“America’s criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation’s prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives. — Senator Jim Webb, March 3 2009” (Clear 2013, 1).

The questions of whether mass incarceration improves the function of our society and whether it is congruent with our commonly understood national values have complex and varied responses. As the number of incarcerations increased over the last few decades, were communities safer? How do we move from whatever correlations may be noted to the greater certainty of direct causation? Similar complexities arise when the focus turns to the theoretical: can a reprioritization and better appreciation of the interdependence of different values improve things? How do we deal with values that exist in tension with one another while remaining aware of our own biases? How does the totality of scriptural wisdom come to bear on these questions?

“Mass incarceration is arguably the most pressing and protracted social crisis of postindustrial America. The imprisoned population in the United States has exploded from 200,000 people in the early 1970s to 2.3 million people in the first decade of the twenty-first century, including 95,000 youths under the age of eighteen. To accommodate this colossal movement toward confinement, close to one thousand prisons have been built throughout the United States since 1973” (Guenther 2015, 13).

That a self-proclaimed Christian nation should imprison a greater percentage of its own population than India or China (indeed, a greater raw number than either of those more populous countries as well) begs the question: could Christianity have contributed to mass incarceration in America (WPB 2024)? Arguably Christians might be more aware of sin (i.e. crime), but why are they just as incapable as non-Christians (or perhaps moreso) at applying remedies other than punitive ones? How is mass incarceration a theologically justifiable Christian response?

Douglas Campbell, Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School, has suggested that the retributive philosophy that dominates the American justice system is mirrored by theological ideas extracted from the first four chapters of the book of Romans. “The law-and-order narrative affirms a state that acts like the God of the gospel of justification, retributively, holding individuals personally—and solely—accountable for what they do, and responding to wrongdoing with punishment” (Campbell 2018). In Romans 1:18 God’s wrath (orgē G3709) is invoked against the wickedness of people. Among the many examples of wickedness listed in this chapter is unmercifulness (aneleēmōn G415) in verse 31. Verse 32 concludes the chapter by asserting that willfully disobedient people deserve death. However, Paul seems to be talking about humanity as a whole here. And if that’s not enough to give pause to those who are anxious to condemn others they perceive as falling below some sort of obedience threshold, Paul reminds the reader of the evil of being unmerciful.

Romans Chapter 2 begins by warning against the passing of judgment on someone else, because to do so would be the same as condemning oneself. However, by verses 7 and 8 a delineation is made. Those who persist in doing good are promised a reward, while those who follow evil and reject the truth are promised anger and wrath. It is clear that God is the judge and will be the one meting out justice. And yet, in Romans 13, we read what appears to be the most undeniable affirmation imaginable of a “divine office” of government: “For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience” (Romans 13:4-5).

I immediately looked to see if maybe there was some controversy surrounding the inclusion of chapter 13 in the canon. I thought perhaps it may have been added at a later time in some late night council or synod. It’s not particularly easy to take chapter 13 at face value. Those who do right never need worry about unjust responses from rulers… ever? Anywhere or anytime? Pau is not talking about authority as one tool among the many tools of a sovereign God (e.g. Satan, sin, pain, etc), but rather he seems to be teaching that all authority commends righteousness. That’s a tough pill to swallow. It doesn’t pass the congruence test or the common sense test.

There are some places in scripture where what Paul says is not what he means. For example, in 1 Corinthians 6 a variety of translations disagree about where Paul’s literal meaning is being stated versus where he is contrasting his thoughts with Corinthian slogans. The Brazos commentary on 1 Corinthians suggests a reimagining of where quotation marks ought to be placed, depending upon the flow of the argument and the logic of message. This raises the uncomfortable proposition of just how easy it might be to erroneously interpret as good something that Paul has actually intended to be a bad example.

I do not think the issue with 1 Corinthians 6 is what is happening in Romans 13, but it does show how reading Paul the way we might read AI content is not without its problems. The issue with Chapter 13 is not about where quotation marks go, but perhaps it is about a meaning that is more subtle than it appears on the page. T.L. Carter makes a compelling case for the use of irony in Romans 13. “A modern reader acquainted with Paul’s other letters may be excused for wondering whether the apostle himself had not suffered from a severe case of amnesia when he wrote that rulers are not a terror to good conduct… When read against the social context of the original readers of the letter, it is apparent that the way in which political power was exercised in Rome would not have predisposed Paul’s readers to simply accept what the apostle wrote at face value” (Carter 2004). Yet this problematic maxim has certainly been latched onto by some who argue that authorities are always acting in society’s best interests and in accordance with God’s will.

Campbell addresses Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 6 as he challenges the idea that God is retributive and that the Paul of a literal reading of Romans 13 would want Christians to take each other to court. “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:5-8). “These verses, and this God, are a torpedo through the hull of any gospel construed in terms of justification…” (Campbell 2018). Here Campbell links justification with authoritarianism: Romans 1-4 has context, and to draw out a “Christian” philosophy of law-enforcement based upon the first four chapters alone is to miss that context. Similarly, if Romans 13 is literally, always true, why would Paul warn believers against going to court in 1 Corinthians 6?

If Romans 13 is meant to be ironic to some degree, if Paul’s readers would have literally laughed because Paul’s words were so obviously not literal… then finding congruent meaning with the rest of Romans becomes a more realistic hope. Sometimes it is possible to keep seemingly contradictory ideas in tension with one another, but a gospel that is primarily retributive versus one that is primarily restorative would necessarily affect how we understand the character of Christ.

There is also a fluidity to the idea of what constitutes criminal behavior that brings into question the consistency of our value of fairness for all. The context of any particular cultural moment and what it means for the notion of a jury of one’s peers is always in flux. In the journal Critical Sociology, James Kilgore notes just how quickly monumental decisions can be made that are seen very differently within only a few years. “In the most extreme case, Regina McKnight, an African-American woman, was charged with murder in South Carolina after a stillbirth. A jury deliberated for 15 minutes and found her guilty because she had consumed cocaine while pregnant. She served eight years in prison before a medical examiner concluded that the evidence which linked McKnight’s drug consumption to the infant’s death was ‘outdated’” (Kilgore 2015).

I have never heard America called a “Catholic nation,” as the term Christian tends to be used to describe the Protestant tradition in this country. But in his 2015 visit with Philadelphia prisoners, Pope Francis connected a theological rationale to the restorative justice model. “I am here as a pastor, but above all as a brother, to share your situation and to make it my own… It is painful when we see people who think that only others need to be cleansed, purified, and do not recognize that their weariness, pain and wounds are also the weariness, pain and wounds of society” (Pope Francis 2015). The Greek Orthodox Social Ethos statement, “For The Life of the World,” emphasizes protections such a habeas corpus, but doesn’t seem to be quite as focused on the issue as Rome.

A Christian nation must wrestle with more than Romans 1-4 and Romans 13 when dealing with the morality of mass incarceration. The goal of rehabilitation (restoration) should not only be in the picture, it should be the overarching hope. Punishment alone does not equal justice. We may not be able to identify clear causation relationships in practical terms, but the theory and theology supporting mass incarceration is not above criticism. A Christian nation may struggle to implement these sensibilities, but perhaps it starts at the Christian church level. Retribution is not how the Trinity functions within Itself; it should not be how any community of believers functions, either.

References

Campbell, Douglas A. 2018. “Mass Incarceration: Pauline Problems and Pauline Solutions.” Interpretation (Richmond) 72, no. 3: 282–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020964318766297.

Carter, T.L.“The Irony of Romans 13.” Novum Testamentum 46, no. 3 (January 1, 2004): 209–28. https://doi.org/10.1163/1568536041528213.

Clear, Todd R, and Natasha A Frost. 2013. The Punishment Imperative : The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America. New York, NY: New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/9781479829026.

Guenther, Lisa. 2015. Death and Other Penalties : Philosophy in a Time of Mass Incarceration. Edited by Geoffrey Adelsberg, Lisa Guenther, and Scott C. Zeman. First edition. New York, New York: Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823265329.

Kilgore, James. 2015. “Mass Incarceration: Examining and Moving Beyond the New Jim Crow.” Critical Sociology 41, no. 2: 283–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920513509821.

Pope Francis, FaithND. Notre Dame University.

https://faith.nd.edu/s/1210/faith/interior.aspx?sid=1210&gid=609&pgid=27569 WPB, n.d. https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/united-states-america.