God's Law and Order by Aaron Griffith

Author:Aaron Griffith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

Old-Time Prison Religion

Thrice weekly at Cook County Jail in Chicago, a red wagon bounced down the cellblock, filled with toiletry items to be passed out to indigent inmates. Pulling the wagon was the African American Baptist laywoman Consuella York. She was a striking sight, her tiny five-foot-two-inch frame cloaked in a black cassock, with a clerical collar and silver cross chain around her neck. Like many women ministers among prisoners in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, she went by the title “Mother.” Emblazoned on the side of York’s wagon, in bright white lettering, were exhortations: “Look up! See God! Help is on the way. I love you.” These words and the wagon that bore them were emblematic of her ministerial approach: deep concern for inmates combined with an old-fashioned, almost quaint, evangelistic method.6 This was a far cry from the new “scientific” state chaplaincy model, and while it shared similar conceptual emphases, it also obviously differed in scope from the work of York’s more famous evangelistic contemporaries, such as Billy Graham.

Evangelistic work in prisons did not disappear with advent of the state chaplaincy model in the years around World War II, but it did become less popular, despite the occasional visit from celebrities like Graham. When this work did occur, it typically took the form of small, informal missionary efforts. The Assemblies of God, which showcased an interest in prison work from its founding in 1914, was one exception. The denomination employed a national prison chaplain and its publications regularly promoted prison mission trips and literature distribution. Yet Assemblies prison work, though it foreshadowed future trends, still was highly localized.7

York offers an example of the most common form of evangelical prison ministry that did occur around midcentury. She displayed certain qualities of Holiness evangelists from fifty years earlier, but her work was thrown in sharp relief in the midst of the new dominant chaplaincy paradigm. York began evangelistic work at Cook County Jail in 1952, during her final year at the Chicago Baptist Institute. York had heard from Mother Elizabeth Oglesby of a need for ministers at the jail and accompanied her to the facility to observe. While praying in the jail, York was moved by the sight of men looking back at her through the bars. She felt the Lord speaking to her: “Supposing one of those were your sons fifteen years from now. How would you feel?” From that moment on York felt a maternal connection to prisoners and a strong desire to reach them with the message of salvation.8

Several aspects of York’s work are illustrative. First, she was not from the mainstream Protestant clergy culture of the day, in either its liberal or its conservative form. As a woman, York faced opposition to her sense of calling to ministry as she attended the Chicago Baptist Institute. Though she strongly believed she had a call from the Lord to preach, she regularly had to answer to skeptical denominational officials for challenging the male ministerial status quo. She took a position as an associate minister at a small Chicago church, but the hostility remained.

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