Over The Wall: New York Times Reports On ‘Faith-Based’ Prison Ministries That Flout Church-State Separation
U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) last week spent a night behind bars in a high-security prison in Louisiana in a somewhat over-the-top effort to promote government funding of religious rehabilitation programs for inmates.
The senator, a staunch advocate of the Bush administration’s “faith-based” initiative, told the prisoners at the Louisiana State Penitentiary that although he believes in a separation of church and state, he does not “believe in removal of faith from the public square.”
Added Brownback, “Our motto of our land is, ‘In God We Trust.’”
Brownback’s view of the First Amendment is cramped. Advocating for direct public funding of religious work is about as clear an affront to the principle of church-state separation as one can get.
The New York Times yesterday featured a front-page story about prison ministry programs under the headline, “Religion for a Captive Audience, Paid For by Taxes.”
The article, by Diana B. Henriques and Andrew Lehren, details how lawmakers in the mold of Brownback are pushing nationwide to set up religious rehabilitation programs in prisons. The story notes that the concept of directly funding religious missions has a stumbling block – the First Amendment. And the First Amendment, as has been interpreted by the federal courts, is not yet as narrow as Brownback would like.
The Times article highlights a recent federal court ruling against Iowa’s funding of Prison Fellowship’s InnerChange program, a fundamentalist Christian ministry that seeks to convert prisoners. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, representing inmates and taxpayers, lodged a lawsuit arguing that state subsidies for the religious program, which was founded by ex-Watergate felon Chuck Colson, violates the Constitution.
Americans United’s lawsuit could have a detrimental impact on the Bush administration’s — and Brownback’s — push for faith-based funding. So far, the litigation has hobbled the Religious Right-driven call for direct taxpayer funding of religious social service operations.
This summer U.S. District Judge Robert W. Pratt issued an exhaustive opinion siding with Americans United’s arguments and ordering InnerChange to repay the tax money to the state.
As noted by The Times, Americans United provided extensive documentation to the court showing that inmates who volunteered to join the InnerChange program received greater benefits than those who did not and that InnerChange staff preached a fundamentalist strain of Christianity that included persistent slams on other faiths.
Citing a court deposition, the newspaper quoted a Catholic prisoner who dropped out of the program after determining that the InnerChange program was hostile to his faith.
“My No. 1 reason for leaving the program was that I personally felt spiritually crushed,” the inmate testified. “I just didn’t feel good about where I was and what was going on.”
Pratt noted that InnerChange’s program is suffused with proselytizing, that it contained no secular components and that therefore it amounted to direct government funding of InnerChange’s religious mission.
“The state has literally established an Evangelical Christian congregation within the walls of one of its penal institutions, giving the leaders of that congregation, i.e., InnerChange employees, authority to control the spiritual, emotional and physical lives of hundreds of Iowa images,” Pratt wrote in Americans United v. Prison Fellowship Ministries.
Lawyers for InnerChange, with the support of Religious Right groups and lawmakers, are asking the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Pratt’s ruling.
InnerChange continues to maintain that it is open to inmates of other faiths, that its staffers don’t push religion on the participating prisoners and that its program reduces recidivism.
There are no studies to back up InnerChange’s propaganda regarding recidivism. And, as Ayesha Khan, Americans United’s Legal Director, told The New York Times in a video interview, the bottom line is clear: Prisons cannot put in place a religious program that essentially coerces prisoners to participate.
She’s right. InnerChange is a church. Its mission is transparent – to convert prisoners to fundamentalist Christianity. Such a mission cannot be supported by public funds. InnerChange can offer its religious program to prisoners nationwide, but it shouldn’t expect the taxpayers to foot the bill.