Southwestern Seminary Launches Classes in Federal Prison
By Dr. Mark Denison
One of the largest seminaries in the world has gone where no seminary has gone before – to prison. Offering a fully accredited Bachelor of Science degree in Biblical Studies, the seminary has graduated two classes in its first six years. Graduates commit to being “field ministers” who work in small teams with fellow inmates to minister to other inmates. State lawmakers are hoping these seminarians will help reduce recidivism and violence in the state’s prisons.
Inmates in white uniforms carrying Bibles file into a classroom at the maximum security Darrington Unit near Houston, some with gang tattoos, eager to study Christian theology and the holy scriptures. They access the seminary library online at the prison computer lab, as they work toward the completion of a four-year academic program.
With 180 students enrolled, Southwestern is changing the world in its darkest corners as she turns prison into chapel and death sentences into life-giving redemption. With 147,000 prisoners, Texas has the nation’s largest prison population.
At Darrington, guards summon seminarians to sit with suicidal inmates. They also volunteer as “tier walkers,” counseling hardened gang members housed on the prison’s tiers in solitary confinement, some for years for what they call “supreme violence.”
Mark Staley, 34, is a Southwestern student in the prison. Serving a 60-year term for fatally shooting a man outside a San Antonio bar, Staley says, “We’re in the trenches, places other people don’t want to go.”
Another seminary inmate, Troup Foster, says, “People would see my racist tattoos and say, ‘Look who they’re letting in the Bible College!’ I have to show through my walk that I’m not that person anymore. I was looking for purpose to my life, because most likely I’m going to die here. I have found that hope.”
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary continues to do kingdom work on the cutting edge. B.H. Carroll, who founded the seminary in 1908, would be proud. With a stated purpose of “equipping men and women with a strong theological foundation to fulfill God’s calling on their lives,” the seminary is fulfilling the mission for which she was created 109 years ago – in ways that previous generations could have only dreamed of.
For more information on Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, visit their website at swbts.edu.