Correctional facilities must grapple with unprecedented levels of overcrowding, violence, and suicide, as well as rampant mental illness among inmates. The tightening of budgets and the resulting loss of vocational, educational, and treatment programs pose additional difficulties. In the midst of these struggles, faith-based approaches, led by faith-motivated volunteers and prisoners, are providing the most innovative, holistic, and effective programs available in correctional facilities today.

It’s hard to overstate the current challenges facing the American prison system. Rampant violence, extremely high levels of offender recidivism, mounting taxpayer cost, and difficulty retaining employees, typify recent headlines from the world of American “corrections.” But prisons do little to meaningfully correct offenders’ past transgressions, nor do they deter future offending.
Many American prisons have become so violent that they comprise what Cambridge University prison scholar Alison Liebling describes as “failed state” institutions. In “failed state” institutions, even the most basic levels of safety and control are not provided by authorities. For an example, look no further than the New York Times, which recently reported on the horrifying conditions at Rikers Island, where whole sections of the prison are run by detainees, who fashion make-shift weapons out of the complex’s crumbling buildings. Staff members and detainees have been beaten and stabbed. One detainee reports having been denied food for two days by the gang that controls his unit. Thirteen people have died at Rikers so far this year.

These institutions not only cause more human damage than they prevent, they produce emotionally crippled citizens and elevate the likelihood of reoffending. New research from the nonpartisan Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., moreover, highlights the likelihood of “mass incarceration” becoming a permanent feature of American society.
In the midst of these failures, a new, more successful model of correctional programming is quietly taking hold in the United States. The model draws on innovative work inside some of America’s largest and most violent prison environments. These new approaches are being developed primarily at maximum-security prisons, which have long been under-resourced until lethal violence has boiled over. In the face of this reality, prison administrators have become increasingly open to “outsourcing” rehabilitation programming to religious volunteers. As a result, in an increasingly large number of prisons, religious programming is now the dominant source of inmate rehabilitation.
An Interracial, Ecumenical, Personal Church
For many inmates, religious practice not only provides a momentary escape from prison life. It does something deeper and much more foundational: it helps them redefine and reclaim their lives.
Over the past ten years, as we conducted the research described in our new book, we have had the distinct privilege of sitting with men in prison as they engaged in religious worship. Many of these experiences have taken place in America’s largest maximum-security prisons, including Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, Sing Sing (NY), Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman (MS), Darrington Unit Correctional Institution (TX), and Lawtey Correctional Institution (FL), among several others. We have been struck by the reverence, energy, and seriousness with which inmates cultivate a practice of faith.
Perhaps the most striking feature of “church in prison” is the robustly interracial character of the “congregation.” As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out in 1960, American religious practice is nothing if not racially segregated. By necessity, religious worship in prison, however, is both racially integrated and remarkably ecumenical. To witness the sign of the cross and hear a call-and-response during one and the same ceremony—sometimes even from the same practitioner—is not uncommon. For long-time inmate religionists, cross-fertilization of worship becomes a normalized practice, with inmate lifers often referring to themselves as “Bapticostal,” “Catholipalean,” or as one Florida inmate put it, “agnosti-pizza” (“I just come for the pizza”).
Religion in prison is characterized by a relaxed and non-hierarchical openness to various forms of religious practice in a doctrinally neutral space. It is first and foremost preoccupied with the meeting of immediate physical and spiritual needs. Prisoner prayer groups, Bible studies, outside church volunteer groups, yoga practitioners, Buddhist meditation leaders, and many others all combine to create a remarkably elaborate menu of religious options for prisoners. Diverse practitioners and non-believers are welcomed by faithful inmates, who understand themselves to be imperfect seekers. Perfectionism in faith and the performative gestures that often accompany corporate worship are simply not present in prison. By definition, everyone there has fallen.

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The best part of the book is that, like Puritan theology itself, ‘Following God Fully’ is not purely academic, but encourages reflection and action. Coming to the end of the book, I gained a refreshed wonder at the power of God’s Word to bring light and love into whole swaths of society. I am also full of thankfulness for how he fulfills his promise to supply his church with gifts to protect it and bring it to full maturity (Eph 4:11-13). I wonder how our modern churches would be more blessed if pastors, writers (including myself), and gospel workers were gripped by the centrality of Christ in the Bible.

This book is for those who have only heard of the Puritans as a movement or a vague idea, and can’t name a single person from that time. William Perkins… who?
It’s for those who belong to most major Protestant denominations in Australia, as beneficiaries of the Puritans’ reforming work.
It’s for those who want refreshing, encouraging and real-life examples of how a deep knowledge of God’s Word can lead to inflamed devotions for the Lord Jesus, rather than mere games for the intelligentsia and ‘theological ping-pong’ (148).
In Following God Fully, Joel Beeke and Michael Reeves achieve an admirable feat by putting together a short, informative and edifying book that would benefit people on both ends of the Puritan knowledge spectrum.
The ‘Who’ and ‘What’ of Puritanism
The Puritans were pastors and theologians who existed roughly 150 years following the Reformation, between approximately 1550 and 1700 AD. In many ways, they were a group of fervent-hearted gospel workers raised ‘for such a time as this’ (Est 4:14); by the time of their existence, the church was largely biblically illiterate and hungry for God’s Word:
The people of Europe had been without a Bible that they could read in their native tongue for approximately a thousand years. To be able to read God’s own words, and to see in them such good news that God saves sinners… entirely by his own grace, was like glorious sunshine bursting into the dark, grey world of religious guilt and human misery. (4)
The Puritans heralded this good news and were especially well-equipped to nourish the church back to life. They were largely ‘highly learned… well-trained in linguistics, and well-educated in biblical, systematic, and historical theology’ (148).
Beyond knowledge and skills, they were also men whose hearts and consciences were on fire for God, his Word and his church. They saw Christ in every line of the Bible and sought to expound him as clearly as possible. They fed and shepherded their flocks with tenderness and care, nourishing them with—to their delight—lengthy and scripturally rich sermons.
In short, the Puritans were gifts from God to the churches in old England, producing such a ‘movement of… intense, comprehensive pursuit of holiness [that lasted] for 150 years’ (9), not replicated even until now.
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The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689) dedicates a whole chapter to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. It affirms the biblical truth that those whom God saves, He keeps, not merely out of hell and for heaven, but He keeps them in the way of faith. He keeps them repenting, believing, and following Christ.

Several years ago a fellow pastor who served with me at Grace Baptist Church told me how he came to study the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints as a new believer. Shortly after he was converted he became involved in his church’s evangelism efforts, eager to be a part of the work of making disciples.
Employing the methods that he had been taught, he noticed that a large percentage of the people who made professions of faith seemed to have no interest in the things of the Lord. Even most of those who agreed to be baptized drifted away from participation in church life after a few months.
When my friend asked his pastor about this phenomenon the answer that he received startled him. “Some Christians start backsliding as soon as they are converted.”
I was reminded of his story recently when I came across comments David Miller made years ago while preaching from Acts 2:42. That verse says, “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (KJV).
In his sermon, David explained what the phrase, “continued steadfastly,” meant for those new converts:
I don’t have any background in the biblical languages, and I’m not a scholar, but I do have a homespun definition of what that phrase means. I believe it means they did not backslide right off. They didn’t join the church one Sunday morning during the heat of the revival service and have company come in that afternoon and not be able to make it out to the evening worship service. You’ve encountered the person who comes to church one Sunday and, the next Sunday, they had to go out of town in their new car ten miles to visit with Granny out in the country and she needed help with the noon meal and they couldn’t attend church out there. You know the ones. They stay visiting much longer than they intended and by the time they got home late that Sunday afternoon, about 2:30, they were so worn and weary, they couldn’t make it back to the worship service that evening. And the following Wednesday, they had so looked forward to the mid-week Bible study and prayer time, but the little ten-year-old boy came home with a high temperature of 98.7 and they didn’t think he ought to be out in the night air. Brother, unlike these people, the folks converted in Acts just didn’t backslide right off.
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