Author: Ronald Shultz
Publisher: Xulon Press
ISBN: 159467342X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Author: Anthony Kelley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780910683135
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Author: Stephen Canup
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781735252919
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
After being on top of the world with an office on Park Avenue, Stephen Canup lost it all and found himself homeless and incarcerated. Jail-House Religion is his true life story of God's redeeming love and grace. "Jail-House Religion", a term we have all heard and often made fun of, can be "the real thing" and not just "a cheap imitation". Stephen Canup knows first-hand how real and lasting a true relationship with Jesus can be. Jesus found Stephen in prison - broken, bound, battered, betrayed and busted. But Jesus saved him and changed him forever. This is his story."Jail-House Religion"-How many times have we heard that phrase? It's usually in a mocking way. Is it the "real thing" or a "cheap imitation"? Can someone really find God in a jail or prison? Is God close enough to sinners there to hear their sincere cry? Can a person really be heard by Him if they commit, or re-dedicate, their hearts to walk with Christ? Can He actually use a convict, who turns his life around, to advance the cause of His Kingdom?Having once been incarcerated for nearly three years, Stephen knows first-hand what "society" says and thinks about prisoners - they call them misfits, outcasts and career criminals. For the most part, they despise prisoners. Society thinks they are worthless, dangerous and not capable of changing their ways. But many people have been "imprisoned" in the free world by their own bad choices even though they may have never been actually "incarcerated". When someone is as low as they can go, and think that the only "light at the end of the tunnel" is a train headed their way, what do they do? When they finally wake up one day and realize they are sick and tired of being in bondage because of our own stupid actions, wrong decisions and addictions, to whom do they turn? Isn't this the best time to cry out to God?God always runs to welcome truly repentant sinners! Stephen's story is very much like "the prodigal son" in Luke 15!

Author: Joshua Dubler
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 146683711X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
A bold and provocative interpretation of one of the most religiously vibrant places in America—a state penitentiary Baraka, Al, Teddy, and Sayyid—four black men from South Philadelphia, two Christian and two Muslim—are serving life sentences at Pennsylvania's maximum-security Graterford Prison. All of them work in Graterford's chapel, a place that is at once a sanctuary for religious contemplation and an arena for disputing the workings of God and man. Day in, day out, everything is, in its twisted way, rather ordinary. And then one of them disappears. Down in the Chapel tells the story of one week at Graterford Prison. We learn how the men at Graterford pass their time, care for themselves, and commune with their makers. We observe a variety of Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, and others, at prayer and in study and song. And we listen in as an interloping scholar of religion tries to make sense of it all. When prisoners turn to God, they are often scorned as con artists who fake their piety, or pitied as wretches who cling to faith because faith is all they have left. Joshua Dubler goes beyond these stereotypes to show the religious life of a prison in all its complexity. One part prison procedural, one part philosophical investigation, Down in the Chapel explores the many uses prisoners make of their religions and weighs the circumstances that make these uses possible. Gritty and visceral, meditative and searching, it is an essential study of American religion in the age of mass incarceration.

Author: Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691152535
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
More than the citizens of most countries, Americans are either religious or in jail--or both. But what does it mean when imprisonment and evangelization actually go hand in hand, or at least appear to? What do "faith-based" prison programs mean for the constitutional separation of church and state, particularly when prisoners who participate get special privileges? In Prison Religion, law and religion scholar Winnifred Fallers Sullivan takes up these and other important questions through a close examination of a 2005 lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a faith-based residential rehabilitation program in an Iowa state prison. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State v. Prison Fellowship Ministries, a trial in which Sullivan served as an expert witness, centered on the constitutionality of allowing religious organizations to operate programs in state-run facilities. Using the trial as a case study, Sullivan argues that separation of church and state is no longer possible. Religious authority has shifted from institutions to individuals, making it difficult to define religion, let alone disentangle it from the state. Prison Religion casts new light on church-state law, the debate over government-funded faith-based programs, and the predicament of prisoners who have precious little choice about what kind of rehabilitation they receive, if they are offered any at all.

Author: Rebecca Lewis
Publisher: Archway Publishing
ISBN: 166575625X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Every year thousands of religious individuals and groups of all faiths volunteer to enter into jails and prisons to bring hope to the incarcerated. But while their intention is honorable, many of these volunteers run into the reality of a highly dysfunctional, complicated and often volatile environment hostile by it’s nature to those efforts. Jail and prison ministry is not just about bringing the gospel of deliverance to the inmates through religious programming and spiritual counseling. Wise ministry comes from knowing the dynamics of the mission field which is often filled with the condensed darkness of human suffering and evil and many wolf traps. Effective jail and prison ministry requires the religious volunteer to have an awareness of the inner nuances of that environment. A study of inmate religious games, security issues that affect civilians entering to minister, as well as their own personal perceptions of ministry in a secular environment, is part of being fully equipped for that mission. Jail and prison ministry is not for the naïve in matters that may sabotage or weaken the intended purpose of those religious volunteers who seek to bring the hope of the gospel into the dark places that are our jails and prisons.

Author: Martin J. Hershock
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472051814
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
A microhistorical examination of early American culture

Author: D. Braxtonbrown-Smith
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 143436531X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Book Description
When one thinks of prison, the element that is most commonly omitted is love. Like in the outside world, love has its ups and its downs, its ins and its outs and complexities that send one soaring to the highest of highs and plummeting to the lowest of lows. Prison Love is a personal and thoughtful account of the different types of love in a place that is known for backstabbing, cutthroat deals and deadly violence. It is a place that can degrade the goodness of humanity, harden the heart and kill one's joy. Serving a six-year prison term in Alderson, West Virginia, Dr. D. Braxtonbrown-Smith glimpsed another side of prison life. This unspoken aspect of incarceration is a way of survival for the growing number of women who find themselves snatched away from their families. In this new life experience, Dr.Braxtonbrown-Smith had to consciously decide how to handle her own love life. Like thousands of women behind bards, the choice of lesbianism and sex with officers were among the many choices. The choice she made not only strengthened her marriage, but also helped others realize their own strength. Prison Love is a true account of choices that women make in an effort to survive isolation while trying to hold on to what it means to be a woman.

Author: Tanya Erzen
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807089982
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
An eye-opening account of how and why evangelical Christian ministries are flourishing in prisons across the United States It is by now well known that the United States’ incarceration rate is the highest in the world. What is not broadly understood is how cash-strapped and overcrowded state and federal prisons are increasingly relying on religious organizations to provide educational and mental health services and to help maintain order. And these religious organizations are overwhelmingly run by nondenominational Protestant Christians who see prisoners as captive audiences. Some twenty thousand of these Evangelical Christian volunteers now run educational programs in over three hundred US prisons, jails, and detention centers. Prison seminary programs are flourishing in states as diverse as Texas and Tennessee, California and Illinois, and almost half of the federal prisons operate or are developing faith-based residential programs. Tanya Erzen gained inside access to many of these programs, spending time with prisoners, wardens, and members of faith-based ministries in six states, at both male and female penitentiaries, to better understand both the nature of these ministries and their effects. What she discovered raises questions about how these ministries and the people who live in prison grapple with the meaning of punishment and redemption, as well as what legal and ethical issues emerge when conservative Christians are the main and sometimes only outside forces in a prison system that no longer offers even the pretense of rehabilitation. Yet Erzen also shows how prison ministries make undeniably positive impacts on the lives of many 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 within the confines of their cells. 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, becoming a method of control behind bars even as prisoners use them as a lifeline for self-transformation and dignity.

Author: Martin L. Lockett
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1546238697
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Martin was sent to prison for nearly twenty years. To utilize his time productively, he pursued an education that culminated in a masters degree of science in psychology. He became a model inmate over the course of his first decade in prison. Energized by his success, he channeled his newfound passion for writing into composing blogs that shed light on his remarkable growth process, unique experiences, and profound insights and observations. Three years later, My Prison Life was born. This collection of blogs consists of Martins finest, most compelling posts that range in topics from adjusting to prison to maintaining romance beyond the bars. In an authentic and conversational voice, Martin offers hope to the prisoner and comfort to their loved ones. He engages his audience with riveting anecdotes through the eyes of someone destined to defy the odds by navigating the perils of prison while evolving into the best version of himself.