A CHURCH BEHIND PRISON BARS

Eastham Prison, near Crockett, is one of 21 facilities within the Texas Department of Corrections and one of five maximum-security units within the system, most of its 2500 inmates being repeaters who are serving longer sentences for more serious crimes. While the average age of a prisoner in other units is 23, at Eastham it is 28. The facility, which is secured by two tall chain-link fences and oodles of barbed wire instead of stone walls, is situated on a 3,000 acre farm, which provides work for many of the inmates.

I was pleased that the warden permitted Ouida to accompany me on a visit to the church behind those prison bars, and once we passed through the electronically-controlled twin gates in the yard, there were three or four other iron gates en route to the chapel. To hear a prison door clang shut behind you is an eerie and ominous sound. Once we were in the long, wide hall leading to the chapel, we saw masses of men, all dressed in white shirts and pants, filing into the huge mess hall for their evening meal. We took time to study the menu for all three meals that day which was posted on the wall, which confirmed complaints we had heard from folk in the area when we dined at a Mom’s and Pop’s cafe in nearby Lovelady: “They eat a lot better than they do in the slums of Dallas or Houston!”

Those who hang out at such places like to tell about prison breaks, riots, and stabbings, and one can count on embellishments. But we found it to be true that a guard had recently been stabbed while attempting to pass a tray of food to a “locked in” (segregated) inmate. The prisoner thrust a self-made blade through the small aperture when it was opened to feed him, attempting to murder a man he did not even know. It was also true that several convicts had excavated their way to freedom a few days before, but only for a few brief hours. But there is one story they tell, with a touch of admiration for the subject, of the convict who walked away from the field where he was working and has never been heard of since, and he only had a few more months to serve. Since the prison farm is so remote from civilization, they figured he had it planned and was picked up on some distant highway. Such stories point up the obvious truth concerning all those confined behind prison walls: they want out!

We were guests of the Protestant chaplain, Vance Drum, Church of Christ minister who was in a prison ministry with a church in the Dallas area before going to Eastham. But he is now employed by the prison system rather than a church, and, having the heart of a shepherd, he finds real meaning in his ministry. He speaks of his prison church in the same way any preacher would refer to his ministry. He has his own elders and deacons, preaching, programs, and problems, just like any other church. While he cooperates fraternally with the Roman Catholic chaplain, he is free to conduct this church as he thinks best. He has immersed numerous inmates and soon expects to have weekly communion.

Ouida and I sat with the chaplain and his elders, some of whom are in for murder, for sometime before the service began. Ouida was impressed with the respect they showed toward each other, the prison elders for the chaplain and the chaplain for them. When we prayed together, they besought the Father with great fervency, humility, and sincerity. The service that followed exuded with enthusiasm, praise, and sharing. A recent convert gave a testimonial, explaining that it was a “Jesus freak” that turned his life around. A choir sang with gusto. God’s church was in assembly behind prison bars, sinners saved by grace, which is what the church always is. One might suppose that grace is more urgent behind prison walls.

In my remarks I told of how I had met with God’s church around the world, whether in a schoolroom in Japan, a thatched hut in Thailand, a college campus in Taiwan, an army base in Korea, or a back street in Uruguay, that wherever the Spirit of Christ is in the hearts of men and women there is God’s church. I told them that we can all bring the kingdom of heaven into greater reality by doing God’s will in our hearts and lives on this earth, wherever we are, as his will is done in heaven. Realizing that they have deep resentments, perhaps more than the rest of us, I spoke of the relationship between God forgiving us and our forgiving those whom we feel have done us wrong. “The judge is not your enemy, nor the warden or the guards, and not even those who have ‘done you in,’ for your real enemy is not flesh and blood,” I assured them. And so I taught them to pray, as Jesus taught his disciples: Deliver us from the evil one.

That is of course an important lesson for us to learn whether we are in a prison with iron bars or one with sectarian barriers. Many of us still think that it is the Baptists or the Roman Catholics or even some of our own folk that is the enemy. And if ours is a warfare in which we put on “the whole armor of God,” as the Scriptures mandate, then we must learn who the enemy is, one who may, unfortunately, disguise himself as an angel of light.

Speaking of adversaries, it is well for us to realize that we are sometimes our own worst enemy. When the prison elders asked me about philosophy, I told them of wise old Socrates, who was both imprisoned and executed for the most serious crime in human annals: causing people to think critically about themselves. The one truth that people avoid like a plague is the truth about themselves, and man’s most debilitating habit is self-deception. If a man in prison should blame only himself for his plight and not the system or the judge or the unseen enemy called “they,” so should it be with the rest of us.

As Ouida and I left the facility, checking in our “Visitor” badges, a guard in the tower touched a button, opening the gates before us. We stood beside our car for a time, looking back on a real prison stretched out on the vast plains of south Texas. It had long since been dark and the cool evening breeze reminded us of the blessings of liberty. But freedom has its rules, we recalled, and the poor guys we had visited were not willing to follow the rules. Men do not break the law, the law breaks them. We thought of all the grief, the hurts, the hate, and the despair shut up behind those prison bars. That very week one inmate had hung himself in his cell. His body had not yet been claimed, and if it is not he will be buried in the cemetery of the Texas prison system in Huntsville, the home of our infamous “Death Row.” A suitable epitaph for his grave, as over the grave of all mankind: Whatever a man sows that shall he also reap. If men believed that inviolable law of God, prisons would be no more. But even now our prison system has a new facility on the drawing board, bigger and “better” than ever. The human race is such that we build cages for beasts and men alike.

We drove across a mile or two of farmland to the outer gate where the police woman who had checked us in from her approved list of entrants proceeded to check us out. As we looked back over the vast prison farm, the lighted guard towers barely visible against the dark Texas sky, we thanked God that the church of Jesus Christ, the pillar and ground of the truth, is there too. And so there is joy and hope in a sea of despair.

Ouida and I decided that the most impressive part of our visit was Chaplain Vance Drum himself. We know something of his struggle to be free from a prison of legalism, and now he freely “locks himself in” daily to minister to God’s forgotten people. Even now I see him taking his slow walk through the mass of men and bars of the segregated units, making himself available to any who wish to talk or pray with a man of God. I asked if I might take that walk with him, but it is not allowed. “Some even there come to Christ,” he told us with characteristic joy, but explained that they can’t attend church. They are deemed too dangerous to leave their cells except to shower and exercise. But Chaplain Drum walks fearlessly in their midst with the Spirit of Christ in his heart and the message of God’s forgiving love on his lips. He teaches them that the poet was right that “Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage,” for if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation and free — the only freedom that really counts!

Chaplain Drum follows him who said, “I was in prison and you ministered unto me.” — the Editor