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The Church & Justice: A Tool for Churches (y en español

What You’ll Find Below

  • Introduction & Welcome!
  • Part 1 – How We Got Here: America’s Criminal Legal System
  • Part 2 – What Is Justice?
  • Part 3 – What Are Trauma and Violence?
  • Part 4 – What Is the Role of Race Equity?
  • Part 5 – The Bible and Healing
  • Part 6 – What Can Churches Do?
  • Part 7 – Resources for Churches

Introduction

Sam Heath – Manager for the EJUSA Evangelical Network

Welcome! This tool is meant to be engaged in a Christian community, either with others present while you view the content or in a space where you can process the content after viewing it. Justice happens in its most lasting ways within community.

This tool is meant to form you. It is intended to move you from understanding to engagement. If, as Bryan Stevenson at Equal Justice Initiative says, “Truth and reconciliation are sequential,” then we need to understand the truth before we engage in reconciliation or conciliation. Below are some weighty and worthy truths.

You can view and read all the content of this tool at once, in segments over time, or you can pick and choose what you and your community need most. You know your own heart and community best.

Please click below on the contact information link. We would love to know who is using this tool, how it impacts your community, and if there are any ways that we could help support you.

Below is also a Facilitator’s Guide, which will help those in churches leading church groups through this tool’s material do that in an intentional and hospitable way.

Join the EJUSA Evangelical Network Contact List

Facilitator’s Guide

Part 1 – How We Got Here: America’s Criminal Legal System

Aaron Griffith – Historian and author of God’s Law & Order

The United States has the largest criminal legal system in the world. Our country has 5% of the world’s population, yet 20% of the world’s prisoners. We have close to 1 million police officers, and right now there are nearly 2 million people in prison or jail, or, 1 of every 100 people. We spend more money per incarcerated person than per student. And with 2,300 jails and prisons, we have ⅓ of the world’s female prisoners.

1 in 5 prisoners in the world is incarcerated in the U.S.

The criminal legal system of the United States is a bewilderingly complex set of entities, with an equally complicated history. However, two dimensions of this system’s present-day and historical realities stand out. The first is the way the criminal legal system has disproportionately targeted and affected people with marginal status in American life, particularly racial and ethnic minorities and the poor. Those incarcerated in the earliest American prisons were disproportionately recent immigrants, Black Americans, or indigenous peoples. Similar disparities are present today: Black people make up 13% of the general U.S. population and yet are 38% of those incarcerated in our nation’s prisons and jails.

Graphic breaking down the racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities.

Second, ideals have motivated the criminal legal system that have routinely been unrealized or have even contributed to the system’s harshness and inequalities. The earliest American prisons began as reform projects by Christians designed to correct the cruel forms of punishment of the colonial era, but soon turned into little more than warehouses with their own severe qualities. The stated rehabilitative aims of the criminal legal system today are similarly often unfulfilled. Motivating ideals such as fairness are often lacking , while the purported colorblindness of the system obscures racial inequalities.

Graph breaking down how many people are locked up in the United States.

As numerous scholars have demonstrated, the power and size of the criminal legal system in the United States has little connection to levels of crime in society at large. What instead has driven much of our nation’s impulses to police and incarcerate is fear, the fear of certain populations that have been deemed criminal and deserving of punishment. At the same time, crimes that do occur are often addressed in ways that continue to enact harm and fail to address the needs of victims.

View the Visiting Room Project, where you can hear from men serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Stacy Rector – Executive Director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

In the United States we have executed over 16,000 people since 1700. This is done by our government — in your name. 70% of the world nations have abolished the death penalty, leaving the U.S. as the only nation in the Western Hemisphere that still practices it. We know the death penalty is applied in a racist manner, not fiscally responsible, done in a torturous manner, and does not deter crime. The only thing the death penalty does that it claims to do is to punish.

Yet we persist.

Support for and a continuance of the death penalty is our nation’s most resounding “NO” to a belief in God’s ability to bring healing after harm.

We need to ask the question of whether punishment is synonymous with justice.

Sabrina Butler-Smith – Death row exoneree

Part 2 — What Is Justice?

Sarah Jobe — Prison chaplain and Co-Director of Duke University Divinity School’s Prison Studies Program

Christians worship a risen savior, but this is a savior who was arrested, tortured, tried, and executed by the state. Sarah Jobe speaks of Jesus as a repeat offender who had run-ins with the law, someone deemed a public nuisance. This “suffering servant,” this “man of sorrows” is our king. Who do Christians worship? A “convict Christ,” to quote Jens Söring.

We then can ask, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus’s answer to this question solicited the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. His answer? Anyone who has need. Christians can and must meet the needs of those around us. We need eyes to see and ears to hear that and those which we often miss.

We follow the call in Micah 6:8 — “And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Sam Heath — Manager of the EJUSA Evangelical Network

Justice is not punishment but is safety, healing, and accountability. Justice is doing the active work of healing rather than suffering passive effects of punishment.  True safety is not only the absence of violence but the presence of wellbeing. America has created and exists under a system focused on punishment rather than healing. Our actions show we care more about punishing a wrongdoer than healing or bringing restoration to the survivor, surrounding community, or the person who offends. To reference C.S. Lewis, we are far too easily pleased. We are easily pleased by punishment, when what can bring us true delight is to pursue healing, restoration, reconciliation. Our national obsession with punishment — whether that be in the criminal legal system or in parenting — is idolatrous and must end.

Alan Johnson — Doctor of Ministry, former reporter, and witness to 21 executions

Danielle Sered — Executive Director of Common Justice, survivor of violence

Part 3 – What Are Trauma and Violence?

Lionel Latouche — Program Director of Trauma to Trust at EJUSA & psychotherapist

Psychiatrist and author Curt Thompson speaks of trauma in The Soul of Desire:

Trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances perceived by an individual as physically or emotionally overwhelming, which has lasting adverse effects on functioning and mental, physical, social, emotions, or spiritual well-being — effects one also perceives himself or herself to be powerless to change. In this sense trauma refers more to one’s perception and response to an event than the event itself.

The video above names these as the “three Es” of trauma: the Event, the Experience, and the Effect. Trauma is a moment in someone’s life (event), how that person feels/responds in that moment (experience), and the resulting ways that event impacts someone’s life physically, psychologically, and spiritually (effect).

Current research on epigenetics shows us the lasting impact of trauma on our offspring, making trauma-informed care all the more important.

“Trauma” is a modern word for an ancient concept. The Bible itself — nowhere clearer than the ministry of Jesus — gives us a model for how to see someone, see their story, and to accompany them on the road to healing.

Al-Tariq Best — CEO/Founder of The H.U.B.B. Arts & Trauma Center

Violence is much more than crime, since not all forms of harm are criminalized. Violence can be committed on an individual level as well as a systemic one. We live in a world where hurt can come in so many forms. But so can healing.

We believe that the establishment of community-centered public safety ecosystems, where communities are interdependent on each other for their safety, is the most effective way to prevent and treat violence. (Learn more about community-centered public safety ecosystems here and here.)

As Al-Tariq Best says, “Hurt people hurt people, but healed people heal people.” We know the public health crisis of violence in this country can, like disease, be both prevented and treated. To be healed, people need those who commit violent acts to be held accountable. Accountability does not mean punishment. Rather, it means acknowledgment (of the wrong done), repair (in the form of some physical act of restoration), and change (in the surrounding environment or system so that the violence cannot happen again). Accountability in the face of violence is the opposite of being “soft on crime.” Being held accountable is the hardest work there is, and this is what’s necessary to break cycles of violence.

Violence begets violence, but systemic, public health-based, community-centered options for reducing violence are one way society can return its sword to the sheath. By pursuing violence reduction over punishment, we can seek to reflect how the biblical narrative prioritizes social healing and restoration. All in the context of community.

Dr. Dorothy Johnson-Speight — Founder of Mothers in Charge and a murder victim family member

Part 4 — What Is the Role of Race Equity?

Dr. Jemar Tisby — Historian, author, & speaker

Bryan Stevenson — Founder & Executive Director of Equal Justice Initiative

Racism is a heresy. It is a heresy that claims that skin color dictates a hierarchy of value rather than grounding our value in how we are all equally made in the image of God. No single race can claim supremacy. Christ himself reigns, that “he might have the supremacy” (Col 1:18). White supremacy, like Satan in the garden, attempts to use a lie to dethrone God.

Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes defines white supremacy as “the systemic evil that denies and distorts the image of God inherent in all human beings based upon the heretical belief that white aesthetics, values, and cultural norms bear the fullest representation of the imago Dei. White supremacy thus maintains that white people are superior to all other peoples, and it orders creation, identities, and social structures in ways that support this distortion and denial.”

Michael Emerson and Christian Smith in the book Divided by Faith use the term “racialized” to describe our society. A racialized society is one “wherein race matters profoundly for differences in life experiences, life opportunities, and social relationships. A racialized society can also be said to be ‘a society that allocates differential economic, political, social, and even psychological rewards to groups along racial lines; lines that are socially constructed.'”

America is a racialized land, but that racialization is never separate from hierarchies of class, gender, disability, and sexuality.

Since these categories affect both institutions and individuals, we need a two-pronged approach, pursuing systemic change as well as changed hearts. This is how we can pursue Jesus’ multi-ethnic kingdom in which every nation, tribe, and tongue is represented, praising God in unity rather than uniformity (Rev 5:9, 7:9, 11:9, 14:6). Difference, even ethnic difference, is celebrated from creation (Gen 1:27) to the eschaton (Rev 7:9), yet it is transformed by the union of believers that Christ brings (Gal 3:28). This unity in diversity is sustained by the power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2).

Part 5 — The Bible and Healing

Joia Erin Thornton — National Policy Strategist at the Southern Center for Human Rights

The gospel is the good news that Jesus came to defeat Satan, sin, and death. The death and resurrection of Jesus heals his people and brings us an eternal salvation that leads our hearts to echo John in saying, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus.”

But that is not all.

Growing up in the church, I often heard pastors say that we were not only saved from something but for something. We are blessed in order to be a blessing to others. This means that, while we know salvation is permanent and unconditional, we still look to this world for ways to “seek the welfare of the city” (Jer 29:7). We can seek justice and healing for those around us. We can see a measure of shalom, or peace, brought to this world.

God has not only healed our souls but has saved our bodies to be vessels of welcome and reconciliation in all of our spheres. It is out of a love for Christ that we find the method and motive to do this.

From Jacob and Esau in the Old Testament to Philemon and Onessimus in the New, the principle of earthly reconciliation is a central reaction to the love of God. The gospel of Jesus is the ultimate example of this, which leads

Randal Padget — Death row exoneree

Part 6 — What Can Churches Do?

Nathan Walton — Co-Lead Pastor at East End Fellowship

The Church not only shares the gospel message of life in Jesus but also a common grace good news for all, which is that Christians work for the flourishing of all spaces we are in. Our love of God flows into a love of others. Part of loving others is hearing and working to meet the needs of our communities.

Churches must first question their local communities to identify and feel its needs. We can then move toward commitment and collaboration, often with justice efforts that are already ongoing in our cities and towns. As Nathan Walton says in the video above, “Justice work is also kingdom work.”

Lead your church into a season of listening to your communities, a time of empathy for the needs you hear, and then a response of thoughtful partnership to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Part 7 — Resources for Churches

Here is the next step for you and your community! These resources below are things that exist already and can help individuals and groups grow in the knowledge and ability to love neighbors well.

In a way, this whole tool is meant to elevate the work and voices represented below. What churches need already exists, and we want to draw your time and attention to some really good work.

After going through Part 6 in the tool, look through these topics and decide the area(s) you and your church need to take in.

Below is a Facilitator’s Guide, which will help those in churches leading church groups through this tool’s material do that in an intentional and hospitable way. You can also ask yourself these questions and begin spreading the word:

  • What is one church I could tell about this tool?
  • Who is one pastor or faith leader I could share this with?
  • What is one local Christian organization this tool could help?

Lastly, reach out to us! We’d love to hear how this tool impacted your community, and we also want to make ourselves available for any ways we might accompany you in your justice work and journey.

Racial Equity

  • Be the Bridge ministry to “empower people and culture toward racial healing, equity, and reconciliation.”
  • Jemar Tisby’s Three Colors of Complicity talk about the history of racism and the Christian church
  • Tim Keller’s four justice and race articles
  • The Witness: A Black Christian Collective “is a Christian collective that engages issues of religion, race, justice, and culture from a biblical perspective.”
  • Segregated by Design documentary (17 mins) on “federal, state and local governments unconstitutionally segregated every major metropolitan area in America through law and policy”
  • UNDIVIDED is a six-week cohort experience for churches interested in the intersection of faith and race.
  • The Repentance Project’s mission is to “encourage racial healing by communicating the systemic legacies of slavery, building relationships, and creating opportunities — through formation, repentance, and repair — for a just future.”

Criminal Legal System

Restorative Practices

  • Equal Justice USA has a Restorative Justice Project, a team of people training and supporting groups across the country working to divert individuals from the criminal legal system and to promote responses to harm that heal.
  • Underground Ministries is a group in Washington state that helps churches enact their “one parish, one prisoner” form of community. They ask, “What if every church became a local reentry team—a resurrection community—walking alongside just one neighbor leaving the tombs of incarceration?” Take Lazarus Challenge.
  • Center for Public Justice’s Political Discipleship curriculum to develop “a practical approach to Christian citizenship and engagement with public justice”
  • Restorative Justice Project: A Diversion Toolkit for Communities wanting to “build a pre-charge restorative justice diversion program that reduces youth criminalization while meeting the needs of people harmed.”
  • Restorative Church project is “making connections between restorative justice, restorative theology, and restorative practices for church communities”

The Death Penalty

  • Right Here, Right Now: Life Stories from America’s Death Row, Question Guide for Churches
  • Ghosts Over the Boiler: Voices from Alabama’s Death Row, Question Guide for Churches
  • Witness to Innocence partnered with renowned photographer Martin Schoeller to create moving portraits of death row exonerees, each paired with an interview excerpt about the exonerees’ experiences.
  • Death Penalty Sundays – The EJUSA Evangelical Network has developed packets of materials designed for churches interested in hosting events, services, or speakers related to faithfully reflecting on the death penalty. These can be for churches in any state, but we have so far developed state-specific materials for Alabama, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.

Trauma

For Catholic Churches

Additional Resources to Watch, Listen, & Read