One of the challenges that individuals face upon incarceration is learning how to communicate with the “outside world” without the modern technology most of us take for granted. Inmates must learn to adapt to life without cellphones, radio, or regular computer access. Any television viewing is strictly limited, and several states are seeking to ban prisoner access to social media sites like Facebook to prevent the potential harassment of victims or informants.
For most of these inmates, the best way to learn about what is going on outside the prison walls – and to convey what is happening on the inside to friends and family on the outside – is the time-tested art of letter writing. And according to at least one seminary professor, this practice can provide prisoners with a unique perspective on the New Testament epistles – many of which were written from behind bars.
One of the challenges that individuals face upon incarceration is learning how to communicate with the “outside world” without the modern technology most of us take for granted. Inmates must learn to adapt to life without cellphones, radio, or regular computer access. Any television viewing is strictly limited, and several states are seeking to ban prisoner access to social media sites like Facebook to prevent the potential harassment of victims or informants.
For most of these inmates, the best way to learn about what is going on outside the prison walls – and to convey what is happening on the inside to friends and family on the outside – is the time-tested art of letter writing. And according to at least one seminary professor, this practice can provide prisoners with a unique perspective on the New Testament epistles – many of which were written from behind bars.
“[Prisoners], in a very real and a very sincere way, understand what it would have been like for the early Christians to start to receive letters from Paul,” says Stephen Presley, assistant professor of biblical interpretation at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Havard campus in Houston. “I think that [for] those of us who live in a world that’s dominated by email and controlled by other forms of technology, sometimes it’s hard for us to understand the genre of letter writing — the genre of the epistles.
“But for those who live in this world [behind bars], it is so easy for them to comprehend and to almost identify with the early church in the way they would have felt receiving these letters from Paul and how they would have treated the letter, perhaps, even in ways we don’t, in terms of reading it from start to finish, reading it closely and observing every word.”
Presley is teaching a biblical interpretation class to inmates at a maximum-security prison near Houston, Texas. He says that prisoners can relate to many of the New Testament letters, with many of them even reflecting similar writing patterns and phrases of Paul in their own letters.
The class discussions have also affected how many of these prisoners live out their faith in their current surroundings, and how they interact with their fellow inmates. “Many of them have voiced that they feel more confident in handling the Scriptures than they did before,” he says. “They feel more confident about teaching other inmates. They are more passionate about teaching the Scriptures.”