Redeemed on the Inside: Radical Accounts of Ecclesia Incarcerate

Abstract

Among various carceral governance structures meant to punish, educate, and rehabilitate is the carceral governance structure of the church with its dynamic structure operative in the reconstitution of prisoners’ humanity. Presenting an interdisciplinary theological vision of this phenomenon found in the material content of personal faith, this paper presents preliminary results of twenty-four interviews of former prisoners who participated in the incarcerated church, interpreting the ethnographic data in dialogue with the ecumenical creed. Thus, it reinterprets in-depth interview data so as to begin presenting a coherent theological vision of what the members of the prison church both are and could increasingly become within the carceral context.