Incarceration and Incarnation: Prisons and Christian Ethics

Catalog description

This course examines incarceration in the U.S. in light of the incarnation, theological anthropology, and Christian ethics. One aim will be to understand various themes related to incarceration: the school to prison pipeline, race, legislation, policing, prisons and labor, justice, punishment, and reintegration. Another aim will be to consider how belief in an incarnate God, who died a criminal death, shapes Christian views of and responses to incarceration in the U.S. today. We will draw on those who have written theology behind bars (Thoreau, Bonhoeffer, M.L.K., Jr., etc.). Local concerns will be our focus throughout.