Faith, Church Attendance, and Service: Pathway to Transformation and Freedom

• In Event: The Angola Prison Seminary: Effects of Faith-Based Ministry on Identity Transformation, Desistance, and Rehabilitation

Abstract

A 20 year old Bible College within the Louisiana State Penitentiary (aka Angola) produces Inmate Ministers that are deployed as seminary graduates in bi-vocational pastoral service roles throughout America’s largest maximum-security prison. Inmates establish their own churches and serve in lay-ministry capacities in hospice, cellblock visitation, tier ministry, officiating inmate funerals, and through tithing with “care packages” for indigent prisoners. Observational field work coupled with interview as well as survey data from Inmate Ministers offer perceptions of “personal freedom” achieved through religiously-motivated service to fellow inmates as a central driving characteristic of religious identity change at Angola. These findings are consistent with an emerging body of evidence linking God consciousness and service to others in maintaining sobriety among court-referred adolescents in Alcoholics Anonymous. Implications of this work for future research are discussed as well as the applicability of these findings for both religious and rehabilitative programs within the field of corrections.

Author

• Byron Johnson, Baylor University