I never really liked Easter — the pastel holiday of springtime flowers, the tired imagery of an emptied tomb, the hollow cheers of “He is risen” — until I had friends buried away in prisons. It wasn’t until I spent time in a jail as a volunteer with people awaiting actual trials that Holy Week became troubling and electric for me.
The connection between poverty and mass incarceration will be explored during a Nov. 9 webinar that’s part of an ongoing conversation by the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People on the importance of churches stepping outside of their walls to “love thy neighbor.”
Three times a year, synod executives from across the country gather together to share, pray, and seek solutions to problems or challenges in their communities of worship. Planners for this month’s meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, took a different approach, a field trip.
The fifty attendees made a daylong visit to the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial to Peace and Justice. Both are managed by the Equal Justice Initiative; an organization working to end mass incarceration and protect basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.
For most of us, the Christmas season is a hectic time and seems to start earlier each year. Black Friday has spilled into Thanksgiving Day, and the store hours are getting longer and longer. Many stores will stay open into Christmas Day itself in an effort to catch that last consumer dollar.
In the meantime, church choirs and pastors prepare for Christmas pageants and candlelight services to commemorate the Christ child’s birth.
For Janet Wolf, however, Christmas will always be “a story that belongs in the streets among the oppressed.”
What is the role—and relevance — of the church in reducing the problem of mass incarceration in today’s society? Noted activist Gail Tyree will explore that in her keynote address at the upcoming Compassion Peace and Justice (CPJ) Training Day in Washington, D.C. on April 17th.