Learning to Live: Prisons, Pedagogy, and Theological Education

What good is theological education for those in prison? For more than fifteen years, students in a Georgia prison for women have participated in a theological education program; most of these women have no desire to become professional religious leaders, and some are not religious at all. In a criminal punishment system governed by practices of social death, these students study theology in hopes of negotiating and constructing meaningful life anew. How can a better understanding of the lives desired by these students help shape a more life-affirming commitment to and practice of theological education in prison?

In Learning to Live, Rachelle R. Green combines ethnographic research with sociological, criminological, and theological scholarship to argue that prisons practice a form of death-dealing education that distorts human vocation and intentionally erodes students' hopes for meaningful life. However, student narratives attest that incarcerated students may turn to theological learning programs to defy these life-negating pedagogies and piece together lives marked by belonging, dynamism, and freedom. Ultimately, the good of theological education in prison rests in its ability to participate in God's work of redeeming life from death-dealing domination.

Learning to Live is written to encourage reflective practice for those doing theological education in death-dealing contexts--in prisons and elsewhere. It is an invitation to hear stories--stories about dying, domination, and constraint, and likewise stories about life, freedom, and possibility--and to allow these stories to form and reform our practice of theological education.