You Thought I was Mad Before…

First off, let me say that my reading of Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus places EQUAL emphasis on feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting those in prison. I can say in my own life, I try to do all of these things, but I place a little more time and effort on visiting those in prison, because I feel very few people do that. Sure, people can say they aren’t called to visit those in prison, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this is just plain wrong. We as Christians cannot exempt ourselves from any of these requirements. I can’t say that all I’m going to do is care for the sick and not do anything for the hungry - that is a misreading of the plain words of the Gospel. Coupled with the fact that in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ last word of forgiveness, indeed his last act of ministry, was not to his disciples, those who crucified him, or the onlookers in the crowd, but to Dismas, his fellow prisoner, a case could be made that prison ministry perhaps ought to have even greater priority that some other areas of ministry, because it seemed to have greater priority to Jesus. Because that argument can be made, I don’t think anyone can put prison ministry on a lesser footing than ministry to the sick or the hungry.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting by telephone ECUSA’s “prison person", as she calls herself, the Rev. Jackie Means. She is a former prison chaplain and really knows her stuff. She has wonderful ideas, and was glad to hear of what we have going on in Louisiana. I’ll brag more about what we are doing in Louisiana and more about Mother Jackie another time.

She told me that she has a $17,000 travel budget and a $20,000 program budget. With that, she is to supervise and support all ECUSA prison chaplains in the federal Bureau of Prisons and support prison ministry across ECUSA. I thought that figure seemed small. Tonight, I decided to take a look at ECUSA’s budget for the first time. My poor wife had to peel me off the ceiling.

The more I think of these paltry figures, the madder I get. I’m sure ECUSA spends more on that ad campaign, dippy religious art (okay, I admit, I’m not an art lover), decorations for the Offices at 815, and studying other comparatively unimportant things. I imagine we spend more in a month on some of these things than the yearly prison ministry program budget.

According to the ECUSA budget, we spend $18,000 per year on science, technology and faith! I’m sure science, technology and faith is real important, but is it roughly as important as prison ministry programs? Did the gospel say try to meld science, technology and faith? I haven’t found that one yet. We spend over $10 million on missions, Episcopal Relief and Development, Support to Foreign Provinces, Ecumenical Appropriations, Overseas partnerships, and planned giving. We spend $150,000 on planned giving alone. Not one penny of that $10 million goes to prison ministry that I can find.

We spend $30,000 per year on some ECUSA standing commissions. Are those just as important as prison ministry? We spend $650,000 per year on the archives. Is keeping our old documents in order as important as prison ministry? We spend $1.4 million per year on ethnic congregational development. Considering that people of color are more often incarcerated than white folks, wouldn’t prison ministries further ethnic congregational development, a very worthy goal? To tweak some of you liberals out there, Mother Jackie told me that she uses Chuck Colson’s ministries to get funding to send kids to camp whose parents are in prison, as ECUSA doesn’t have anything like that. Colson’s group not only pays for the camp, but buys each child a backpack and a bible. Gee, sounds like something we ought to be doing. But, we don’t, and ECUSA’s prison person has to beg Chuck Colson for money. How do you liberals out there like that? Yes, I’m trying to tick you off, and hopefully you’ll do something about it!

In short, ECUSA spends about $20,000 out of $46 million on prison ministry programs. I thought I was mad at the Episcopal Church before. When I found out about these budget figures tonight, I was ready to go get a flame thrower and set fire to every Episcopal Church building I could find! Maybe then we would be freed of whatever is keeping us from following the Gospel and doing prison ministry!

There has been a lot of talk about stinginess regarding the tsunami in Asia on the HOBD list and other places as well. My friends, ECUSA’s budgetary priority for prison ministry put the STING in stinginess!

I then look at our support of Kairos Prison Ministries, something which has had many Episcopalians as volunteers, including Mother Jackie. It often marks the beginning of Episcopal ministry within prisons - there is an Episcopal congregation at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola due to the exposure of Episocopalians to prison ministry through Kairos. Kairos in Louisiana was founded by an Episcopalian, John Musser, so Episcopalians can lead the way in getting this ministry started. As of right now, Kairos is not present in the following states: Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Hawaii, or Michigan. Okay, where is the Episcopal Church in all this??? We’ve got plenty of Episcopalians in these places. What’s the deal? Ignoring the Gospel, maybe? What are all these wonderful EFM graduates and Bishop’s School graduates doing in these states? More Christian formation to turn out more Episcopalians who can ignore the Gospel and not visit those in prison?

I’ve seen a lot of folks argue about following the Gospel as to homosexual persons. But, there is no doubt as to what the Gospel said about people in prison. The Episcopal Church is simply giving lip service to Jesus command to visit those in prison, and is violating scripture and the clear imparatives of the Gospel. To think I thought the real problem with GC 2003 was the stink caused by homosexual issues. The real problem is that Jesus’ call for us to visit those in prison was largely ignored, and continues to be!

I hear a lot of talk about embracing otherness. Embracing otherness is not just welcoming someone who is well dressed and classy who happens to be homosexual, black, hispanic, or in some other minority group but is otherwise socially acceptable. Embracing otherness is embracing someone in prison, or a member of their family who is doing time right along with them. These folks are the ultimate anathema to society, and that is precisely why Jesus calls us to embrace them. If you want to love your neighbor, you need to figure out who your neighbor really is. Your neighbor isn’t just the nice person that lives down the street. He or she is sitting in a prison cell, or is a child with a parent in prison, or someone else with a loved one in prison. If you think you are truly embracing otherness without being somehow involved in prison ministry, you are kidding yourself.

The bible makes no bones about what will happen to those who ignore those in prison - the King will say He did not know us, and eternal punishment will be our final judgment. Let me say that in simpler terms - if ECUSA and its members don’t start getting real active in prison ministry and real fast, hell is what is waiting!

The Episcopal Church and its members risk their salvation by virtually ignoring those in prison. I call on ECUSA to repent, and to change. If your parish or diocese doesn’t play some role in prison ministry, fix it. ECUSA needs to quadruple the budget for prison ministry programs, for starters, and continue to increase the budget until there is a Kairos and an Episcopal prison ministry in every state, and someday, every prison.

Since ECUSA only gives a pittence to Mother Jackie for travel, considering she has supervisory duties over all ECUSA prison chaplains in the BOP, I’m willing to help raise some money to send her, me, John Musser, the Rev. Deacon Charles deGravelles (from Angola) or whoever you want to help get prison ministry started where you are. Just let me know of the invite, and I’ll get to work on raising the money. People’s salvation is at stake; I’ll do anything to save folks. For any of you that think prison ministry is pointless, email me and let me share some stories with you.

I do not apologize if this email seems too harsh! I absolutely intend it to be! The only thing that would make me madder than what I discovered tonight is if I found out some Episcopal church was worshipping a golden calf somewhere and no one did anything about it. On that note, I highly recommend those that would like to comment on this post to refrain from commenting to me (you can complain to whoever else you want to) on the problems with my theology, the tone of this post, grammatical errors contained herein, or my lack of sensitivity for any particular person or groups of people. I also don’t recommend that anyone email me about some golden calf worshipping Episcopal church somewhere and how there is room in this big Episcopal tent for those people. Usually, I’m prepared to listen, but on this issue, I’m not.

The only thing I want to hear from folks about this post is that they are doing something or are going to do something about prison ministry within their Church, Diocese, and ECUSA as a whole. As we say in Kairos - Christ is counting on YOU!

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Thanks for posting this rant.

As someone who participated in prison visitation when I was living/working in Hawaii, it tells me that the subsequent Rector who virtually single-handedly killed St. Mary's in Honolulu, clearly killed off the prison ministry that also existed in that Church.

My reaction to the rant is negative. If there is a viable, locally run program in Louisiana, why would he want money (and control) to flow through the central leadership? He strikes me as a typical greedy liberal who wants a bigger slice of someone else's pie. He needs to raise and spend his money locally.

As a side note, I would suggest that he may be doing the typical liberal misreading Matthew 25.

Visiting the brothers and sisters in Christ in prison, which is contemplated by the Matthew verses referred to above("inasmuch as you did to one of the least of these My brethren"), should be distinguished from prison evangelism (which would be covered by the commandment to make disciples Mt. 28:19-20).

Living in Hawaii, I can tell you to forget about any support from Hawaii ECUSA. If it doesn't have anything to do with gay rights, same sex marriage, or supporting declaring the "U.S. colonization" illegal and giving the state back to the Native Hawaiians (I am one so nobody call me a racist!), they don't care.

It is the independent evangelical churches like New Hope that are providing support and manpower for the prison ministries here.

As far as I'm concerned, the less money ECUSA puts into its prison ministry, the fewer people it can preach its false gospel to. I mean, really, do you want ANYONE promoting ECUSA's "gospel" of salvation without sin and redemption without repentence to convicted criminals? How about ECUSA's lukewarm regard for the Scriptures? At the last convention, ECUSA couldn't even get a majority of its clergy or laity to vote to re-affirm the belief that "Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation." I wouldn't give one thin dime to ANY ECUSA mission or ministry. It merely perpetuates the apostasy & false teaching to the world.

With all due respect, there are many good people in ECUSA still -- for all that their numbers have been steadily declining the past quarter-century. I would be happy to see a prison ministry led by Bishop John-David Schofield, for example.

And I don't believe it's the wackos who are out evangelizing -- they're far too busy trying to pervert the church to their own ends.

You might be right in defending some of those folks who've remained behind in ECUSA. Perhaps your experience is not similar to mine. It was only recently, when our Priest conducted a 12 week catechism refresher for adults, that it became abundantly clear just how many of us had embraced false teachings or were utterly ignorant as to the fundmentals of the Anglican faith. It was stunning (at least to me) that only two or three knew what the 39 Articles of Religion are or where to find them in the BCP. In fact, two individuals subsequently left the Church (one joined the Assembly of God, another joined a non-denominational church) because they could not accept the doctrine of "real presence" in the sacraments. As I mentioned to you at least once before, our ECUSA parish had a woman priest who actually preached from the pulpit that it wasn't absolutely necessary to believe in Jesus Christ to go to Heaven...that she was quite sure Heaven would be filled with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists & every other type of religious follower, so long as they were of good conduct & did good while here on Earth. Some folks actually believed her! When Jesus commanded that we should go into the whole world & proclaim the good news, do you suppose this is the "good news" he had in mind? Shall we finance somebody like this (or anyone that she's taught) to minister to prisoners? I wouldn't recommend it.

Don't forget -- although a cradle Episcopalian, I left ECUSA almost a quarter-century ago.

I was shocked and sick when recently I looked back and saw what it had become. And even more today with the "LibProts" posting I put up today -- if you look back at it, you'll see in post #11 a link to Kipling's "The Mother Hive." If you want my assessment of the state of ECUSA today you have it there, right before the Great Burning.

What you tell me dismays me further -- how could one be an Anglican of any stripe and not know of the 39 Articles??? And your woman priest's apostasy? You were right to flee!!

My limited experience is that you will find two kinds of people in prison ministry: some well-meaning (but sometimes dangerous "feel good") liberals, but more (rather more hard-headed) evangelizers. There was a blog I ran across today from one of the latter, about ministering in a Lousiana "lifer" prison (they rank themselves by the number of life sentences they have -- these are men who will never get out). I thought about posting it... but decided not to.

But Episcopalians... my father (a priest who has now also left ECUSA) has as his spiritual director an ECUSA bishop, one of the three good ones remaining, I'm told. Last summer we attended an ECUSA church camp with them. There are good people there still, but even a good bishop won't be able to shield them much longer, the way you were not in the extremely liberal ECUSA Diocese of Olympia.

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