Conger

The Diocese of Florida has welcomed an independent report on the state’s faith and character-based prisons that found that prison ministry is an effective tool in turning around the lives of inmates.

The Urban Institute’s report released Oct. 19 stated Florida’s Faith and Character-Based Institution (FCBI) program resulted in lower rates of inmate recidivism and better adjustment to civilian life.

Faith-based prisons were “absolutely a great thing,” the Rt. Rev. Samuel Johnson Howard, Bishop of Florida, told The Living Church. The Urban Institute report confirms all of the “anecdotal evidence we have that prison ministry is effective in reducing recidivism and helps improve inmate behavior.”

Six months after leaving North Florida’s Lawtey Prison and its volunteer-led rehabilitation programs, none of the 189 inmates surveyed were back behind bars, whereas 2.1 percent of a comparison group had re-offended.

The report, titled “Evaluation of Florida’s Faith and Character-Based Institutions,” noted that more research needed to be done, as a similar study of women participants in the faith-based program found no significant difference in recidivism in relation to those who did not participate in the program.

“Our findings are strictly preliminary, but they suggest that inmates throughout the Florida prison system could benefit from self-betterment programs that are volunteer run and virtually budget neutral,” said Nancy La Vigne, the study’s lead author.

The report found that the FCBI program improved inmate behavior, prepared inmates for successful re-entry into society, promoted family reunification and job prospects for released prisoners, and improved the “prison environment for inmates, volunteers, and staff.”

The voluntary program FCBI program includes worship and scriptural study, personal relationship building through mentoring and small-group activities, and character development programs on parenting and anger management. The programs are funded and operated by volunteers.

Bishop Howard said Prison Ministry was a priority for the Diocese of Florida. “There are 30,000 inmates in this diocese, and 30,000 Episcopalians,” he said.

Three priests — two men and one woman — had been “ordained for work in the prisons” Bishop Howard noted, and a fourth would be ordained in December.

The interdenominational Kairos Ministries is at work in half of North Florida’s prisons, Bishop Howard said, and “day in and day out, there is an Episcopal presence in a third of our prisons.” Last year the diocese inaugurated “Camp St. Elizabeth,” a residential summer program where the children of inmates received “one-on-one adult supervision.”

Bishop Howard said his experiences as an assistant U.S. attorney and criminal lawyer before he entered the ministry had taught him that prison outreach was vital both to the spiritual health of inmates and to society.

Published in The Living Church.

Parish defections and litigation are continuing to mount in the United States, with five parishes quitting the Episcopal Church last month for oversight from Nigerian and Ugandan bishops.

Members of the Diocese of Colorado’s largest parish ratified the March decision by their rector the Rev. Donald Armstrong, and the vestry to join CANA.

On May 26 the Grace & St Stephen’s Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado announced that 370 of the parishes 822 members had caste ballots in the secession referendum, with 348 voting to leave and 22 to stay. The Diocese has condemned the vote, saying it was illegal and non-binding, arguing that while individuals may leave the Episcopal Church, congregations may not.

The congregation which claimed over 1500 communicants before the conflict between the parish and diocese reached a head in March, has divided with approximately three quarters of the worshippers loyal to the parish leadership and a quarter loyal to the diocese—meeting in a chapel of nearby Colorado College under the cure of an assistant priest of the parish who did not support the secession.

Litigation over the £9 million property between the parish and diocese is on-going.

CANA announced last week that three other US congregations had quit the Episcopal Church to join the Nigerian missionary district led by Bishop Martyn Minns. One of the Connecticut 6 parishes—a group of traditionalist parishes involved in a long-running dispute with diocesan Bishop Andrew Smith, quit the diocese on May 29.

Founded in 1754, before the creation of the Diocese of Connecticut, Trinity Church in Bristol will seek to retain its property, Bishop Minns said, while moving under Nigerian oversight.

Members of Holy Trinity Church in Garland, Texas, in the Diocese of Dallas, have withdrawn from the Episcopal Church, forming Holy Trinity Anglican Church. In Florida the parishioners and vicar of St. Cyprians Episcopal Church, a predominantly African-American congregation, have quit the diocese to form Christ the King Anglican Church in St. Augustine, led by their former priest in charge, the Rev. David Allert.

The parish at the center of the Panel of Reference’s report on the Diocese of Florida has also been forced out of its church buildings following a court order from a Florida judge.

Last month a court ordered the secessionist clergy and members of the Church of the Redeemer in Jacksonville led by the Rev. Neil Lebhar to vacate their property, turning it over to the control of Florida Bishop John Howard. Approximately 90 percent of the congregation has followed Mr. Lebhar, with only 10 families remaining at Redeemer under the supervision of a vicar appointed by the Diocese.

The Rt. Rev. Samuel Johnson Howard, Bishop of Florida, has rejected a “good neighbor” episcopal ministry plan proposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Panel of Reference. The report, which required almost two years of “hard and painstaking work,” was in response to an appeal made by the rector and vestry of Church of the Redeemer in Jacksonville.

The report, which was released to the public on March 16, called for Church of the Redeemer to return to the oversight of Bishop Howard and to active participation in the fiscal and corporate life of the diocese. In return, Bishop Howard was asked to lift canonical sanctions against the clergy, end litigation, and permit alternate episcopal oversight for the parish from a neighboring Episcopal bishop acceptable to both the parish and the diocese.

Read it all in The Living Church.