God's Law and Order

The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-0-674-23878-7
Verlag: Harvard University Press

Buch, Englisch, 352 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 704 g

Winner of a Christianity Today Book Award An incisive look at how evangelical Christians shaped—and were shaped by—the American criminal justice system. America incarcerates on a massive scale. Despite recent reforms, the United States locks up large numbers of people—disproportionately poor and nonwhite—for long periods and offers little opportunity for restoration. Aaron Griffith reveals a key component in the origins of American mass incarceration: evangelical Christianity. Evangelicals in the postwar era made crime concern a major religious issue and found new platforms for shaping public life through punitive politics. Religious leaders like Billy Graham and David Wilkerson mobilized fears of lawbreaking and concern for offenders to sharpen appeals for Christian conversion, setting the stage for evangelicals who began advocating tough-on-crime politics in the 1960s. Building on religious campaigns for public safety earlier in the twentieth century, some preachers and politicians pushed for “law and order,” urging support for harsh sentences and expanded policing. Other evangelicals saw crime as a missionary opportunity, launching innovative ministries that reshaped the practice of religion in prisons. From the 1980s on, evangelicals were instrumental in popularizing criminal justice reform, making it a central cause in the compassionate conservative movement. At every stage in their work, evangelicals framed their efforts as colorblind, which only masked racial inequality in incarceration and delayed real change. Today evangelicals play an ambiguous role in reform, pressing for reduced imprisonment while backing law-and-order politicians. God’s Law and Order shows that we cannot understand the criminal justice system without accounting for evangelicalism’s impact on its historical development.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Griffith, Aaron

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christentum/Christliche Theologie Allgemein
• Rechtswissenschaften Strafrecht Kriminologie, Strafverfolgung
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kriminalsoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religion & Politik, Religionsfreiheit

Über Autor(innen)

Griffith, Aaron
Aaron Griffith is Assistant Professor of Modern American History at Whitworth University. A former fellow at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics and instructor at Washington University’s Prison Education Project, he is the winner of the 2021 Emerging Public Intellectual Award, hosted by Redeemer University, for those in the Christian academy whose work impacts the common good. He has written for the <i>Washington Post</i>, <i>Christianity Today</i>, and Religion News Service.