Hannah Bowman is a scholar of Christian theology and prison abolition, which she writes and teaches about through the organization Christians for the Abolition of Prisons. She holds an M.A. in Religious Studies from Mount Saint Mary's University, Los Angeles. Her theological writing has been featured in Political Theology, the Anglican Theological Review, and Sojourners, among other publications.
Description
Introduction This chapter lays out the rationale for examining space and spatiality as guiding principles for studying the intersection of Christianity and prison abolition. It considers previous theological interventions into Christianity and abolition, and explains the need for a spatial turn. The chapter explores the way that incarceration and policing function as spatial phenomena. From there, it argues that Christian abolitionist goals requires considering how churches and communities of faith currently are structured as well as the spatial understandings of their worldview and how they organize themselves. Chapter 1: Spatiality in Abolition and Theology This chapter provides an overview of key scholarship such as Ruth Wilson Gilmore's work on geography, space, and spatiality with respect to abolition, developing concepts such as abolition geography and freedom as place-making. It also introduces relevant scholarship on spatiality and theology, especially Henri Lefebvre's spatial triad and Kim Knott's application of it to religion as well as Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia and Edward Soja's theory of Thirdspace. Chapter 2: Carcerality in Christian Spatial Imagination This chapter describes three spatial dualities that lead Christian theology to support carcerality and prisons: inside versus outside is such as the saved and the damned, above versus below such as the hierarchy in the divine-human relationship and in human relationships, and here verses hereafter such as found in traditional distinctions between the church and the world. Exploring how each of these dualities leads to carceral thinking points toward possibilities for a different way forward that is focused on border-crossing instead of separation, mutual accountability instead of hierarchy, and solidaristic presence instead of unearthly hope. Chapter 3: The Border-Crossing Highway of God This chapter presents the first of three spatial metaphors for abolitionist resistance: the border-crossing Highway of God as described in Isaiah 40:3-5. This metaphor provides a model for border-crossing instead of separation and offers a renewed perspective on the practice of the Eucharist. The chapter draws on decolonial thought, including Gloria Anzaldua's work on borderlands, Loida Martell's vision of the church as a space defined by movement, and Maria Lugones' concept of world-travelling. Finally, the chapter considers the Eucharist as a Highway practice in dialogue with M. Shawn Copeland's work on eucharistic solidarity. Chapter 4: The City of Refuge This chapter presents the second spatial metaphor as the City of Refuge defined in Numbers 35 and Deuteronomy 19. This metaphor provides a model for mutual accountability instead of hierarchy, and offers a renewed perspective on practices of confession, absolution, and accountability. The chapter draws on theories and practices from the transformative justice movement and theories of moral injury and its repair. The Cities of Refuge prove to be a powerful metaphor for a thirdspace community. Chapter 5: The Garden in Exile This chapter presents the third spatial metaphor as the Garden in Exile from Jeremiah 29:5-7. The Garden in Exile provides a model for practicing solidaristic presence such as planting gardens instead of unearthly hope. The Garden in Exile offers a renewed perspective on the sacramental practice of baptism for commissioning Christians for solidarity, ministry, and resistance to carceral powers in this world of Exile. The chapter draws on China Mieville's concept of breach from the novel The City and the City and Fleming Rutledge's apocalyptic transvision. The spatial metaphor of the Garden in Exile presents a place that is both a living-out of a promised restoration to come and a place that sanctifies the antagonistic world around it. Chapter 6: Abolition Ecclesiology and Trinitarian Thought The chapter explores the implications of abolition ecclesiology for how we think about God. It will consider the role of the Holy Spirit, in particular, in structuring abolition ecclesiologies. It also will examine what a spatial methodology can offer to our understanding of perichoresis in the Trinity, of the kenosis of the Son, and of a non-hierarchical, mutual understanding of divinity. In the end, this chapter examines how a radical reimagining of ecclesiology in response to provocations from abolitionist thought reflects and requires new understandings of the Trinity. Conclusion The book's conclusion offers a summary of properties of an abolition ecclesiology and considers examples of what such abolition ecclesiologies might look like. Examples include Nikia Smith Robert's Abolitionist Sanctuary, an organization that centers Black mothers and organizes Black churches toward abolition; Jason Sexton's ecclesia incarcerate; Mark Lewis Taylor's concept of a liturgical theatrics of counterterror from The Executed God; and Jennifer McBride's description of a theology class in prison that provides a space of self-actualization and resistance.