An Evangelical Powerhouse Is Coming to a Prison Near You

Photo Credit: Prison Fellowship International (via Religion Dispatches)

By his final day, Xavier Branch was more than eager to leave prison. It was a trying term, a whole year of which he spent in excruciating solitary confinement. But as he walked back into the wider world, he soon realized he was left only to return to the same friends, frustrations, and, ultimately, the same destructive drug use that led him to incarceration.

On the outside, one day he hit a tragic low: he was denied his usual refuge at the local Salvation Army in Baton Rouge, which had provided him housing when he was unable to make his rent payments. Faced with his persistent drug problems, the shelter refused him. "I gave up," he told me, "and looked up at the sky and said, 'Lord, I'm in your hands.'"

Branch found his salvation in Step Out, a service group that helped him drop his drug habit, secure a steady job, find a church and become "born-again." The nonprofit is part of Out4Life, a new program run by the evangelical powerhouse Prison Fellowship Ministries (PFM) solely devoted to ex-offenders. First launched in two Bible-belt states, the program is quickly expanding and skillfully becoming the go-to contractor for cash-strapped governments to outsource their ex-offender programs, raising serious questions about separation of church and state.

PFM was founded in 1976 by Watergate felon Charles "Chuck" Colson, after his own seven-month prison stint, where he experienced rebirth in Christ. With Colson's own salvation story as a walking advertisement, PFM rapidly became an influential player in the evangelical world -- and in politics. As governor, George W. Bush partnered with Colson to forge a prison program in Texas, which laid the groundwork for the faith-based initiative he launched from the White House.

Colson continues to be a heavy hitter in evangelical politics, too; last year he was one of the chief promoters of the Manhattan Declaration, which promises to reignite the culture wars in the name of religious liberty. In a video promoting the Declaration, Colson likened contemporary America to Nazi Germany, and "elites" and "intellectuals" to Hitler.

For decades, PFM has placed its volunteers inside prison walls to minister directly to inmates. In addition to questions about the programs' effectiveness, such partnerships with state institutions have drawn legal challenges. InnerChange, a PFM program inside correctional facilities, was shut down by the state of Iowa in 2008 after Americans United for the Separation of Church and State won a legal challenge to its constitutionality. AU charged, and the court agreed, that InnerChange, which received government funding, required inmate participants "to attend Bible study, Christian classes, and church services," in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Alex Luchenitser, the lead litigator for Americans United in the case, wrote in a legal journal, "Inmates who did not subscribe to the program's religious teachings faced discrimination and pressure to convert."

Despite legal challenges, PFM continued to minister in prisons and two years ago decided to direct a bulk of its considerable resources toward cutting recidivism, the rate of repeat offenses and incarceration, through the Out4Life program. In the coming year, it plans to launch Out4Life in ten additional states with more on the horizon.

In creating Out4Life, PFM says it was responding to a deep need its volunteers and chaplains saw within prison populations. It was also intervening in the newest trend in dealing with recidivism, says Winnifred Sullivan, a law professor at the University at Buffalo who has written on the intersections of prisons and religion. Reentry programs are increasingly popular, she explained, but one of "the hardest things for a state to do well." Correctional facilities are strapped for cash and state budgets are in the red. This makes the resources PFM offers very attractive. "PFM can do this, in part," Sullivan told me, "because of their church and business networks."