HIGH SPIRITS: Unity and Redemption
Aitken, Jonathan
HIGH SPIRITS Unity and Redemption by Jonathan Aitken S PIRITUAL UNITY AND PERSONAL REDEMPTION are two great ideals of the Christian faith. In today’s denominationally divided world, the...
...T HE WORD “COMMUNITY” in this context usually means the Christian community...
...The volunteers who run them cut across all denominations with a unity that vindicates another of Charles Colson’s ideas that the skeptics said could never work—the Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) movement...
...Their leader, John Woods, was asked by the Belizean prime minister to take on the management of the catastrophically overcrowded central jail...
...Maybe a few old-fashioned denominational rules were broken in the process, but I am sure Jesus would have been pleased by such fulfillment of his exhortation to his followers in John 17: “May they all be one as you, Father, and I are one… may they become completely one so that the world may know that you have sent me...
...Inevitably there John Woods was asked by the Belizean prime minister to take on the management of the catastrophically overcrowded central jail...
...So what is the proof that bringing the Gospel to prisoners changes lives...
...In today’s denominationally divided world, the first is more honored in the breach than in the observance, while the second is all too often mocked by the rising voices of atheism and secularism...
...An important part of this effort is focused on Rimutaka jail, whose faith-based unit has now been drug free (with multiple testing to prove it) for over two years...
...I am referring to prison ministry, which from a global perspective is growing and changing for the better as never before...
...It is complemented by in-community training schemes run by Woods and other business leaders who have offered jobs, computer courses, and other opportunities to 1,200 ex-offenders...
...Raniero Cantalamessa, the official preacher to the papal household...
...In Belize, a variation of the Phoenix program has been operated by businessmen...
...and Ian Elliott, a farmer and landowner...
...Raniero Cantalamessa, tell the Toronto conference that we could all unite behind the words “rehabilitation by faith,” I realized that the two great ideals described in the opening paragraph of this article—spiritual unity and personal redemption—are alive and flourishing in modern prison ministry...
...They are Kim Workman, a former director of the prison service...
...We have learned that governments can provide more and more custodial places, but that only the community can provide real rehabilitation,” said Judge Thorburn...
...As a result of this program, known as “The Phoenix,” recidivism has fallen from 90 percent to 9 percent since 2002...
...He accepted the job on two conditions: “No more executions, no more civil servants...
...Our after-care programs are becoming increasingly successful because they are not only preparing prisoners for re-entry into the local community, they are also about preparing local communities to re-integrate ex-offenders...
...is occasional opposition to faith-based rehabilitation schemes from secularists...
...Colson began it in 1997 when, with a little help from the then governor of Texas, George W. Bush, he opened America’s first ever faith-based prison rehabilitation program at the Inner Change correctional unit in Houston...
...As Charles W. Colson has riposted to opponents of Prison Fellowship’s Inner Change prisons: “You can argue about faith but you can’t argue about the consequences of faith...
...He began by quoting Martin Luther—an unusual source of authority for citation by a spokesman for the Vatican...
...He chided past generations for having spent too much time and energy in divisive arguments over the phrase “justification by faith...
...The success in the United States of the Inner Change prisons (which have repeat offending rates of between 8 percent and 22 percent) is largely due to post-release mentoring of offenders by volunteers from local churches...
...As I thought about this progress while listening to the papal preacher, Fr...
...As he warmed to his theme of oneness under God, Father Cantalamessa praised the work of those who unite in prison ministry...
...Three remarkable Kiwis are spearheading this effort...
...This key ingredient of Christian voluntary support is present in all the programs mentioned in this column...
...His biographies include Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed (Doubleday) and Nixon: A Life, now available in a new paperback edition (Regnery...
...He accepted the job on two conditions: “No more executions, no more civil servants...
...56 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2007 An earlier manifestation of unity was given in a remarkable keynote speech of great humor and holiness from Fr...
...SEPTEMBER 2007 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 57...
...In Mexico, a Christian businessman, Raimundo Leal, has spent the last five years running a drug rehabilitation program at the notorious Chihuahua jail...
...All those who give spiritual counseling to inmates of jails have a deep conviction, confirmed by innumerable individual examples, that even the worst of sinners can be transformed by God’s grace...
...The theme of unity was underpinned by the entire week of addresses and discussions...
...There were two particular moments when it surfaced with joyful enthusiasm...
...A much better translation, said the papal preacher, would be “justification by rehabilitation...
...HIGH SPIRITS Unity and Redemption by Jonathan Aitken S PIRITUAL UNITY AND PERSONAL REDEMPTION are two great ideals of the Christian faith...
...Look at four international examples of this trend...
...In addition to the schemes highlighted above in Mexico, Belize, and New Zealand, similar initiatives are up and running in Britain, Cambodia, South Africa, and Australia...
...However, the secular cynics say: “Where is your evidence apart from anecdotalism that these transformations result in criminals becoming good citizens...
...The evidence for this new unity and redemptive power was rolled out in an understated yet impressive way at an international prison ministry conference in Toronto last June attended by over 900 representatives from 134 countries...
...For international statistics show that the repeat offending rates for released prisoners stay at the remorselessly high level of 65-70 percent whether they are in the Antipodes, Latin America, Europe, or the United States...
...In fact, this evidential proof is beginning to emerge in various communities around the world that combine spiritual motivation with practical rehabilitation in a form that connects the pre-release JONATHAN AITKEN and post-release phases of a prisoner’s journey...
...For on the whole it is primarily church people who feel called to extend the hand of friendship to recently released prisoners...
...One was the concluding communion service celebrated by religious leaders and participants from all the major churches and continents of the world...
...Jonathan Aitken,The American Spectator’s High Spirits columnist, is most recently author of John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace, published in June by Crossway Books...
...But what works is surely more important than who protests...
...I cannot imagine where else in the 21st-century church you could find nearly a thousand Catholics, Protestants, Pentacostalists, Baptists, Evangelicals, Quakers, Orthodox, and many other varieties of Christian worshippers uniting alongside one another as they commemorate the Lord’s Supper...
...The result is that repeat offending among released inmates at Belize Central Prison has fallen to 6 percent among graduates of the Phoenix course...
...In New Zealand, over 3,000 voluntary rehabilitation workers support the country’s prison population of 8,000 inmates...
...It has taken ten years of hard work to win the argument...
...Stan Thorburn, a High Court judge...
...Woods enlisted the help of Belize’s leading philanthropist, Lord Michael Ashcroft, who donated a state of the art in-prison drug rehabilitation center...
...So it is good to report that one part of the body of Christ is making huge strides forward in both these crucial areas...
...Since then the leaders of Prison Fellowship International, particularly Chairman Michael Timmis and President Ron Nikkel, have been encouraging similar programs across the world...
...These words resonated strongly with Father Cantalamessa’s audience because rehabilitation and redemption are the meat and drink of prison ministry...
Vol. 40 • September 2007 • No. 7
