by Rudy Logan | Mar 14, 2024
My father was a correctional officer and deputy sheriff in Maryland for several years before I was born. Growing up, he would say that prison is the closest thing to “hell on earth,” as he instructed me on navigating racist policing and legal systems I might encounter directly as a Black youth in America. This idea became ingrained in my consciousness. His way of describing prison communicated theological undertones I couldn’t dismiss or take lightly. I understood at a deep level that prison wasn’t an ideal place for me—or anyone else.
Through my experiences in prison ministry, the New York Court System as an intern, returning citizens outreach, my studies and advocacy, I have learned that my father wasn’t far off in his assessment of prison. Sadly, for many “hell” doesn’t start in prison, but in neighborhoods subject to decades of disinvestment and neglect.
Public safety cannot be divorced from accountability measures when harm is committed. Yet our current way of responding to harm and holding people accountable has far too long revealed racist tendencies. Surely, it is time to imagine new infrastructures that center care, equity and revitalization of structurally abandoned communities.
As a person of Christian faith, I ponder what Jesus Christ might say to the death-dealing conditions of prisons and structural violence haunting us today. In the Apostle’s Creed, it is mentioned that Jesus descended into hell between the period of his death and resurrection. While there are exhaustive debates regarding this descent (that I won’t delve into), it illustrates a moment where Jesus goes to those in bondage, relegated to “hell”, and frees them from damnation—offering them salvation from death in the process. I’d like to think that Jesus’ descent offers us a guide for how to engage with the violence of the incarceration system and inadequacies in public safety that send our dispossessed neighbors to “hell.”
If you are willing to follow Christ into hell to save others from damnation and premature death, you don’t have to look far. One issue among many regarding incarceration in Washington, D.C. and Maryland is solitary confinement.
The origins of solitary confinement in the U.S. have theological roots. In 1829, Quakers and Anglicans conceived of Eastern State Penitentiary (Pennsylvania) as a place where “solitude” would offer prisoners the space to commune with God, find forgiveness and penance, hence the term “penitentiary.” The penitentiary was intended as a humane alternative response to the existing brutal incarceration systems, but wound up merely serving as punishment by another name, dishing out cold isolation and deprivation. In the late 1800’s1, the U.S. Supreme Court assessed increasing clinical evidence showing that solitary confinement had severe psychological ramifications on incarcerated persons. Unfortunately, this “hell” of another name still exists across the country and in our local context.
Today, D.C. Jail officials express that they no longer place people in solitary confinement; however, this isn’t the case. According to a Bureau of Justice statistics report, D.C. places people in solitary confinement at three times the national average. According to the Maryland Department for Public Safety and Correctional Services, Maryland state prisons incarcerated 15,807 people and placed 11,953 people in solitary or other restrictive confinement. Given the psychological, physical and spiritual toll of solitary confinement on a person and its long-term adverse effects, Maryland has a health emergency on its hands. The Maryland Alliance for Justice Reform and Maryland Episcopal Public Policy Network have been working hard to address the cruelty of solitary confinement and its effects that are fundamentally counter to rehabilitation
As followers of Jesus, we can save people from the “hell” of prisons, and in this case–solitary confinement. We can do this in D.C. by supporting the Erase Solitary Confinement Act of 2023 (ERASE). In Unlock the Box’s campaign to end solitary confinement you will find a template and instructions for how to communicate your support of this bill to your D.C. Council member.
In Maryland, contact your state representative in the Maryland General Assembly and voice your support for ending solitary confinement. Here is a sample script you can use.
1History and Health Consequences of Solitary Confinement (Public Health Post) and Timeline: Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons (NPR)
by Keely Thrall | Feb 13, 2024
In the wealthiest nation in the world, nearly half of the population is poor or low-wealth. There are approximately 140 million people in the U.S. who are living in poverty or are just one emergency away from it.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
On Saturday, March 2, in DC and Annapolis and at state capitals all across the nation, supporters of the Poor People’s Campaign will be marching to lift up the issues of poor and low wealth people. It is part of a 40-week campaign to mobilize the United States’ approximately 85 million eligible poor and low-wealth voters–along with their allies–for the 2024 election.
Be an ally!
For more information on this important event, visit https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/march2/
by Keely Thrall | Feb 12, 2024
In our polarized and often poisonous politics, it can be challenging to even talk to someone who has different beliefs. Our relationships are strained, loving our neighbor feels impossible and we’ve lost a sense of empathy for each other. Together with Wesley Theological Seminary and the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, the Cathedral will explore how to repair the breaches in our civic life. You’re invited to join us in-person or online for this special forum.
Republican Gov. Spencer Cox (Utah) and Democratic Gov. Wes Moore (Maryland) will dig into Gov. Cox’s initiative to “Disagree Better,” followed by a conversation of leaders, including ABC’s Donna Brazile, attorney Rachel Brand, legal scholar Ruth Okediji, and activist Tim Shriver, who are trying to model a new kind of politics. Columnist Peter Wehner will join Joshua DuBois, Director of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships for the Obama Administration, to uncover how to aim higher and do better.
Free and open to the public, but please register in advance for both in-person and online attendance.
by Rudy Logan | Feb 1, 2024
In 1915, Historian and Journalist Carter G. Woodson traveled to Washington, D.C., to participate in the commemoration of the Emancipation Proclamation. This trip inspired him to create an organization devoted to the scientific study of Black life, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. On February 7, 1926, Woodson established Negro History Week. He chose the month of February because it was the birthday month of two key figures in U.S. and Black history, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Woodson built upon rituals of celebration, as Black people had already been commemorating the birthdays of Douglass and Lincoln on the 12th and 14th of February. With Negro History Week, Woodson sought to go further than the commemoration of these two giant figures. He believed in the power of the collective as agents of social change, educators, and advocates for the study of Black life.
Woodson was a child of the enslaved and grew up toiling alongside Civil War veterans and those who were rendered illiterate due to anti-black chattel slavery. Long before he became the second Black person to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard, he knew people for whom it was criminal to read and be educated. From these roots grew the inspiration for Negro History Week and a lifelong mission to educate the Black masses and the rest of the country about the evocative and soul-stirring elements of Black history that we bear witness to today. Woodson helped catalyze a movement born out of struggle—transforming knowledge and improving race relations. Today, we observe Black History Month with the same goals in mind, seeking liberation through truth-telling, emancipatory representation, education, and social transformation.
On a personal note, the study of Black History has been a medium for educational growth and greater self-awareness, impressing upon me that I am somebody. As an undergraduate student, I was introduced to the work of Black Liberation Theology by one of my professors at St. John’s University in Queens, New York. I was exposed to the transcendent relation between what we know about the historical Jesus as a Jewish Palestinian imprisoned under Roman imperial occupation and victim of capital punishment via the Cross and the experiences of black people rendered marginalized and hung on lynching trees in Jim Crow USA.
The Cross and the lynching tree symbolize a similar terror as elaborated in one of James Cone’s seminal texts—The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Both are utilized as instruments of the dominant against the least of these to murder, provoke fear, and maintain control over subjugated groups of people. Upon learning this connection, I realized that to be Black and Christian was not irrational, given the ways in which Christian theologies had been appropriated to steal, brutalize, and displace others, but that to be Black and Christian was ideologically and spiritually consistent, given what we know about the person Christ. This is in part what the study of Black History has done for me as a Black person and follower of Jesus. Black History illuminated that lines between the secular and sacred are imaginary—that to share about Black History is to engage in an anti-racist and freedom-driven practice and spiritual call to action with structurally marginalized groups, both black and across categories of difference.
Nationally, ongoing attacks against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives (DEI) show us that Woodson’s vision for what would eventually become Black History Month is as critical as ever. To suppress such efforts is to disappear lived realities of historically marginalized communities subject to routine and overt forms of violence. From learning about structural injustice to the strange fruit, the slave ships, segregated lunch counters, and neighborhoods, education illuminates the full depth of life and helps us chart restorative paths forward. Information—or history rather—equips us with the knowledge to speak and act with sobering clarity and purpose. This is the work of Black History Month—to lift up what has shaped us, our contexts, living within and around us so that we may activate our deepest capacity to be stewards for collective liberation.
Past and present realities illustrate how invaluable our efforts, led by the Committee on Diocesan Reparations have been to excavate our history and employ what we have learned for reparations and (re)conciliation efforts. At this moment when Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and Black Studies are under assault across the country, Carter G. Woodson’s vision for Negro History Week and Black History Month is essential to our journey for liberation. It confronts us with an imperative task to continue our race education work within the Diocese of Washington and to support those within our geography employing Black, race-conscious education and initiatives to advance our collective knowledge, well-being, and freedom from the lies and violent mechanisms of anti-black racism.
Black History Month is a clarion call—a reminder that the souls of Black folks and our contributions toward realizing a true multi-racial democracy and equitable society aren’t reducible to a single week or month but instead are integral parts of an ongoing struggle to realize just futures for all.
To learn more about Carter G. Woodson, the evolution of Negro History Week to Black History Month and the long history of Black educators using Black History as a framework for advancing anti-racist education, check out the following books:
