 Good afternoon. We're going to begin this afternoon session. It is a very, very powerful opportunity for us to have conversation with each other, and we dare not lose any time doing so. I am delighted and privileged to speak to you this afternoon and serve as your moderator. I am Iva Carruthers and I serve as the General Secretary of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. We are very, very privileged to be a partner with Drug Policy Alliance, and in that partnership we have collaboratively struggled with trying to make sure we engage the faith community in this conversation around reform and transformation as it relates to drug policy, not just in this nation but indeed in the world. The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference is a network of clergy and lay leaders, seminarians, activists, advocates who are grounded in what we would consider to be the prophetic tradition of the African American Church. That simply means that we should first of all understand that the African American Church is a very diverse church, but the prophetic tradition of that church is the tradition which carries in its belly the desire of the voice for social justice. And so it is only appropriate that we would be at this table. We have been asked to consider and reflect on the issue of, can you hear me now, speaking the language of reform to faith leaders. We mix that a bit and say that what we're going to be talking about is this issue of the message within the message. And by that we mean what do we say, to whom do we say it, who says it, and how is the best way to say it. It is a very important issue as you know because so much as Dr. Sanders has already shared with us this morning, so much of what we believe is driven by the spirit and so much of our capacity and power is often driven by the spirit. And so as we consider this conversation, we do so recognizing and affirming the diversity of the faith tradition and that we have to have this conversation recognizing the diversity of those who are engaged in this work. That diversity is not only in terms of tradition, it is in terms of gender, it is in terms of institutional representation, it is in terms of theological beliefs, institutional structures, and most of all we acknowledge that we have to message within the message with competing messages because more often than not we are the minority voice. Now one of the things I had to first of all acknowledge and step back and say so what do I do about this is that all of our panelists on this round table are male. Have you all noticed that? And so to my sisters in the audience I want to say that I acknowledge that and therefore to begin this conversation I want to say that I stand here in the tradition of Isabel Bonfrey who became Sir Journal Truth and she said ain't I a woman. I stand in the tradition of Harriet Tubman who said I would have freed more of them if they had only known that they were still slaves. I stand in the tradition of Fannie Lou Hamer who said I'm tired of being tired. I stand in the tradition of Ella Baker who said we who believe in freedom shall not rest until it comes. And finally I stand in the tradition of those South African women who said you have struck a rock and therefore you have hit the woman. And it is within that notion of the feminine energy of the spirit that the sisters in the room are going to engage in this conversation acknowledging that the brothers who I will call up to the stage fully affirm our participation in this movement. I would like to ask for the Honorable Craig DeRoch to join us. He is the former Speaker of the House in the state of Michigan and he is President of Justice Fellowship. We have agreed collectively that we're going to be short on introductions so that we have the best use of our time. Pastor Kenneth Glasgow who serves as the founder and the Chief Servant of the Ordinary People Society, Dotham, Alabama. Reverend Alvin Herring, Director of Training of Lifelines to Healing the Pico National Network, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but now the National Director of Training and really based in Washington, D.C. Reverend John E. Jackson, please join us. Trinity United Church of Christ, Gary, Indiana. Reverend Peter Larmann, Co-convenor of Justice Not Jails, California Faith Action, Los Angeles, California. Dr. William Martin, Senior Fellow in Religion and Public Policy, Baker Institute, Rice University, Houston, Texas. Reverend Edwin Sanders who we've already heard from who's on his way and of course he will join when he comes. Reverend Al Sharp, Interim Director, Community Renewal Society for My Home City, Chicago, Illinois. And last but certainly not least, Dr. Walter, Dr. George Walter Slayon who is the Executive Director of the Center for Church and Prisons Incorporated. How about that? Well, we're not going to get back to the stand. We're going to do this as a conversation. Can all of you see here? Okay, great. All right, so Dr. Peter Larmann, can you share with us a little bit about some of the power of language and words that are often barriers to this conversation? I know you've done a lot in that area. Thank you Dr. Creathers and thanks to all of you for being here. It's a privilege and may we thank God that we have the emerging national voice of good religion. I want to talk a little bit about good religion and bad religion and I use those terms freely but I think that the spirit of condemnation and punishment, and I wrote about this a little bit in a thing I put at the back, the spirit of condemnation and punishment hangs over this whole discussion of criminalization. In my sense of things, we wouldn't criminalize users, we wouldn't have the capacity to criminalize users were it not for our predisposition to judge others and to reach conclusions about others and bad religion has obviously played a huge role in building up the capacity for harsh judgment. The capacity, I think Jesus warned people about this but the capacity of people to come to church and say in their prayer, I thank you Father that I am not like those other people. Our faith communities are bastions of respectability and they are bastions of denial in regard to our own participation in systems of oppression. So yes, I think language is profoundly important. I really want to be brief in the spirit of collegiality here so I want to say that I think in respect to the resources that good religion brings to this conversation, we have the capacity theologically to raise up that different voice and raise it up powerfully in the pulpit and also in the life of the community. In the pulpit the message is that we absolutely need to hear addictions and use of substances here to stay, not going away, not going away and people use differently but just about everybody uses in some fashion or another. Not everyone who uses becomes an addict obviously. Criminalizing use and criminalizing users solves nothing and wreaks horrendous damage, horrendous damage and suffering. Theologically our God is a God of second chances and as much as God still speaks to us God is saying your addiction is your addiction to judgment and condemnation. That's the addiction that needs to be treated and it can only be treated in the spirit, I'll speak here as a Christian, only in the spirit of Jesus who said judge not lest you be judged. Why are you fussing over the speck in your neighbor's eye when you have this big beam in your own eye? The Jesus who went out and searched for the lost sheep and embraced the lost sheep, the Jesus who taught us about the prodigal son. The Jesus who was the great physician not the great corrections officer. So the safe space conversations part and this is the inner life of congregations, the safe space congregations. This stuff is so deep and so embedded that you need to create an opportunity for people to meet and talk and expose themselves, reveal their own heart about how they judge, how they struggle with their own stuff. And those conversations of course should be informed by the presence of formerly incarcerated people. It should be a safe place for formerly incarcerated people to be present and be welcomed and the families of the incarcerated. That keeps it real, it grounds it. I'll conclude by saying that with knowledge begins responsibility so that as people in your faith community become aware, it doesn't stop with that, it's not good enough to become aware and then say okay I'm done. With knowledge becomes responsibility, we are building a movement here. I think it's possible in any church or any house of worship in this country to say honestly to people you want to be part of the freedom movement of this era, this is the freedom movement. This is the struggle that you cannot be absent from. I like to say in my own tradition, I'm a United Church of Christ minister. We have a bumper sticker that says the day of non-judgment is at hand. May it come quickly. Amen. So Reverend Jackson, I know you usually do your sermon preparation on Thursday evening or Thursday day and you struggle with it through Saturday night. As you think about the consequential and collateral damage that the black community and black believers in the faith struggle with and the multiplicities of ways in which they have to understand the theology and the preached word, what are some of the ways in which you are guided to speak this truth to your people? Thank you to the panelists. Thank you. The issue of biblical interpretation informing one's theology I believe is very important. For me it is the way you look at scripture that will allow you to either be empowered or enslaved and so it is a way to look at the narrative. And the first thing is Dr. Jerome Rawls out of the Virginia Union, the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union. Dr. Jerome Rawls points out that when you look at the Bible you see people under oppression from Genesis to Revelation. It is a text that deals with people under oppression and how they deal with that. And so then you narrow it down to looking at different texts of the scripture. When one is able to embrace that liberation theology in the text, which it is prevalent in the text, then that is the way one will look at it from then on. I just wanted to give an example of how I do that not only in the preached moment, but in the Bible study moment in conversations about different texts. It is a way of looking at the scriptures that allows the scripture to say, thank you for seeing what is underneath. And one of the things people can do is you can take down Mark the Ninth Chapter. Mark the Ninth Chapter and you can read it in your own private times and you'll see what I'm saying. Mark the Ninth Chapter, many of us in here who attend church have heard the story of a man who came to Jesus and he came to Jesus because his son had been seized by a spirit of subjugation. The spirit had thrown the boy down in the fire and the water trying to kill the boy and the man had brought his son to Jesus. But Jesus was on the mountain at that time so he couldn't find Jesus. So he went to the church. Jesus is a disciple. They couldn't do nothing about it. And so when Jesus came down off the mountain, he said, the man exasperated said, I brought my son to you. Your disciples couldn't do anything about it. And here I am with my son. Jesus then issues a reprimand to the disciples. When you look at the text, he says, oh, unbelieving generation. In other words, you all did not do what I empowered you to do. So then he says to the father, bring your son to me. Bring the boy to me. And so when he brings the boy, then that spirit started convulsing the boy. And Jesus then adds what I call a touch of tenderness. In other words, he identifies with empathy to the father. He says, how long has he been like this? In other words, it allows the father to tell his story. He said he's been going through this since childhood. He's been convulsing childhood. And he then the man says, if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us. What that said in the text is that when one member of the family is suffering, everybody is suffering. The boy is the one who has the spirit, but the whole family is tormented because of the suffering. In other words, when one member of the family or community is suffering, the entire community suffers. But that would not have come out if Jesus had not added some empathy and compassion. I call it a theology of compassion. So then Jesus says something that we have mist translated and exegeted by saying that Jesus reprimanded the man for lack of faith. He didn't do that. What he did was reassure the man that those who walk by faith and not by sight, those who really take in this relationship with me can do what others think cannot be done. So he says, you said, if all things are possible for those who believe. So then he rebukes the spirit. The man expresses his struggle with the experiences he has had. He's gone everywhere. He's gone even to the church and they weren't able to do it. And so the man says, I believe, help my unbelief. In other words, he's saying it's not that I don't believe. I don't have too many experiences where people let me down. And Jesus then commands the spirit out of the boy, the boy kicking the habit, kicking the spirit, kicking this thing going on within him. Then all of a sudden when the spirit leaves, it seems he's dead. The people say, it looks like he's a corpse. And Jesus shows us in that moment. I got this part from Chad Myers binding the strong man. He has a commentary on Mark. He says Jesus demonstrates then what the reality of resurrection is. He demonstrates to them because the boy looks like a corpse. In other words, without saying a word, Jesus reaches his hand down, lifts the boy up and he stands up. In other words, Jesus is saying resurrection is saying that nobody is beyond redemption. Nobody is beyond restoration and nobody is beyond restoration or resurrection, rather. Nobody is beyond this. In other words, even those situations that seem dead, even those situations that look like a corpse to us, lifeless situations, if we embody this resurrection spirit of Jesus Christ, then they have life in them. Now the final point I want to make, and I'm going to pass to Mike, is there's an addendum here because there's much more to it, but in the interest of time, the disciples pulled Jesus aside and say, how come we weren't able to do this? They had already had the power. Jesus had given them the power to drive out subjugating spirits in chapter 6, but they didn't believe in the power they had. One of the things about domination in this culture and in the first century is it drives people to feel a sense of resignation. That we can't do anything about this. That this is overwhelming. I don't have the power to do this. We're just a little church over here. I'm just a pastor of a small group of people. When we talk to faith leaders, majority of them have a feeling of being overwhelmed. And so what Jesus says is this kind only comes out by prayer. In other words, the ground of our work has to start with prayer that we don't go to the bargaining table with God, but prayer where we deal with the demons within us that try to get us to be disillusioned, depressed, despondent, where we just feel like I can't do anything else. Jesus says the key is prayer should be used as battleground so that you can use my words to counteract the presence of inertia and apathy that go on within all of us in this struggle. And so that's just one of the ways that I consistently look at Scripture no matter what the situation is to help folks see that there's liberation within it. Thank you. So if I could tie in the commentary we've already heard. Certainly Reverend Larmann and Reverend Jackson, you have both implicitly and explicitly talked about the need for those who are formally incarcerated persons to be in the conversation. And you've raised the question of resurrection. I would just like our brother, Reverend Kenneth Glasgow, who is unapologetic about his story and who comes out of the tradition of the black church to testify. I got to be real nice because my mother in the audience, she don't like me cursing. But I love to cuss around preachers and see them cringe. You know, he's a pastor and he's cussing like that. The secret is all of them cuss, they just don't let you hear them. But one of the things that we must realize is that the church is the most trusted institution in the community. When that trusted institution of the community that's supposed to be the safe haven, the refuge, the place for us to seek restoration and redemption, as you said, is not there, then we tend to have a failing community and the church is responsible for it. One of the things I'm going to say real clearly before I even testify is that it's a shame to all of us. All of us as pastors are ordained or people that consider themselves Christians to sit up here and have to come to a drug policy alliance conference to be called to the carpet, so to speak, to do our own jobs that we should be doing anyway. And what's even a bigger shame is jail in your land and all of y'all let's hear it. Where's Jill at? It has to be the ones who, we as the pastors, should be doing, but they are actually the ones, Dr. Sanders, that's doing the ministry that we've been called to because they see the oppression and the injustice and the laws that exist against our people that we minister to in our congregations. In my testimony, I am a formerly incarcerated person of 14 years, got my epiphany to do tops, the Ordinary People Society, in prison. And what's so profound is what you asked Dr. Aura and Correlas is that you wanted me to testify. In my testimony, I always tell people that, you know, in 1994 when I was in prison, I studied all religions it was, I got two doctors now, theology and all that, since I've been out of prison, but in that particular time, I was studying Islam, I was studying Buddhism, I was studying Voodam, I was studying every religion it was. So I didn't just go with theology, I studied theosophy. That's the study of all religions. And when I learned all these different prophets, Dr. Sanders and all, what they did and God just gave me this thing and inside all of my speaking and doing coup bars and all that, God stopped me and the Muslims, they rejected me, y'all, because I started leading the prayer service and I got up one day and said, I love rock bar in the name of Jesus. And the Muslims got mad. Brother Khalif, you just said in the name of Jesus and I realized God had called me back to my original place that my mother brought me from. And I studied the Bible and I studied all the prophets. And I found out that even though I was in jail and incarcerated, guess what? Most of the prophets in there went to jail too. And even in my other study, Reverend Khalif, I found out Jesus went to jail too. He broke the law of healing somebody on the Sabbath day. And I said, well, wait a minute, according to the moral standards of religion, I done failed morally by being the person incarcerated in the community of crime. But yet still in that Bible, I see where crimes were committed by standing up for morality and spreading the gospel. So we have we failed. And I looked at Amos, you know, and I seen him repeatedly yesterday with God said, I don't care about your festivals, I don't care about your praises, I don't care about your senior songs. I don't care about your sacrifices until justice rolled out like my waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. We forgot that. I looked at Matthew 25, 33 to 46, which is the basis of TOPS, the whole organization. And it says, you know, I was hungry. You ain't feeding me. I was thirsty. You ain't giving me water to drink. I was sick in prison. It makes us both synonymous one to another. And I love to do etymology on the words, Bill. And when I did it, I looked at the root of being sick and in prison. And it said that the reason in our studies and similar, the reason that they put them both together, you know why Craig is because we were to administer to the needs thereof the same way. And minister to the needs of both the same way. And then I looked at the Prodigal Child Project that we have. And I looked at Luke and it says that the father, first of all, received him with open arms. First, secondly, he killed what? The fatter calf gave him food, clothing, shelter. Second, that's the church now. Third, he gave him what? Shoes on his feet to give him what? Not the center. Direction. Uh-oh. Come on. We still talking about the church. And then what did he do? He put a coat of colors on them. That cover, and all of us know as preachers that them studied that those colors are what? Our emotions, our depressions. Come on. Come on. The things that we go through. Our different mental stages that we are to cover. And we're supposed to be teaching on as we preach to congregations. And last but not least, what did they do? Dr. Sanders gave him a ring on his finger that meant he belonged. Ah, the authority, his citizenship, as Paul says it. So I said, what's wrong with the church? The church done lost one of the biggest factors that it was. And what I believe, especially the black church, is that we are so concentrated on our outreach. Somewhere along the line, we forgot about our in reach. So now we need to do an animal in the church. I'm going to say it. And we need to get back to the fact for people like me that was on crack and drugs and got off. People like me that was incarcerated and all that. And some of the main people who were smoking drugs with me and stopped because I pulled a gun on them and tell them, hey, you don't want to hear what God got to say. And they mysteriously just stopped getting high with me. But they had enough since to tell me, why don't you get a pulpit and put the pipe down. They seen the act of God. But those of us in the church don't see it. We get so stuck on this and I'm going to say this and I'm going to end. We get so stuck on this touch, not my anointing, do my prayer for no harm. But we forget Sister Jill Harris that the anointing comes on the person prior to them becoming saved, not after they become, oh, come on now. Because Jesus said, I called you. Even in your mess, I called you. And one of the biggest controversies we go through seminary is whether a person is saved or stay safe, whether God hears a sinner's prayer and all that. And the man came out with some God still here, a sinner's prayer. But Paul said it in the Bible, when I was yet killing Christians, when I was yet on my way to the mat, God spoke to me. Last thing I will say is that if we're the trusted institution, we must realize that Samson, one of the biggest prophets in the Bible, he killed more in his death than he did in his life. But it says when he went to prison, Dr. Sanders, guess what happened? When he went to prison, it said his hell started growing back in the 16th verse, Brother George. And you know what that mean? Restoration came on him while he was yet in his sin. So Brother Craig, you know the prophets exemplified speaking truth to power. And you have been on both sides of the table. Do you want to share some insights about that journey? I'm so proud to see your mother here because I know what I put my mom through. My story is that of political leadership. I was the Speaker of the House in Michigan. I was 34 years old. I was the youngest Republican in the country as a statewide leader at the time. And I had another part of my life that I never talked about, which was at a full-on addiction to alcohol since I was a little kid. And I could manage things the best I could, but I couldn't do both. You know, I'm a real alcoholic. And when I got arrested twice and four months in 2010, God put a lot on me. And he took away that compulsion I had to go to alcohol. And I want to speak briefly about this because it's to the topic, Ivy, of what we're talking about, which is the language of faith in this drug policy debate that we're having in Denver and in all the states in the country. And that is that we don't speak to our values well in this country because of where we started this debate is that that human instinct that you can bring yourself up by bringing other people down. And I believe that that has led to a political model that's been successful for generations, whereas what is wrong with the drug use is not what we talk about in this country anymore. And as Christians, I'm going to start now giving you some of the language of a Christian that is different than you hear out of a lot of organizations and individuals that are active, whether it be to legalize marijuana or to decriminalize things or just simple reforms and mandatory minimums. As a Christian, would you say that drinking alcohol is the sin or when you're addicted to it and you put it before God is the sin? It's very easy for a Christian to say what my sin was, was not drinking alcohol itself, it was that I put it before God. You can't pass a law that way and that's not what the laws in any state say of when you start drinking alcohol or how much you can drink or anything else. But that is the origin as a Christian in the faith and if you look to the gospel as to what God instructs you is to what is right and what is wrong. The things on this earth are all here to be used by his children properly but it's very clear that he's a jealous God, the things that are put before him. And we see the policies applied. I'll take one specific example that many in this room are probably aware of which is the stop and frisk program in New York. And in that state in 2011, they had 47,000 people stop and frisk because they had marijuana in their pocket. That was the worst thing that they were doing. They weren't robbing somebody stealing a car and had marijuana. They just had marijuana. At the same time, Craig's crystal ball would tell you that in a city of 10 million people there was probably 47,000 young women walking around with fake purses, felony theft. That's in the Bible. That's stealing. And as a Christian, you would say was the person with marijuana in their pocket just walk them through this, give me the scripture that would say young primarily minority male was sinning against God. He may very well have been. You don't know the circumstance though. In many cases you would be hard pressed without knowing a lot more as to what he was actually doing in violation of his faith. The person with the fake purse that was never stopped and frisked or arrested that I'm aware of, you can quote that chapter in verse. We can get into the debate of what is wrong with drugs and alcohol as Christians and I would hope that those of you that are in the room that are not Christians or Muslims or Jews would be tolerant of the concerns that the faith community has that it is very alluring for somebody to put it before God just as gambling or sex or food or money and all sorts of other things of this world are and be tolerant of that debate. The faith community IV, I think that's where we need to bring it back to and we need to bring it back as the pastors are saying and I'm sorry for my long-windedness, I am not a pastor but I'm a politician which is probably worse up here. Amen, can I get an amen on that? There, that's as close as I can get. In our work at Prison Fellowship Ministries our job and where I lead the advocacy at Justice Fellowship is to bring this debate back into the churches and back into the Christian discourse because we believe that is where our solution is, not in the government. That is where Christians have empowered instead of doing the work that we should have to say this is what you should be doing and this is what is a sin we've instead handed that off to the government which has turned their power and misused their applications of that with no level of success of what anybody on the Christian level would advocate as an advancement of the values that we find in our faith and that's the difficulty and that's why we have to get back to a language that is attractive to bring more pastors more churches into this movement to be able to have this discussion and move forward with reform. So Dr. Martin bringing this back to faith and understanding the diversity of faith communities help us to figure out how to message in the midst of that diversity. I'll try to give a few examples. You've been getting manner here and this may be more like white bread but I'll do my best. It's already been noted that the attitudes of the church that Peter talked about and opposition to reform is often rooted in the conviction that drug use is a sin and that not to oppose it is to condone or to encourage sin. If we can't convince religious people to look at drug use both benign and problematic from different angles and to see the great harms caused by the war on drug then we are ceding a powerful force to the opposition. With that in mind when I speak at a church whether it's from the pulpit or sometimes to a class or interdenominational gathering or testifying before the Texas legislature committee or writing an article or an op-ed I try to keep that audience in mind knowing that even in a secular setting particularly in Texas and the south but elsewhere as well a biblical reference or an illusion can strike a responsive chord as George Bush understood it can have wonder working power. Let me stipulate that I don't do that cynically but I consciously hope it works. Let me just give you a few examples of different aspects of what we're talking about. I almost always start with pointing out that alcohol causes far more problems than any other drug. And when I'm in a church setting I notice the wide range of views about alcohol in the Bible from stern warnings of the perils of drink to the story of Jesus at the wedding feast in Cana. Cana. It wasn't making blue nun. It was good wine. Whatever you think happened to give rise to that story it's clear that the early church saw it in a positive light and it was not something they needed to explain away by insisting most surely it must have been grape juice. Overall the picture of alcohol in the Bible is that you might be better off drinking but it's not forbidden and sometimes it's a really good idea. So use your head depending on your status and situation. Well I urge people to remember that when you were talking about other drugs and I find that's a good way to lead into talking about harm reduction. Just give a few examples. Take the environment. Liberal churches tend to take environmentalism seriously and many evangelicals belong to a movement called creation care. So I talk about the harms caused by eradication by aerial spraying and the hundreds of tons of chemicals that clandestine cocaine laboratories dump into the waterways of the Amazon and other Latin American rivers. Regulating marijuana, cocaine and heroin would eliminate much of that or certainly would greatly reduce those harms. Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers. Well more than a hundred thousand people have been killed in Mexico in the last seven years as a consequence of war between the drug cartels and between the cartels and the Mexican government. Now this is often called drug violence but they're not killing each other because they want marijuana to smoke or cocaine to snort or because they're high on meth. They're killing each other. They're fighting over the billions of dollars that they can make by selling drugs whose prices have been driven to outrageous heights by prohibition. To oppose prohibition is to reduce violence and to further the cause of peacemaking. I work on needle exchange a good bit. Religious people as well as many others view needle exchange as condoning even abetting harmful drug use. And after seeing the fiscal and public health benefits of providing clean needles to injecting users many of them still say it sends the wrong message. So I ask them to think about the message we currently send. We know a way to dramatically cut your chances of contracting a deadly disease and spreading it to others including your unborn children. But because we believe what you are doing is illegal, immoral and sinful we are not going to do what we know works. As upright, moral, sincerely religious people we prefer that you and others in your social orbit die. Jesus had nothing to say about needles but he had a great deal to say about and we know how he treated social outcasts and centers and he had a great deal to say about people who let prim concern with their own righteousness keep them from aiding those who were in peril. Finally we come back to Matthew 25 as Brother Glasgow led us. After citing the sad data about incarceration and effects I note that that ought particularly to offend Christians. Jesus said he came to set captives free and he died in custody as did Peter and Paul and John the Baptist. Christianity was founded by people in deep trouble with the law who knew what it was like to be in prison and as you quoted Jesus said I was hungry and you fed me thirsty and you brought me drink. I was in prison and you came to visit me. That's what you should have done but if you're a friend of Jesus or just think highly of him suppose you try to imagine hearing his voice saying I was in prison and you didn't visit. I was in prison and you didn't care or if we do not do all we can to change the laws that imprison people at an unconscionable rate I was in prison because you let it happen. I could say more but I trust these will serve as examples may it be so. So Dr. Walter Slayong you are in the heart of the academy in Boston and part of the barrier is the divide between the academy the church and the community. Your organization is on the cutting edge of addressing issues of recidivism in terms of speaking the same message in different ways to different audiences. What have you learned about that? So thank you very much it's quite a pleasure to be here. I represent two organizations one they Center for Church and Prison and the other one is Strengthening the Black Church for the 21st century SBC 21. I come to this conversation with three backgrounds one as a student of philosophy as a student of public policy social ethics and as a student of theology as well and so I want to begin by quoting Howard Thurman who said this from my book he said the underprivileged everywhere have long since abandoned any hope that this type of salvation deals with the crucial issues by which their days are turned into despair without consolation and so it is very important as we talk about the issue of the war on drugs and whether from an academic perspective or whether from a very pragmatic perspective we view this whole issue of mass incarceration and the war on drugs holistically that is the war on drugs is not isolated from the issues of mass incarceration they informed one another and so within that context that mass incarceration in the U.S. has become a humanitarian crisis mass incarceration in the United States is a humanitarian crisis it's historical continuity from slavery, neo-slavery convict leasing system PNH system and the modern form of social control and subjugation reflected in the war on drugs need to be addressed and we feel that a religion whether it's Buddhism, the nation of Islam or Christianity or any form of religion cannot be isolated to the process of strategic solution development and so I would just say three things one, how do we define the situation two, what are the implications of the situation three, what are the solutions one, talking about defining it we believe that the war on drugs in the United States we should be seen as a militant expression of mass incarceration mass incarceration and it's pointed and reflected in the racial form blacks, Hispanics, poor whites so whilst you have these groups astronomically, enormously you've got black men black women and black youth as the highest population in the U.S. criminal justice system just to give you a little bit of statistics a background the United States has 5% of the world's population or 25% of the world's incarcerated population at this particular time whilst we talk there are 7.4, 7.5 million people caught in the criminal justice system whether on parole, on probation in jail or prison under some kind of criminal supervision think about it at this particular time 2 to 4, 2 to 5 million people are in jails in prison whether on the federal level across the United States black men alone black men alone think about it are close to 43 to 44% of the criminal justice population of the United States and think about it blacks are only 12 to 13% of the U.S. population so when you talk about the whole racial implication and disproportionality reflected in the U.S. criminal justice system we feel it is important for us to define it as a humanitarian crisis as a real humanitarian crisis that distorts what we call human dignity undermines human flourishing and systematically negates human existence the war on drugs and its cumulative expression in mass incarceration with racial particularities reflects a racial consciousness in the American socio-political and economic psychic that is absolutely debilitating it is debilitating how do we define it by looking at the implications one think about the political implications a lot of these guys would quarry a lot of these guys and the criminal justice policy have come out with some statistics in the United States today there are more than 18 million Americans with criminal record that are bar from being included in the American socio-political and economic process whether on parole on probation etc etc you've got strengths that reflects itself continuously from as Douglas Blackmon speaks that reflects itself in the modern prison system you see so when we begin to think about it think about the social implication think about the breakdown of the black family structure there is an increase now in single parenting in the black community there is a breakdown or a great decrease in black marriage during the civil rights era it was about 46 to 48 percent now it's gone down to less than 31 percent black marriage in the United States think about the economic implication a lot of these guys because of their quarry it's difficult for them to even get jobs you are black it's difficult for them to get jobs so you think about economic inclusion economic mobility social mobility they are systematically bar from that level of inclusion then think about the health implication Jim Webb, former senator says that the American prison system is littered with people with AIDS tobacco losses, syphilis mental illness and most of these people are in jail for nonviolent drug offenses nonviolent drug so when you think about it as another group has also studied what is also we need to begin to think about again from the perspective of a church religious people with a moral conscience, with an ethical conscience we should begin to think about the fact that when you put people in jail as human beings they are going to have sex we should begin to think about the issue of sex behind bars is the church willing to say can we get these people condoms because AIDS has now become the number one killer in the black community and don't you fool yourself they are wholly abstinence they are having sex can the church say are we going to give them condoms or are we afraid to talk about some of these issues that's the stress on a solution perspective on a solution level on a solution level we have a different perspective a pragmatic perspective a critical perspective that we are going to be talking about and a prophetic perspective but it is important for us to lay it down like this and I will just conclude this particular point by a quotation from you talked about females from someone whose work I have begun to take interest in her name is Ida B. Wells she says this in a way towards providing I'm improving this at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen and the punishment by law for the lawless I shall feel I have done my race, humanity a service thank you Reverend Herring you have challenged us with the power of the construct of healing and you're talking about the restoration of families of communities and indeed a nation a nation that is divided because of the racialized systematic manifestations of legacy systems that are still current in what we know that we're struggling with with the restoration we're talking about the collateral damages that Dr. George just spoke about in so many different varieties and forms how does Pico see and envision the possibility for healing and what we need to do as a faith community one thing about Dr. Carruthers she doesn't ask any easy questions does she I should also tip my hat to our dear sister I think very wisely and eloquently brought the power of women into this conversation and I move by a quotation that I read and have it prominently displayed in my office from Fannie Lou Hamer you all know sister Fannie Lou she said that this kind of work the kind of work that we're all engaged in the kind of work that goes against the status quo the kind of work that challenges the dominant narratives the kind of work that tries to Sandra says unmask the powerful elites we have a saying in organizing real power is hidden that kind of work she said could get you killed and she said and if they kill me I don't mind because I'll fall four foot eleven feet closer to my freedom she was four foot eleven and I think that in very in very real ways this is the kind of power that we need to bring into the work the kind of power that we're contending against this issue of healing my own personal story my father was a sharecropper from Clayton, Alabama, Canada not too far from Doton at a certain point when he was sixteen or seventeen he was in the middle of plowing a field you remember back in the day they plowed him with mules and he was he was cultivating a field with the mule and I don't know if you all remember what old cultivators looked like it was a big iron apparatus it was hooked to the mule had long leather straps you had the cultivator you had the mule you had the cultivator and then you had the man and my father on one hot day in Alabama having only had a sixth grade education having toiled in those fields for most of his life sharecropping as you know was just a modern extension of slavery he said he one day had to consider who was the mule and who was the man systems of power and domination relegate human beings to second class or maybe no class status my father could not control his drinking could not handle his drinking I guess the world would call him an alcoholic that means I was born the child of an alcoholic and an alcoholic family and the church was of little or no good to me there could not be there was no space for an honest conversation there was no one who paid attention to the obvious signs that my family was struggling my father was struggling in eyes the oldest son and the poster child for my family was struggling there was no one who could break kind of the conspiracy of silence around drug addiction or alcoholism or all the other ways which sometimes we get into trouble with substances so the church was literally of no use to me and no use to my family so you might ask how did I end up as a preacher the church was of no use but Jesus was a healer and he brought me through and he reminded me and he reminded me every opportunity that I can that I can recall that I and I would submit you though you may not necessarily be Christian or maybe may not even appreciate this analysis pardon me as I at least explain it that Jesus that I encountered early in my life told me a story he told me a story and I won't be long he told me a story about a pious man who was making his way from one place to another and befell a harmful incident he was robbed and hit over the head and lay unconscious in the streets and all the good people of church and all the good people of status all the good Thai wearing folk all the good male folk all the good over 40 folk all the good grey hair folk all the good Christian folk all the good educated folk all the good middle class folk but pretending that that's not a part of your life all those folk passed that dear brother by come on now and someone like you and I raised to be invisible but dog gonna refuse to be stopped and helped that brother up and gave him the one thing that we have got to reteach the church to give and that is the acknowledgement of his humanity and then the active participation in his liberation healing of his body and his mind and repositioning him in society so he would no longer be invisible but be visible and count and so for us in Pico this healing work is work that is in defiance of the dominant system we will not Reverend Sanders said it out so eloquently this morning we refuse to go quietly into the night those of us of faith and those of us who are involved in the church we refuse to be chaplains to the empire and so we talk about healing extending love grace, mercy forgiveness and asking of the same we understand we have to clean our own porch up before we look at someone else's porch we understand that there is real pain involved here so we got to be real human beings we got to treat each other with the utmost respect and the most powerful respectful way in which we can encounter and engage with one another is to see one another there is a South African greeting that I repeat often say it after me say it after me say it after me say it after me say it after me say it after me say it after me the church have got to learn to do because their greeting says I see you I see you I see you my last comment there are four challenges that we are taking on that we believe have to be taken off we are going to get the church in this game we believe that there is a powerful dialectic going on right now between the church and its people there are structural challenges that we have got to acknowledge the church ain't what it used to be ain't even where it used to be Because there is strong kind of theology that would say that we need to be not only in the game but central to the game. There are doctrinal challenges that we have to take on because in many of our organized faiths there's doctrine that says that using any drugs in any way is harmful to the body. Your body is a temple and you're sinning and you're asking for ill health. There's even doctrinal challenges that say that you should separate yourself from those who are in obvious sense. We've got doctrinal challenges and we've got political challenges, political challenges. The church has got to make up his mind that it's got to get in the streets and that there should be no public policy debated in this country where people of faith don't have a say. So that certainly raises some very profound questions and challenges about this notion of the separation of church and state. I hail as does Reverend Saunders from Chicago and for some in this nation that has become emblematic of ground zero for many of the issues we're discussing. Reverend Sharp, you sit in Chicago, have headed up one of the most significant faith organizations, interfaith organizations, the Protestants for Common Good in terms of interdenominational and community renewal society now, which is merged. And so what lessons have you learned that you want to share and challenge us relative to the journey to Springfield and the State House and back to the pew? Well this is less than about the language of faith and how we reach out and fight against prohibition and bring people together because we are indeed all one and that's the gospel message. Since you've asked the question that way I'm going to talk a little bit about the practical ways in which as the heads of congregations, as pastors, we can engage our congregations in political action because indeed the faith, faith, church and state are one when it comes to reaching out to bring the gospel into real practice. The best example I've had recently is in the area of medical marijuana. We became the 20th state in Illinois to pass medical marijuana and we did it in collaboration which is how all of our work gets done. Very seldom do we do it all on our own. We work with the marijuana policy project who gave us such good information. We worked with lobbyists in Springfield. Let me talk a minute about what we did with individuals in congregations to be active. We were on the retail side of politics which means that as we were trying to convince people to pass this bill we only had to get five or six votes but it took three years to get those votes and here's how it happened. It happened at the level of retail politics and by that I mean we went to legislative offices and we did it with patience. We would take individuals who had multiple sclerosis, who had degenerative spinal disease, who had cancer and we would sit with legislators in their offices and they would simply tell their stories and what made the difference wasn't the facts and figures that we gave. We could have talked about and did about the hypocrisy of the federal government which says we can't allow medical marijuana to be medicine because it hasn't been approved by the FDA at the same time that those same branches of the federal government are denying the opportunity to do research so that it could be approved by the FDA. We didn't get very far by talking about the hypocrisy of the prescription drugs which indeed do kill people when cannabis can heal people and there's never been a known death for cannabis. Here's what we did and here's how you reach people. We gave them the space to see the human suffering that could be alleviated on a person-by-person basis by meeting these patients and that's really what made the difference. Over three years, six or seven representatives whom we didn't have in our camp came to say, you know, if cannabis were legal as medicine it would reach somebody like my father when he was dying of cancer and needed pain relief or a friend who had similar suffering. So what you have to do is not so much persuade on the facts but give people the opportunity in this case legislators to actually see what the opportunities are so that on an emotional level they can make the difference and where this comes into effect within congregations is that you can find ways to reach out with people in your congregations and patients together to make that case. You have to do it at the local level, you have to do it with individuals who are constituents but your church members are constituents of the politicians you want to affect. I'm kind of a policy wonk so I'm going to make one other policy statement that affects what you do in churches. You've got to find policies that are congruent with the gospel and certainly Jesus was a healer, Jesus preached forgiveness, he preached compassion and he preached healing and there is a policy now on the drug war which is getting more and more currency and it's called diversion. It's keeping people out of the criminal justice system even before they go to trial and not just before they are convicted it's at a pre-booking basis, it's called diversion, it's a new paradigm for drug policy, that's a policy that's congruent with the gospel and you can bring those policies to people in your congregations, you can talk about that congruent, you can say this policy is an expression of our faith and what we're doing now you asked about Chicago is taking the fact that the jail population is increasing in Cook County because of the mal-administration of justice. You have a chief justice who is not managing his case load so that people are sitting in jail for a long time before they even come to trial. You have a state's attorney who is not doing what's called felony review which is meaning that you look at cases carefully before you move to arrest, that happens in all cases except for low level drug offenses. We have a sheriff who could give administrative relief each year to up to 1,500 cases, you know how many he's giving this year, 136 thus far. So you have people sitting in jail for 25, for 50 days and then in many cases their cases are dismissed. Call that to the attention of your congregation and relate it to the fact that that's the dark side of justice and we can bring the good side of justice to the fighting the war on drugs by saying let's keep people out of the system before they even are booked not to mention before they're charged or not to mention before they're convicted. So find policies that match the gospel which is the gospel not a punishment but of compassion, forgiveness and healing and then mobilize the people in your congregation to fight that fight. So Dr. Saunders, we want to cast the vision for collective action as we move forward in the journey. So you sit as a pastor, you sit as the chair of the Drug Policy Alliance, you sit as our colleague. What has penetrated your spirit in this conversation? Do you want to ask a question of one of your brethren here? Could I preface it with a statement? Of course. I might have missed this before I got here. But one of the things that I have been and I think this is a question to you and the question is really built around the degree to which we wrestle and I mean I'm going to give some suggestions of how I mean wrestle with the text that we use as launching points for our messages in a way with intention of trying to see the text in a way that is other than what we have come to hear and to know all of our lives. Now to that end, let me just say two things because a number of you have talked about how you see and envisioning. One of the things that I have found very important is to, the language you heard me use yesterday, stretch my own thinking in a number of ways. One of which, and this could be what I heard alluded to a minute ago, when I was preparing to come here I spent more than 50% of my time making sure I looked at nothing but women's theology. Women's theology is very important for us today and if we as male clergy, since most of us sitting here are, are not taking advantage of this deep, deep, deep well of wisdom, I mean it's usually considered that Delores Williams kind of was a person at the, at the center of birthingness but I have found it to be very important as I've been challenged by others who deal with women's theology to appreciate the fact that the lens really does end up being different and in many ways helps us especially when we're trying to negotiate our way through the removal of the barriers that we as men very often bring to the table in terms of our way of thinking that very often lends itself to fragmentation and division. This is breast cancer awareness month. I made the mistake on Sunday of deciding to just take my sermon and spend my time talking about women's breasts. Mainly because I do think it really challenges us in a society where in many instances we end up being guilty of the framing of women, their role in the church, and their voices in ways that are stuck in sexist thinking. That's one thing. I'm just going to leave it right there. The second is how we see the people that we serve. I have been very blessed to have a number of well-trained young clergy to come through and to our congregation. One of the things that everybody knows if you come to be a part of our pastoral group is that your first job is always going to be to do nothing but sweep the floor and the vestibule. Sometimes that lasts for as long as two years. Mainly because there's something to be said and I had to deal with this myself. The reason why I do not use the title pastor, I do not use Reverend, and as much as I feel, the only doctor I have has been conferred by Kenny because I've told him a lot of times I'm not Dr. Sanders, but he keeps insisting on the fact that I will be. But I want to suggest to you that this business of service and understanding what that means in relationship to the people that we serve in our congregations. So we've spent more time with the young clergy that come dealing with helping people to understand how to do case management and trying to understand the psychosocial dynamics that are at work in our communities that are the major contributing factors to what translates into the behavior that we're sitting here talking about today. One of the texts, so I'll give you at least one biblical text and then I'll ask you to respond, is I have spent a lot of time in the last couple of years reframing the texts of the Garrison-Demone Act. I have become the champion of the Garrison-Demone Act because I think that the person we see in that text is a reflection of many, many, many, many of the people that we engage in the arena of service and leadership in our congregations. I have often said that if you look closely at that text you will realize that everything about that man speaks to who we are. I asked a dear friend of mine, Cynthia Turner Graham, a psychiatrist a few years ago and this was because of a moment that I was in the midst of when it seems like the stresses were overwhelming. I asked her, I said, Cynthia, how do you know, and I'll put it in layman's terms, I said, how do you know when you're about to lose your mind? Is there something that maybe happens that lets you know that you are really right there and you're getting ready to lose it? And I remember she responded by saying simply there was no simple explanation of, you know, kind of a one size fits all. But what she did tell me is that more than 50% of all the people in these United States of America every year have at least one episode in their lives that represents a certifiable mental health crisis. And a lot of it happens with us in church leadership. So this business of how we see those persons that come to us is most important. And we talk about compassion. To me my favorite statement of compassion in Jesus' teaching is when Jesus says, Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. I'm amazed by the fact that most often when we hear that text it's because there's a coffin in the front of the building. I'm thoroughly convinced that what Jesus was talking about is that somehow we developed that lens of life, the sensitivity, the perspective, the understanding and insight that makes us see people in a way that goes beyond the surface, that inner dynamic we were talking about a little while ago. And to see them in a way that allows us to be able to know that they really are who we are. I think the demons that we're referred to as legion, we carry them around with us every day. And in many instances are in denial about them and have figured out ways to frame those issues in relationship to others in a fashion that allows us to see ourselves as somehow being other than who they are when it's really about who we are. So I'm just suggesting that the real issue for me right now as far as drug policy and the related issues are concerned is learning how to see differently than we've seen before. Blessed are they that mourn, I hope all of us number amongst those who walk up and down the streets of our communities every day and find ourselves grieved by what we see. Because what we see is the exact same as people who are living in graveyard and people whose lives are amongst the tombstones and who are involved sometimes in self-destructive behavior and who are howling because that's the only way in which they can release and let go of the inner frustration and are going around naked because they're disgust with the systems and the standards of the world in which we live as such that their number one way perhaps of protesting is to walk around naked. We don't like to see naked folks because it means we have to see ourselves. So that's the question. And I guess I will end as I began, nudged by the womanist construct. And thinking about that, we know that the womanist construct would say that there are transactions which lead us to policy changes and then there are relationships which lead us to transformation. And so as we think about all that has been said here, I think we're really talking about from reform to transform and from transactions to relationships. And it's a relationship that is grounded in one's faith and a relationship that's grounded in looking in the mirror and being able to see ourselves in others, in the spirit of the South African construct of Ubuntu. I am because you are. And we are because we are. We thank you all for being so very attentive and being so very kind as we said here and took all the time. It was very difficult challenge to have nine respondents. I think we have one or two moments and I think I see a burning question. So come on up and ask your question. And take the privilege of that. Get courageous. So here I am. I'm going to get very courageous. My name is Caroline Stewart and I'm the President of the Board of a New Path, Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing and our wonderful campaign across the United States, Moms United Against the War on Drugs. And so I was thinking of you, Reverend, and you mentioned breast cancer and I have to just put this down. I've been in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSD for 25 years. Research and research and research tells us addictive illness people is a heritable biological illness. My son is in a program and is being called a sinner. I'm a Unitarian. I love Jesus, but I'm not a Christian. And my son wants to stay. He's a good man. He's suffering and there's contempt for him there because of a really bad attitude. And I just have to share this with you. Science would, a compassionate Christian approach with knowledge of science could keep my son in treatment. But if he's castigated as a sinner with contempt, he will not stay. And they're losing hundreds of people and our children are dying on the street. And so this is not a small matter. Some of you broached this. We can integrate science and faith, people. If we separate them, we're in big trouble. Please, I beg you, please integrate them. I just wanted to also mention it is also Domestic Violence Month. And so we have the dual responsibility of teaching men and boys that you don't rape, that you don't take stuff from a woman no matter how she's dressed, no matter how much, how intoxicated she is. Because we know what the paradigm is like in Ohio. Blame her, you know, for being intoxicated. But then crack crocodile tears about these boys in their so-called career. Teach young men and boys not to rape. Real quick, real quick before we go, two things I want to say. One is when I was playing there about the epiphany I got in the Ordinary People Society. The other side of that is that all the prophets in Jesus were concentrated on one particular people. And that was common people. So God gave me the synonymous word of common, which being ordinary. So I would like the Ordinary People Society to stand up. Okay, now my question was, now I'm going to show you something. Now those are the members that came with me, but I would like the Ordinary People Society to stand up. Okay, now you understand. With respect to women and women's theology, it is important for us to also understand within the context of the war on drugs that women now are going to prison because they do not have money for their bill. Okay, bill fund organizations have raised and emerged all over the country. But more women are going to prison because they are poor and they do not have money and they have been sucked into the prison system. And more prisons have been built all over the country for women. It is important for you to understand that. And it's a cumulative issue. In Massachusetts, they've just set aside $550 million to build a new prison for women. And women in Massachusetts are fighting against it. Know that the struggle is for women to go behind bars. And the more they go behind bars, the more you have the family breaking down because you have more black men, more men behind bars. I just had one quick thing to the lady that shared with us. Thank you for your courage. I lost my younger brother to a drug overdose last year. And we're talking about faith here in the language of faith, so I just want to share with you. I believe God meets us where we are. And that none of us are perfect when he comes into our life. And none of us are going to be perfect when we go home. That he's the one that makes up the difference. So, you know, that's what my feelings about your son are. And he shouldn't be turned away from any church that I've ever heard of. But thank you for sharing. In the sake of the drug policy, since we hear Jill, you land, you land. Hold us to this as pastors. Bill brought up something that's very interesting that you should remember as drug policy advocates and then drug policy advocates in here. And he brought up that Jesus made wine and it was good wine. There's also a scripture in the Bible said that we should also take a little wine for our stomach's sake. And the Bible wine speaks synonymously of all the other drugs. So watch us when we say you're wrong for using them. Thank you for a terrific panel. I've really enjoyed this a lot. I'm Chris Conrad. I was a former seminarian and I wrote a pamphlet called Marijuana in the Bible, which you've been distributing since 1990 and talking about a lot of these issues. And so I've been involved in a lot of conversations with people who call themselves Christians about this subject. And one of the things I've noticed over and over again is that I'm quoting Jesus to them and I'm going to quote Ecclesiastes back to me. And then I point out to them that Jesus actually when they asked him about stoning the adulterous, he told them don't go by Ecclesiastes. I have a new law which is to love one another. But it's just like, maybe you can explain to me how do we get past these people who are so hooked into Ecclesiastes judgment and throwing stones when Jesus clearly didn't preach that. And so I just don't know how to bridge that because I keep running to the same thing. They keep quoting Ecclesiastes back to me and they don't like to quote Jesus, I notice. And how do I advance that dialogue? I'll pass it on, but I'll just tell you this much. I don't think I have preached a sermon in the last 10 years that did not start from a gospel text because I've realized that there's something that we seem to be unwilling to deal with in Jesus. I want to second that. I think the difficulty here is understanding the extent to which Jesus interrupted the sanctimony and the judgment of the religious authority in his own time and place. I mean, yes, he died in custody. He died because he actually quoted the prophets against the religious leaders in cleansing the temple. And that was it. That was the fatal offense. I can do this very briefly, and I'm so glad this came up. And when I was fighting for medical marijuana, I went to visit a legislator who turns out went to Wheaton Bible College and was a member of a church in Wheaton. And he said, oh, those stories about people being helped are just anecdotes. And I said, how can you be against this bill? And he said, the law is a good teacher. And he was talking about the law that punishes people, that separates us through arrests. So I went back to my office and spoke to an esteemed colleague, Walter Boyd, who some of you may know. And he said, yes, Al, but the law is not the gospel. I am so sorry. I think there's another, yes, one sentence. There's another group that's coming in. I know we can't build a tabernacle and stay here, but surely it's been good for us to be in this place. Thank you all. Thank you.