Prison Religion is a comprehensive, provocative, and nuanced examination of the legal, religious, and personal conceptual frameworks for faith-based programming in prisons. Although Sullivan's “ethnographic reading” of the record of Americans United for Separation of Church and State v. Prison Fellowship Ministries (AU v. PFM) claims not to take a normative position, this work has normative implications that are troubling for minority religion adherents in prisons and therefore for Establishment Clause jurisprudence generally.

The Establishment Clause issue in AU v. PFM involved an in-prison 24-7 faith-based prison program, funded in part by the State of Iowa and operated by Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries (PFM). A former “honor dorm,” which had provided a better living environment to reward prisoners with good disciplinary records, was transformed into PFM's Interchange Freedom Initiative (IFI) “Godpod.” This involved a pre-release program in an “enveloping environment” (24) using a faith-based, values-oriented approach to treatment (e.g., substance abuse, anger management) based on evangelical Christianity. “The language of scripture served as the amniotic fluid of the highly ordered womb in which IFI members lived” (54).

Prison Religion even-handedly mines the case record to reveal through an empathetic narrative the need for inmate services; the aspirations of the IFI staff to help inmates succeed, while gaining converts; and the inmates' “yearning” for transformation” (31). Inmate adherents to any religion were eligible for IFI's Christ-centered, biblically-based curriculum, but it would be “holy ground, a place set apart for the Lord's purposes” (25). Prison Religion also documents the disappointment of other inmates, including Catholics, who could not participate in the program because of conflicts with their own beliefs. (The IFI substance abuse course used a book that instructs readers to renounce occult practices and false religions, including Mormonism, Unitarianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, New Age medicine, Christian Science, and fortune-telling (48)). IFI inmate participants received special privileges and treatment, including a better living environment, the promise by IFI staff of more favorable consideration for parole, more visits with family members, and after-release mentoring. No other faith-based program was available, and other state programs were only intermittently available because of budget constraints. The AU v. PFM courts held that the IFI program constituted an unconstitutional establishment of religion.

Drawing on a wide range of interdisciplinary scholarship, Sullivan provides a multidimensional portrayal of the cognitive frame out of which PFM and IFI members think and act. Sullivan recounts the story of PFM's birth out of The Family, also known as The Fellowship, which is Washington, DC's powerful business and political leadership group. PFM joins The Fellowship's worldwide mission to bring all peoples to “conformity with Christ” (70), reaching out from “man to man” in Christian love (75) to fight self-centered, secular humanism, moral relativism, and socialism — that is, the “secular denial of absolute truth” (77) — through conversion. It is “a cosmic struggle between competing worldviews” (ibid.). Citing the work of Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, Talal Asad, and others, Sullivan places PFM/IFI in the context of the modern secular order, as seeking to create virtuous men who can live in the United States's non-hierarchical, disestablished legal-political order, while contributing to the maintenance of the moral order. The PFM/IFI message is that its “natural” Christianity is a more authoritative, legitimate, and universal frame for modern secular society than the valueless, relativistic secularity that they hold is a false universality that is undermining.

Sullivan suggests that such Christians' claims to the universal are as cogent as secular claims, as “postmodern theory dethrones the necessary secularism of the universal” (172). Consequently, Sullivan characterizes PFM/IFI evangelicals as not regressive, but as their own contribution to the modern and its conditions of religious pluralism, as one “universal” among others and a form of the modern secular. Affirming evangelicals' “intimate role in the formation of a modern American consciousness” (92), Sullivan concludes that PFM/IFI's brand of Evangelicalism is a “formidable opponent for traditional separationists, secular and religious” (84) and suggests:

Although Prison Religion is a thoughtful study that aims to transcend the church vs. state frame, it remains caught in an old divide, thus unwittingly providing an apologetic for a re-established Protestant hegemony.

First, Sullivan's perspective is shaped primarily by the dominant Christian vs. secular perspective. In the introduction, Sullivan states: “Among relevant American distinctions is the absence of any history of the comprehensive legal and cultural privileging of a single religious tradition” (3). This is an implausible claim considering that the legal and cultural privileging of Christianity has long been a feature of American life, from the enforcement of blasphemy laws, to required Bible reading in public schools, to military and prison chaplaincy, to faith-based initiatives in society-at-large, which are dominated by Christians. Therefore, we must assume that Sullivan meant no single Christian tradition has been privileged, revealing that Sullivan views her subject through a Christian, especially a Protestant, lens (regardless of her own affiliation). As a result, many of her assumptions, observations, and conclusions miss inherent inequities among religions beyond the Christianities.

Second, Sullivan notes the convergence of American religion and “the ascendency of an increasingly punitive penal system” (101) and details the role of Protestant Christianity in the development of prisons. However, Prison Religion does not sufficiently take account of the pervasive Calvinist evangelical worldview in prison chaplaincy and faith-based programming, which actually supports the prison system Sullivan disparages as inhumane. As Sullivan shows, in the PFM/IFI worldview, the state and IFI each serve a dual godly function as the arbiter of retribution (the state) and as redeemer (IFI). In this view, the state has absolute authority because it is divinely ordained to address inherently sinful, human depravity and to maintain the moral-social order; the state's criminal laws designate “sin” — crime is sin. Thus, the state's failure to exact retribution is the first step toward the “collapse of the entire social order'” (105). PFM/IFI thus becomes the agent of redemption through conversion. Rehabilitation and salvation are linked. Hence, the prison system worldview is the PFM/IFI worldview of sin-retribution-penance-redemption — a “penitentiary.” Sullivan's failure to fully appreciate this evidences a certain lack of understanding about what actually is happening on the ground as a result of the pervasive privileging of Protestant Christianity (usually evangelical Calvinist Protestantism) in prisons, despite formal disestablishment, and the need for Establishment Clause jurisprudence to address it.

Because Calvinist sin-retribution-penance-redemption ideology still permeates the prison system, bias in favor of like-minded Protestantism is still pervasive. Prejudices against other religions prevail in prisons, especially against religions that do not countenance the sin-retribution-penance-redemption view of the function of religion (e.g., Buddhism) or those that address the social causes of crime, e.g., Catholicism and some of the “mainline” Protestant denominations. (See T. Richard Snyder, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Punishment [Eerdmans 2000]).

Because Sullivan does not take account of such prejudices, she makes erroneous assumptions that undermine her perspectives on the law. Despite non-accommodation, and in many cases suppression, of non-ideologically conforming religious practice in prisons, Sullivan asserts: “An enormous variety of religion is everywhere in U.S. prisons … For the most part prison authorities welcome such interest and activity …” (14–15). Although there has been an effort to accommodate inmates' diverse religions in some jurisdictions, it has been accomplished not because it has been “welcomed,” but because it has been forced on the prisons by the courts via both of the Religious Clauses and statutes designed to enhance recognition of those rights. Moreover, it has occurred only incrementally, primarily through inmate lawsuits. Further, actual equitable accommodation of the “enormous variety of religion,” even where some accommodation is found, is far from achieved or even, in many cases, attempted.Footnote ¹ Even when state statutes and prison regulations incorporate seemingly unbiased language, they often also incorporate Protestant assumptions and other religions are not accommodated through equitable allocation of resources.

Thus, Sullivan relies on an Iowa chaplain's testimony when she states: “The Iowa chaplain … apparently sees himself as serving a universal human need by making a space for an ever-changing stew of religious practice” (235). Although I am not familiar with the specific accommodations of religion in Iowa's correctional system, I can say that a California chaplain could make a similar claim. However, the actual accommodation of minority religions, particularly those not widely understood (e.g., Hinduism, Buddhism, and Pagan religions) is miniscule. Rather, resources are allocated to favor the Calvinist sin-retribution-penance-redemption paradigm that serves the prison system worldview, providing exponentially greater services, even when the numbers of inmates using such services, as compared with the number of inmates who identify with other religious orientations, do not justify such inequities.

Further, Sullivan characterizes PFM/IFI as exhibiting “increasing openness … to other religions” (232), but does not appear to grasp the import of the fact that such “openness” is only to the extent that adherents of “other religions” adopt the evangelical Protestant lens that resulted in their suppression in the first place. The disestablishment of Protestantism, as Sullivan notes, has opened United States law and culture to “religion” not defined by a Protestant template. However, that template still rules in most prisons throughout the United States.

Third, the reason many, like Sullivan, cannot make sense of the Establishment Clause today is because there has been a tendency to read it as requiring the polarization of church vs. state, when what always should have been at stake is the individual vs. the state. That is, the dichotomy that counts is liberty vs. domination/coercion, not whether one's faith-beliefs and practice derive from an institutional religion or not. The liberty vs. dominance/coercion dichotomy places into a different context Sullivan's assertion that defining “religion” (so that the courts know what to separate) is impossible, leading to her conclusion that disestablishment is anachronistic. I maintain (as is the trend in the federal courts) that such defining is not as necessary as Sullivan thinks when decisions are made in the context of the liberty vs. dominance/coercion dichotomy.

Sullivan's views regarding the impossibility of disestablishment rest in large part on her conclusion that the Establishment Clause was designed to separate institutional religion from the state. However, Sullivan relies on a common misreading of the word “religion” in the Religion Clauses. Reading back into the eighteenth century today's usage of the word “religion” as meaning distinct “religious institutions” obscures the word's broader and more personal eighteenth century definition: faith or piety and/or a set of beliefs. (See Wilfred Cantwell Smith's classic book The Meaning and End of Religion and eighteenth-century dictionary definitions of religion). Only when “religion” is properly contextualized can the Religious Clauses take their place in the “rights of conscience,” as the founders referred to them.

That said, Sullivan can be read as sympathizing with a liberty/non-coercion approach to prison religion, considering that she briefly raises (but does not explore) the question of “the permissible boundaries of coercive governmental support for one path to reintegrate into the larger society” (181) and notes the turn toward individualized religion. However, she apparently assumes the Establishment Clause does not encompass these points. Therefore, she unwittingly obscures the coercive role evangelical Protestant groups would increasingly play, if the courts were to abandon the Establishment Clause as anachronistic.

Fortunately, the courts have not abandoned the Establishment Clause as an impossible distinction between church and state, as Sullivan suggests, but instead have expanded the Establishment “neutrality” requirement beyond Christian vs. secular programs to include neutrality across sincerely held beliefs. This requires that none are preferred over others, particularly in prisons (Cutter v. Wilkinson [2005]). Of course, accomplishing neutrality is a messy business, but to fail to continue to muddle through makes the perfect the enemy of the good, which is what Sullivan's suggestion that the Establishment Clause is anachronistic would achieve, if countenanced in law.

In the end, Sullivan acknowledges the challenges for creating a space for religious pluralism. Sullivan extends to the law Clark Gilpin's “three moments” typology, which espouses various “modes of secularism” — religious secularism, irreligious secularism, and a religious secularism. As Sullivan explains, all of these secularisms provide various corresponding “spaces” for plural religion and all are present in America today. PFM/IFI represents a form of religious secularism; the “wall of separation of church and state” that privatizes religion, represents irreligious secularism; and the negotiated space open to religious pluralism that focuses on individual choice represents a religious secularism. However, in making the provocative claim that the Establishment Clause is, in effect, a relic of irreligious secularism, Sullivan does not appreciate the role that Establishment Clause jurisprudence can play in making sure the secular spaces she has identified actually do permit religious pluralism.

All examples Sullivan provides for each of the three moments of secularism are fraught with the potential for majoritarian dominion, which she rightly acknowledges. But her characterization of a PFM/IFI-type evangelical Protestantism as a “secular space” that could be recognized in the law gives rise to a potential for the continued privileging of that worldview whatever “secularism” is in evidence. That would continue the marginalization of non-Christian religions, Catholicism, and even some Protestant sects, and promote the domination/coercion that the Establishment Clause should be employed to forestall.

Moreover, Sullivan does not address the potential for overall prison reform to be supported by application of the Establishment Clause neutrality requirement, which necessarily would de-link the sin-retribution-penance-redemption paradigm from prison ideology. Instead, Sullivan says that the reconciliation of the religion/state conundrum will be made by the “consumer” through individual choice. However, such reconciliation will not be possible if the choices are limited by those with a dominant worldview, especially in the coercive prison environment where what constitutes the “voluntary” is often unintelligible.

Sullivan should be commended for bringing to light prison religion and all of its perplexities in such a thorough ethnographic study. However, her suggestions about the application of the law, without a clear understanding of the profound negative implications for prison inmates if the courts were to adopt such suggestions, go too far. It is through respect for, and accommodation of, all sincerely religiously motivated people that prison system dehumanization can be called into question. Then perhaps religion that is not in the sin- retribution-penance-redemption paradigm can speak to and against the ideology that underpins the prison system itself.