the nation…

Reformer Martin Luther, condemned at the 1521 Diet of Worms trial for
daring as a Catholic monk to challenge the Holy Roman Empire on its doctrine of
indulgences, wrote,

Did we in our own strength confide,

Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side,
The Man of God’s own choosing.

Samuel Wesley later followed with a similar sentiment in his famed hymn,
The Church’s One Foundation.
Today’s American evangelical church is struggling for survival and
relevancy, hoping to avoid becoming too involved in the lives of the least among
us. Decidedly white, suburban, upper middle class and Republican, its god has
become the dumping ground for a wing and a prayer in the vain hope that catchy
political activism will change the world. Mainline churches, on the other hand,
seem to be locked in the status quo, fighting escalating costs and declining
membership.
Meanwhile, the least among us are falling off the cliff or rotting in the
world’s most oppressive criminal justice system while we scurry around doing
maintenance on our possessions, the presumed blessings of the god of the
American Dream of prosperity and success.

Prison Reform, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr., Christian Right, Evangelical, Jim Ridgeway,
Solitary Watch, Department of Corrections, NAACP, prison-reform:-where-is-the-church,
www.scribd.com/stanmoody, www.moodyreport.wordpress.com
 We have become a nation proud of our accomplishments, shoving under the
veil of welfare and prison the pesky reminders of our hypocrisy. The church is
losing its counter-cultural edge and its relevancy to speak to national life.
Award-winning journalist, James Ridgeway, prison activist and founder of
Solitary Watch, wrote to me this past week a thought-provoking word:

The prisons are getting full of old people, and the states are
slow to enact compassionate care laws to let these poor old souls out
to die in the free world. Now, isn’t this an issue that could motivate
these stuck-in-the-mud mainline churches? With a few notable
exceptions, primarily among Evangelicals, the churches are dead in
the water. These people seem so out of it!

No, Jim. We are so awfully busy keeping up with our toys, our homes, our
cars, our vacation villas, our club memberships and our 401K’s that we cannot
possibly take on anything more. Would you care for a donation? A Thanksgiving
basket, maybe?
The previous week, a high-profile activist for the NAACP in Maine was
wringing her hands over the so-called faith community’s tepid response to human
rights violations in Maine prisons, particularly around the issue of solitary
confinement. She was frustrated over the tendency of the clergy to fall for the
“bully tactics” of the Department of Corrections, while the Christian perspective
dominates religious culture both inside and outside prison.
As with all causes, there are, of course, exceptions. My favorite is Trinity
Evangelical Free Church in Skowhegan, ME, that recently built a 40-bed shelter
for ex-offenders on the church property. Its motto? “Whatever you did for the
least of these, you did for me” (Matt. 25:40). Their remarkable story is told on
www.shelterbyjesus.org.
Today’s church is in survival mode. There are essentially two ways to
survive. One is to become too big to fail and thereby too big to care very much.
The other is for a conclave of aging members to hold enough bake sales and
suppers to ward off the inevitable. There is little room in either case for touching a
life beyond notches in the old salvation belt. Meanwhile, the homogeneity of
American church congregations holds at bay people who look different, act
different and miss the common biblical metaphors for righteous living. In such an
environment, there is little likelihood of shoulder-rubbing among disparate groups,
let alone addressing each other’s needs.
The critical needs of re-entering prisoners are fairly simple but daunting –
job training, mentoring, housing and drug and alcohol treatment. The church, a
Prison Reform, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr., Christian Right, Evangelical, Jim Ridgeway,
Solitary Watch, Department of Corrections, NAACP, prison-reform:-where-is-the-church,
www.scribd.com/stanmoody, www.moodyreport.wordpress.com
source of Christian values of love, forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration, is
well-positioned to help cut the recidivism rate by as much as 75%. Two
impediments stand in the way – failure to trust in the power of prayer and fear of
getting our hands dirty with time-consuming, unsolvable problems.
As a pastor, I have no easy answers to such problems except to say that the
first step is to welcome into our churches ex-prisoners, their families and their
victims. The roadblocks are daunting. Ex-prisoners are more comfortable with
their own; families are ashamed, and victims are commonly angry at God and the
church that was not there when needed.
It is time for the church to stop wringing its hands over its budget and its
survival and jumpstart the ministry of reconciliation across cultural barriers for no
other reason than that it is the right thing to do.

Prison Reform, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr., Christian Right, Evangelical, Jim Ridgeway,
Solitary Watch, Department of Corrections, NAACP, prison-reform:-where-is-the-church,
www.scribd.com/stanmoody, www.moodyreport.wordpress.com