Karl Barth Belongs In Prison

Here's a blog post that I wrote for God's Politics:

Before coming to Sojourners to serve as the congregational coordinator, I had the unique opportunity to teach Protestant faith formation classes at Leavenworth federal prison in Kansas. Leavenworth was experimenting with a program called Life Connections that allowed Muslims, Christians, and adherents of a variety of faith traditions the opportunity to live together in community and participate in spiritual formation. Participants had the opportunity to deepen their own faith and, at the same time, build trust and friendships with people from other faiths.

I will never forget arriving at the "Big House" for the first time. I approached the ominous guard tower, announced myself, and ascended the long staircase toward the prison entrance. There is something unsettling about the first time you hear the door click behind you. Yet the biggest surprise was not the unsettling confinement, but the students I was about to meet. I had great plans for imparting my superior knowledge of Christian faith and its life implications to the program participants. But when I arrived, I realized that the awaiting class would not only be students, but they would be fellow dialogue partners on the Christian journey. In particular, I was impressed by their knowledge of church history, theology, and the ability of one student to quote Thomas à Kempis.

The participants, who would soon become friends, had amassed an incredible knowledge of the Christian faith and its history from an extensive religious library in the prison. I was a little jealous of their selection. That's why I am outraged this week to read the following in The New York Times:

Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.

The Bureau of Prisons has created a list of acceptable religious books from various faiths and excluded all others. In the name of cleansing the library of radical beliefs, some of the greatest Christian authors have been removed. Who are some of the purged authors? Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Cardinal Avery Dulles, just to name a few. Additionally, the Bureau of Prisons has refused to pay for re-stocking the libraries after the purge, leaving many religious libraries near empty.

In our world and especially in a prison system, where religious faith often seems to divide, my friends in Life Connections, assisted by their extensive religious library, deepened not only their faith but had a profound and positive impact upon Leavenworth federal prison. The purging of religious books from a federal institution hampers not only the discipleship of prisoners, but it should cause us to pause and ask ourselves how this happened in the name of freedom and safety.

Comments

[Louis McAndrew]

You mentioned in your blog that you were a Nazarene minister. How can you expouse this type of theology. You have moved a long way from the roots of the founders of the Nazarene Holiness Movement. Karl Barth is not one that you or any proclaimed holiness minister ought to follow. The inerrancy of the Bible and his view on that alone would cause me to question his position on many other topics. When you question the inerrancy of the Word of God, then your view of any theological issue will be twisted. My prayer is that you, a so called holiness minister will see the light and follow after the founders of your denomination. Then, even your view of Jim Wallis will change. You cannot support the tenets of his theology and follow after God. You are on very shaky ground! Peace my friend.

[Kevin]

Thanks for your comments Louis. As a third generation minister from the holiness tradition, I know it well. Are you a Nazarene? If not, I would encourage you to read up on the Nazarene history. Nazarene's are not fundamentalist. They never have been In fact, our statement on inspiration of scripture says, "(scripture) contain all truth necessary to faith and Christian living." We do not believe that scripture is inerrant. Paul Bassett, one of the Nazarene churches greatest and most respected theologians says, "Wesleyanism has been trapped into "allowing its emotional ties with the aims of Fundamentalism to saddle it with a Fundamentalist doctrine of the Scripture that is quite out of place in Wesleyanism."

Furthermore, Karl Barth is a gift to the Church. I would encourage you to begin by reading Word of God and Word of Man. Few theologians take scripture more seriously.