Court Ruling Strikes Down Evangelical Prison Ministry Program with Connections to the Religious Right in West Michigan

An evangelical Christian prison program that has been supported by several conservative West Michigan families active in the religious right—including Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos—was struck down as unconstitutional earlier this summer. The program at Iowa’s Newton Correctional Facility—called Inner Change and operated by Prison Fellowship Ministries, an evangelical ministry operated by convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson—was judged to be in violation laws governing the use of state funding to support what the judge in the case termed “indoctrination of inmates into the Evangelical Christian belief system.” The ruling also may impact President George W. Bush’s “faith-based initiatives” programs, which are likely to face a variety of constitutional challenges in the coming years.

Inner Change began in 1999 with Iowa corrections officials first using $222,950 from its Inmate Telephone Rebate Fund to pay for the program (a surcharge levied on phone calls made by and to inmates to pay for prison programming) and then using money from the Healthy Iowans Tobacco Trust (partly composed of tax dollars) to pay for the program. The program eventually took over the prison’s “honor unit” where the best-behaved inmates were housed, with the inmates moved back into general population and two hundred inmates moving into the unit to be given religious instruction around the clock. The judge ruled that the program and “…the state has[had] literally established an Evangelical Christian congregation within the walls of one of its penal institutions, giving the leaders of that congregation, i.e., InnerChange employees, authority to control the spiritual, emotional, and physical lives of hundreds of Iowa inmates.” The lawsuit filed against the program did not take issue with religious programs in prisons, but focused on the fact that the program was funded with state money and promoted a conservative and biblically literalist form of Christianity. Inner Change staff members were required to sign Prison Fellowship’s fundamentalist “Statement of Principles” and inmates, if they wanted to participate in the program, were expected to adhere to Inner Change’s view of Christianity, with several inmates revealing in the trial that they were referred to as “unsaved,” “pagan,” or “of Satan” if they did not adopt Inner Change’s worldview. One Native American who joined the program and practiced Native American rituals was accused of “witchcraft.” While the program strongly advocated an Evangelical worldview, it also gave a series of special privileges to participants including private toilet facilities, extra family visits, and access to classes necessary to be considered for parole.

Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries is heavily funded by a variety of prominent conservative foundations based in West Michigan. The Holland-based DeWitt Families Conduit Foundation—funded by money from the Bil Mar slaughterhouse operations—contributed to $12,000 to the organization from 2002 to 2004 while the Cook Charitable Foundation, based in Grand Rapids and founded by Peter C. Cook, founder of Great Lakes Mazda, contributed $10,000 in 2003. However, it is two of the area’s wealthiest and most right-leaning families—the Grand Rapids area DeVos family and Holland’s Prince family—that have made the most substantial contributions to the organization. The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation—established by Amway (Alticor) co-founder Richard DeVos—contributed $1,000,000 annually to the organization from 2002-2004. Additionally, the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation—established by Richard “Dick” DeVos, Junior (and Republican candidate for governor this year)—contributed $50,000 in 2002 and 2003 to Prison Fellowship Ministries. Holland’s Prince family—which made money in the auto parts industry—contributed $680,000 from 2001 through two family foundations, the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation ($30,000 in 2003, $50,000 in 2004, $50,000 in 2005) and the Freiheit Foundation—established by Erik Prince, brother of Betsy DeVos and founder of the security contractor Blackwater.

Chuck Colson is a former aide to President Nixon who served seven months in federal prison stemming from his role in the Watergate scandal for obstruction of justice, while also scheming to firebomb the “liberal” Brookings Institute and hiring union members to beat up anti-Vietnam War protestors. In the mid-1970s, he became a born-again Christian and wrote a best-selling book, Born Again, from which he used the book’s royalties to form Prison Fellowship Ministries in 1976. Prison Fellowship has a presence in the majority of prisons in the United States, in addition to an international presence in 88 countries. Prison Fellowship boasts that more than 150,000 prisoners participate in its Bible studies and seminars each year, while its newspaper is the most widely distributed prison newspaper in the United States. While Colson has received some attention for his advocacy of restorative justice, limiting the jailing of nonviolent offenders, and improving prison conditions, he is an evangelical Protestant Christian who has significant support from the religious right foundations and his programs, such as Prison Fellowship’s Inner Change project, are clearly evangelical with United States District Judge Robert W. Pratt ruling in the Inner Change case that the program is “overwhelmingly devotional in nature and intended to indoctrinate Inner Change inmates into the Evangelical Christian belief system.” Since the 1980s, Colson’s religious views have shifted to the right with attacks on the separation of church and state, public education, evolution, and reproductive rights while advocating that the government post religious creeds such as the Ten Commandments in its buildings. Colson also routinely attacks gay and lesbian and advocates a patriarchal view of family where men are the have the moral and political responsibility to be “leaders” of their families.

Colson, who has published multiple books, has also gained influence in the Christian right through his regular columns for Christianity Today and his daily radio column “Breakpoint” broadcast on 1,000 religious radio stations across the country. As a testament to his influence, Colson received the Templeton Prize in 1993, a million-dollar cash reward given annually to people who have done significant work to advance conservative Christianity. Colson has used his influence in the Christian right to promote increasingly extreme viewpoints over the past few years. In September of 2005 Colson linked Hurricane Katrina to the “war on terror” by arguing that “…he (God) allowed it and perhaps he allowed it to get our attention so that we don’t delude ourselves into thinking that all we have to do is put things back the way they were and life will be normal again.” Earlier this year, Colson blamed “illegal immigration” on abortion stating that “reason we must allow millions of illegal aliens in to fill these jobs is because we have murdered a generation that would otherwise be filling them: 40 million sacrificed since 1973 to the god of self-fulfillment.” Colson frequently links disparate issues such as abortion and immigration, routinely making assertions that link topics such as terrorism and gay marriage or terrorism and the United States’ alleged “moral decadence.”

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Tags: michigan, prisons, religion, religious right, rightwing