On this massive farm, the words also carry the bone-chilling realities
of legal sentences that hold the 5,100 male-only residents captive.
The vast majority of these men have been sentenced to life in prison, or to
death at the hands of the states executioner. Here, ones existence
can understandably slip into a mist of never – ending hopelessness and despair.
In the state of Louisiana, life means life, with no hope of parole. Never.
On this massive farm, the words also carry the bone-chilling realities
of legal sentences that hold the 5,100 male-only residents captive.
The vast majority of these men have been sentenced to life in prison, or to
death at the hands of the states executioner. Here, ones existence
can understandably slip into a mist of never – ending hopelessness and despair.
In the state of Louisiana, life means life, with no hope of parole. Never.
There is scant hope for any of these men walking out of the
gates of this massive prison a free man. The future for most of these men holds
no hope of finding a wife or being physically reunited with one, of ever having
children or more children, of ever watching grandchildren play in the yard of
their homes. Never.
Most of these men will die right here without ever tasting
freedom again, and they know it.
Without hope, there is no meaning, and where there is no meaning,
men commit desperate acts. To escape this reign of hopelessness, some try to
escape the prison, or they can turn to self-inflicted death, or they may project
their hopelessness and rage upon their fellow inmates, killing or maiming them.
For decades that is what many inmates did. Louisiana State
Prison, Angola was known as the bloodiest prison in America. Brutal fights,
heinous murders and grisly suicides were not uncommon.
Five years ago, Burl Cain walked into the farm as its Main
Man, the warden. The words of his “Godly mother” rang in his ear:
“Burl, you are going to have the opportunity to help a lot of people who
really need help. Now dont fail to help them.”
To Cain, the main, obvious need was to help the inmates find
hope, a reason for living. Not hope of escaping, but hope that could not be
choked to death by razor wire topped walls and prison bars and unending sentences.
Hope that no chance of parole could not destroy or a date with the states
executioner would not diminish.
Cain, a Southern Baptist, believed he had found that kind of
hope when as a young man he accepted Christ as his personal savior. While he
had not faced the same circumstances as the inmates, his experience with Christs
hope assured him it could not be destroyed by any circumstances.
“Warden Cain decided there were four important things
he needed to provide the inmates,” says Cathy Jett, Cains Executive
Officer. The petite thirty-something female recalls. “Good food, medicine,
playing and praying.”
By listing “praying” in his four priorities, Cain
emphasized expanded offerings of Christian hope to the prisoners. He believed
that a growing relationship with Christ would give the prisoners hope for a
better life in prison.
Number of chaplains
Angola has only five full-time and six part-time chaplains
on staff, so more leaders were needed. To marshal additional spiritual forces
to help accomplish his goals, Cain turned to people who were already showing
compassion to the prisoners.
“We already had men from churches in our association going into the prison
as volunteers to work with the inmates,” remembers T.W. Terral, Director
of Missions of Judson Baptist Association. “Warden Cain invited me to
have lunch with him.
“He told me that he had at least 2,000 prisoners who said
they were born again, and he wanted each one of them to have the opportunity
to go through Experiencing God.”
Experiencing God is a 13-week discipleship training study that
has gained widespread use and appreciation among Baptists as well as other denominations.
“Warden Cain asked me if Judson Baptists could provide
this opportunity,” Terral recalls with a smile. “He told me 700 men
had already indicated they wanted to go through Experiencing God.
“I thought, Each study book costs $11, and I multiplied that
times 700, and then 2,000. Then I thought about the number of volunteer seminar
leaders it would take. I took a deep breath and told him – by faith – I thought
we could do it.”
That meeting was the beginning of what has become something
more significant and far reaching than the dreams of either Cain or Terral could
have imagined.
Terral returned to Baton Rouge and the churches in the area
affiliated with Judson Baptist Association, and immediately enlisted Marvin
Calhoun, pastor of Forest Park Baptist Church, to enlist volunteer seminar leaders.
Next, he talked to personnel of LifeWay Christian Products,
the Southern Baptist Convention agency that publishes the workbooks for Experiencing
God. He told them about what the association was going to do and asked if some
kind of discount on the purchase of the seminar workbooks would be possible.
LifeWay agreed to sell the $11 workbooks for $6.
Terral turned to churches of the association and they provided
the money for the workbooks. Calhoun enlisted the volunteers.
The first group of inmates moved through Experiencing God and
then other men from the prisons main camp to death row wanted to participate
in the seminar. The needed workbooks were obtained and necessary leaders enlisted.
After several rounds of “experiencing God seminars, theneed
for follow-up seminars became apparent.
As enrollment for the seminars rung up impressive numbers,
so did the cash register. The inmates did not have the money for the workbooks,
so Terral was faced with raising even more money from Judson churches and individuals.
“We have no more than 10 or 12 men per group,” Terral
said. “We open with a time of singing and praise and then we begin the
study.
“Then we have a break with refreshments,” Terral
explained. “At the close of the semester, we have a party. We always have
a three to four week break before we begin another round of seminars.”
The discipleship training has grown significantly and now offers
through the Angola chaplains office 13 different seminars on a “Young
Believers Track” and 15 on the “Mature Believers Track.”
Inmates want more
An unexpected development in training opportunities occurred
when a group of men “who had gone through all the discipleship development
seminars said they felt called to the ministry and wanted still more training,”
Terral recalls with a wide grin.
The obvious next step was vocational ministry training. Because
most of the men did not have a college education, or at least a college education
in a ministry-based curriculum, a baccalaureate level program was appropriate.
Terral contacted Chuck Kelley, president of New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary, and approached him with the revolutionary idea of offering
an on-site college degree in Christian Ministry at Angola. Other colleges offered
correspondence degrees to prisoners, but as far as anyone associated with the
Angola program knew, no college offered an on-site degree. This would mean the
seminary would actually establish an extension campus in the prison.
Kelley picked up on the idea immediately and set things in
motion. Jimmy Dukes, dean of the College of Undergraduate Studies, began to
forge details. In a matter of months, an on-site campus was established in the
main camp of Angola through the seminarys Baton Rouge extension office
headed by John Robson.
While the discipleship training program continued and increased,
a group of 30 men entered the college degree program of New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary. People qualified to teach college courses came to the
prison campus as adjunct professors to conduct regular college classes for the
men. They all worked gratis at the beginning, according to Robson.
The cash register began ringing like a fire-bell with the need
for books for the students and for the library and necessary tuition the prisoners
cannot pay. Also, the men who worked as professors needed stipends to travel
to the isolated prison.
A substantial financial need became apparent and Terral turned
Don Mabry who was Director of Missions for the Louisiana Baptist Convention.
Mabry went to the Womans Missionary Union of the Louisiana Baptist Convention
and the Georgia Barnette Offering for State Missions.
“They provide $16,000 to help us. New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary provides books for the library,” Terral explained.
“The association began budgeting some money. The rest we still have to
raise.”
The 129-hour college degree program reached its second step
last fall when 24 students received their Bachelor of Arts degree in Christian
Ministry last fall. President Kelley, accompanied by a large contingency of
seminary personnel, came to the prison to be the commencement speaker.
Some skeptics may believe that the prisoners interests
in religion are primarily to gain release from prison. But Tony Smith, one of
the graduates, wrote in a paper, “Anyone who supports that opinion, obviously,
has no understanding of the Criminal Justice and Penal Systems of the state
of Louisiana, where religion has virtually no effect where release of inmates
is concerned.
“Granted, some inmates try to use religion to the advantage
of personal agenda,” Smith continues, “but that could be said of some
people in every walk of life. The truth of the matter is that inmates are people
just like all other people. Some are real and some are not.
“I started reading the Bible, studying and serving God
20 years ago, and Im still here,” Smith wrote. “So much for
religion gaining one early release.”
Opportunities for ministry
Nineteen of the 24 graduates now have significant opportunities
to implement their training behind the prisons walls.
Warden Cain had Robert Toney, a chaplain newly arrived on the
Angola staff, develop a program in which each graduate was given a section of
the prison to serve as an inmate assistant chaplain.
The inmate assistant chaplains were given the opportunity to
move freely among the prisoners and minister in any way the prisoner population
would allow. They were officially employed in these positions and paid the “smart
job” salary of $.20 an hour, or $12 a week.
Chaplain Toney also developed a plan that calls for 11 church
starts in the prison, six new Bible studies, an additional cellblock ministry
and the delivery of death messages in the main prison by graduates.
The inmate assistant chaplains meet weekly to discuss their
ministries, receive mutual support and instruction and receive ongoing training.
One inmate assistant chaplain wrote about his church field,
“Camp J is where some of the most violent, rebellious inmates are housed,”
said Robert Bishop. “They are said to be the worst of the prison population.
“But this graduate is witnessing the power of God at work
in the lives of men who have not been out of the cells since the seventies and
eighties. They were bitter and had given up on life. But, God! has changed their
hearts and now I witness those same men receiving Jesus Christ as their Lord
and Savior, being baptized according to the Scripture.
“We study the Bible together and, thank God, I see them
on a regular basis to make sure they are growing in the Lord. We pray together
and I have gained the trust of many. I love to see men repent with sincerity
and accept Christ as their Master and Savior. The suicide rate has dropped tremendously.”
Another inmate assistant chaplain said, “We are called
men of God. We are reaching out to the lonely and the afraid. We are fulfilling
the Great Commission. We are not waiting for prisoners in need to come to us
– we are going out to them. We tell people what we know and have experiencedJesus
Christ gives freedom, even in prison.”
John Sheehan, an inmate seminary graduate, says, “I have
come to have a peace in my life that I never had while I was free in the world.
The peace from Christ lets me be full of joy in prison where the world says
there should be no joy. If I had the choice to live and die here in prison with
Christ, or be free on the outside without Christ, I would choose to stay in
prison. For without Christ a person is in prison no matter where they are.”
Reinforcing the reality of Warden Cain and T.W. Terrals
vision for hope-giving ministries in the prison, inmate assistant chaplain Edward
Murphy said, “I would remind you that this was once the bloodiest penitentiary
in the nation. However, God has equipped men through this program who are not
afraid to stir up the gift in us. We are taking Angola for Christ.”
Another class of men is already moving through the college
education at Angola. But this class is more than four times as large as the
first class, building with some 110 students.
“I want to talk to churches and anyone else,” says
Cain. “I want to tell them about the spiritual things that are going on
here.”
Through the efforts and financial support of countless Louisiana
Baptists and others, multitudes of prisoners who had no hope now live with hope
burning in their hearts. Others have experienced an increasing hope.
They have found a hope that cannot be destroyed by prison walls,
endless sentences or even facing death. Many of them are, by daily finding ways
to minister to their fellow inmates, fulfilling Christs command to “visit
those in prison” – a command their fellow believers “in the outside
world” never do.