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MUM’s Clergy-Lay Leader Event

A view from the bottom

by Jonathan Gramling

 

"Now, my brothers will tell you that when you are in prison, you're at the bottom of the bottom. There's a bottom, but there's a bottom of the bottom. And our biblical faith tells us that the truth about society is best known not at the top of the society, but at the bottom of society."

- Reverend Jim Wallis, executive director of Sojourners

For the past several years, Madison-area Urban Ministry (MUM) has focused on the problems and issues of former offenders as they attempt to reintegrate into society. It is a vantage point that many people, particularly Euro-Americans, have rare occasion to see. Through its Reentering Prisoner Simulation exercise and mentoring programs, MUM has sought to create a supporting environment to help former offenders escape the "bottom of the bottom."

On October 8, MUM featured the issues surrounding former offenders and its programs during its Annual Clergy-Lay Leader Event attended by approximately 100 people in the basement of the State Capitol. The featured speaker, Reverend Jim Wallis, executive director of Sojourners, was in Madison as a stop on his "Rolling to Overcome Poverty Bus Tour."

To Wallis, the issues surrounding criminal justice are racial issues. And he had the statistics to back up his claim. "African Americans are 13 percent of the drug users in America, but African Americans are 35 percent of the arrests for drug offenses in America," Wallis emphasized. "55 percent of all persons convicted of drug charges are African American. And, are you ready for this, 74 percent of persons sent to prison for drug charges in America are African American. 5 percent of the population in Wisconsin is African American and 50 percent are incarcerated. The difference is the color of the skin of those who are arrested and incarcerated. I think the criminal justice system really reveals the rest of society. Remember that biblical principle that the truest view of life is from the bottom and not the top. The criminal justice system may be the toughest poverty issue of all."

Wallis spoke of a time when he was invited to Sing Sing prison in upstate New York to speak to a group of inmates. One of the inmates noted that the vast majority of the inmates - African American and Latino - come from five New York neighborhoods. "'It's like a train," Wallis said in relating what an inmate told him. "It begins in my neighborhood. You get on that train when you're nine or ten years old. And that train ends up here at 16.' It's like a train. You get on when you are ten and the destination is a prison like Sing Sing."

While the situation may seem hopeless at times, it is faith that can intervene and create change according to Wallis. The inmate who related the story about the train was enrolled in a theological program within the prison. "'When I get out, I want to go back and stop that train,'" Wallis related about the inmate. "The real truth about society is at the bottom. So when somebody at the bottom of the bottom has faith like that, there is no excuse for the rest of us because he said 'I'm going to go back and stop the train.'"

Several Madison area churches have also been seeking to gain a better understanding of life from the bottom and then doing something about it. Becoming involved in the issues that former offenders face was an easy decision for Reverend Gregory Armstrong, the pastor of S.S. Morris AME Church. His secular career had been in the criminal justice system. He also noted that African Americans were disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system.

But it was his faith that would not allow him to ignore the issue. "It had to do with the call to ministry," Armstrong emphasized to the crowd. "Jesus spoke about it in the Gospel of Luke when he said 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to ask deliverance to the captive and recover the sight of the blind.' The call to the ministry is what motivates me. It drives and directs me. It controls me. It shapes me. It inspires me to do the work of ministry."

Armstrong's church responded by hosting a prison simulation and selected members of the church to plan the event. "At the first meeting that was held, we went around the room talking and listening to members of the committee and how the issue had impacted each individual life," Armstrong said. "It was a powerful and moving session. Many people's families had been touched by loved ones who had been incarcerated and dealing with the frustrations that accompany it. How does one walk a mile, if you will, in the shoes of a returning prisoner? With the assistance of MUM's staff, S.S. Morris hosted a simulation. People were determined to become involved, to experience what it was like to walk in the shoes of returning prisoners. It was frustrating. My 'parole officer' had detained me and placed me in jail for violations I didn't even know about. It was extremely hard. Our system places some outrageous demands, I thought, on these individuals."

S.S. Morris will be taking their ministry to the next level by becoming involved in MUM's Circle of Support program, a former offender reintegration project.

As people are moved to action about the issues and barriers facing former offenders, Reverend Richard Jones, pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church cautioned the audience to be careful in how they intervene. Jones worked for over 15 years as a public defender. "With the issue of social justice, you have to be careful in how you pick folks up and handle them because you can do more hurt when you pick folks up than you do good," Jones said. "We have to be careful that what we are doing is not a 'band-aid' approach because if we are just feeding folks for a day, you might keep feeding them for a life. The old proverb says 'If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. But if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.' So, whatever work we do has to be designed to feed folks for a lifetime. You have to be careful in how you pull folks up. Right now, we are helping people. We have to change from helping people to helping people up. If we don't help them up, what good have we done? We have to be serious about what God has commanded us to do. If God has commanded us to go and make a difference, then that is what we have to do."

Wallis related the parable about having the faith of a mustard seed would allow one to move mountains. Several speakers related that the issues of the criminal justice system are a mountain to be moved. And so, it will take many people with faith the size of the mustard seed to make changes. MUM's programs for former offenders are proving to be fertile soil for the faith of many Madison area faith communities.