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Friends United Meeting |
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September 2000
Friends Share Their Faith in Prison
By Ben Richmond
"Alot of people think we should lock them up and throw away the key; but how do you want them to be when they are released? Do you want them like animals or like human beings? After all, people do respond to how they are treated," said Jeannie Graves, a Friend and a national visitor for Prison Visitation and Support. She is just one of an invisible army of Friends carrying on the long tradition of Friends ministry in prisons.
Many Meetings in the United States have regular prison ministries. Some examples are:
Marshall Federated Church (Western Yearly Meeting) holds monthly worship services at both the county jail and the Rockville Correctional Facility. Pastor Don Marshall reports that some 30 Friends participate. Rockville, housing 750 women, has a chapel which seats 106 and is always full to capacity. The women enjoy an hour of contemporary Christian music led by musicians from the church. Then Don preaches, followed by half an hour for sharing and testimonies. Don says the women come for the same variety of reasons people come to church on the outside, but he quoted the prison chaplain to make an additional point: "She said, 'We have a very strict no touch policy in the prison. The chapel is the only place you can hug or be hugged.' What a neat definition of the church!"
Anderson Friends (Indiana Yearly Meeting) visit regularly in the local county jail. A number of Friends in Wilmington Yearly Meeting have had prison experience through Wilmington College's long commitment to education in the Lebanon Correctional Facility. This summer, for the second year, First Friends of Indianapolis, and Carmel Friends (both of Western Yearly Meeting) have joined with the Peace and Learning Center at Eagle Creek Park to sponsor a weekend camp for children whose parents or siblings are in jail. About 17 children attended the camp this summer organized for a second year by Paula Gallagher of First Friends.
New York is clearly the most active Yearly Meeting working on prison issues. They have worked closely with the American Friends Service Committee organizing against the death penalty, providing the initial organizing impetus for the Alternatives to Violence Project, and sponsoring ongoing worship groups in eight New York State Prisons and one in New Jersey. The first of those, at the state prison in Auburn, started twenty-five years ago.
Each of the worship groups is under the care of a Quarterly or Monthly Meeting, and each has a coordinator who serves as the liaison between the inside group, the prison administration and the sponsoring group. According to Marge Schlitt, the assistant clerk of the Prison Committee for the Yearly Meeting, most start with half an hour of unprogrammed "silent" worship. Then they might have refreshments followed by group discussion or study. She says the prisoners often initiate Bible study.
Friends in New York Yearly Meeting founded the Alternatives to Violence Project in 1975, when prisoners of Greenhaven Correctional Facility invited Quakers to talk with them about alternatives to violence. Over the years, AVP has grown until it is now in 40 states and 20 countries worldwide and it is now an independent nonprofit corporation. Nevertheless, as many as 20% of AVP facilitators are Friends.
In New York, AVP holds workshops for about 5000 prisoners a year and there are hundreds of civilian volunteers and hundreds of prisoners who work as facilitators. According to Tom Martin, clerk of AVP committee of New York, tools introduced in the AVP workshops, "provide a little bit of time so that in situations of conflict, the conflict doesn't drive the situation, but there is an element of choice. We provide the possibility of win-win." The spiritual basis is "transforming power," Tom says. "You and I would know the transforming power as God--the power that works through us to transform a situation that might lead to violence." Tom adds, "It has enabled me to have a better grasp on the Living Christ in my life because every time I do a workshop I see God making a change in people's lives."
Baltimore Yearly Meeting has sponsored a worship group at Pautuxent, a psychiatric facility in Jessup, Maryland. Over the last twenty years, participation has ranged from just a few to as many as 40 inmates. Currently there are a dozen inmates. According to Jack Fogarty, a prison visitor from Sandy Spring (Maryland) Friends, their normal format is worship-sharing. Recently an AVP workshop at the new menŐs prison of MCI-Jessup resulted in a prisoner request for a new Quaker worship group there.
Curt Rosenburg, originally from Baltimore Yearly Meeting, and clerk of the Friends Committee to Abolish the Death Penalty, is now in Philadelphia working with the American Friends Service Committee's Religious Organizing Against the Death Penalty Project. Curt says that, following Catholics, Friends are probably the most active denomination in anti-death penalty work. Friends Meetings (particularly from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Southeastern Yearly Meetings) have spoken out against the death penalty, and Friends in Brooklyn, N.Y, have maintained a weekly vigil.
The case of Randy Reeves (the adopted son of Friends Don and Barbara Reeves of Nebraska Yearly Meeting who was sentenced to death for murdering two women in a Friends Meetinghouse in Nebraska) catalyzed Quakers to work because it struck so close to home. Several months ago he was granted a resentencing hearing by the Nebraska Supreme Court.
Partly in response to issues raised in the Reeves case, Nebraska passed
a moratorium on the death penalty, but it was vetoed by the governor.
Still, the Nebraska assembly mandated a death penalty study which is now
underway. The decision of the governor of Illinois to put a moratorium
on carrying out death sentences in that state followed. "Now,"
says Curt, "it is like wildfire." Vickie Cooley, clerk of New
York Yearly Meeting, is excited that after years of faithful witness,
there is the possibility of real movement on the issue: "There is
a sense that the tide has changed."
Prisoner Visitation and Support (PVS) was founded in 1968 by Bob Horton, a retired Methodist minister, and Fay Honey Knopp, a Quaker activist, to visit imprisoned conscientious objectors. Bob Horton began visiting in 1941 when a parishioner was imprisoned, and Fay Honey Knopp had been visiting prisoners since 1955. In its first five years of service, PVS volunteers visited over 2,000 conscientious objectors. PVS was encouraged by the war resisters to visit other prisoners and, today, PVS visits any federal or military prisoner wanting a visit. Prisoner Visitation and Support (PVS) is the only nationwide, interfaith visitation program with access to all federal and military prisons and prisoners in the United States. Like AVP, it has grown far beyond its Quaker roots and is now sponsored by 35 national religious bodies and socially-concerned agencies. Today, PVS has 260 volunteers who visit at more than 90 federal and military prisons.
Pastor and former superintendent of Western Yearly Meeting, Bob Garris, has been going to federal prison for close to twenty years as a PVS visitor. When he started, he was superintendent of Western Yearly Meeting, and the executive committee was happy to grant him time one day a month for this extra ministry. He says, "PVS is not a gospel ministry, but I can tell you that a lot of religion is discussed. People ask why I do prison visitation, and I say, 'Well, I read a book that said I should do this.' When they ask, 'What book is that?' my answer is, 'Matthew 25.'"
Jeannie Graves of Orange County Friends in Santa Anna, California, (Pacific Yearly Meeting) is a national visitor for Prison Visitation and Support. She says that she resisted the calling to go to prison as a visitor for many years: "It got more and more painful. I went back and reread the story of Jonah and had a lot of sympathy for Jonah. Why would anyone want to go to Nineveh? Why would anyone want to go into prison?"
Later she was in a worship sharing session at an FWCC meeting, where the question was, "How do we respond to the call to service?" When the question came to her, she says, "I just started crying--blubbering, and said I had not responded to the call." But someone involved with PVS was there and pretty soon she had arranged an interview. "When I finally went in, it was such a relief. It is my heart that is there to be healed. Those visits are extraordinarily valuable to me."
Everyone I talked to in preparing this article said that the hardest job is recruiting new workers. But if you have felt something of the nudging that moved Jeannie Graves, or have read the same book as Bob Garris, and want to discover what Jesus meant when he said, "I was in prison and you visited me," check out the possibilities on page 13. When you start going to prison, you'll be among Friends.
Ben Richmond is a recorded minister in Indiana Yearly Meeting. This is his last issue editing Quaker Life, after many years of appreciated service.
Thank you, Ben, for all you have done for Friends United Meeting!
Copyright (c) 2000 Friends United Meeting
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