Down in the Chapel: Religious Life in an American Prison

A bold and provocative interpretation of one of the most religiously vibrant places in America--a state penitentiary

Baraka, Al, Teddy, and Sayyid--four black men from South Philadelphia, two Christian and two Muslim--are serving life sentences at Pennsylvania's maximum-security Graterford Prison. All of them work in Graterford's chapel, a place that is at once a sanctuary for religious contemplation and an arena for disputing the workings of God and man. Day in, day out, everything is, in its twisted way, rather ordinary. And then one of them disappears.

Down in the Chapel tells the story of one week at Graterford Prison. We learn how the men at Graterford pass their time, care for themselves, and commune with their makers. We observe a variety of Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, and others, at prayer and in study and song. And we listen in as an interloping scholar of religion tries to make sense of it all.

When prisoners turn to God, they are often scorned as con artists who fake their piety, or pitied as wretches who cling to faith because faith is all they have left. Joshua Dubler goes beyond these stereotypes to show the religious life of a prison in all its complexity. One part prison procedural, one part philosophical investigation, Down in the Chapel explores the many uses prisoners make of their religions and weighs the circumstances that make these uses possible. Gritty and visceral, meditative and searching, it is an essential study of American religion in the age of mass incarceration.

Author: Joshua Dubler
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 08/13/2013
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.50w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780374120702

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 06/01/2013 pg. 125
Booklist 06/01/2013 pg. 6
Publishers Weekly 06/10/2013
Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2013
Shelf Awareness 08/16/2013
Christianity Today 09/01/2013 pg. 82
Books & Culture 03/01/2014 pg. 16
Christian Century 03/05/2014 pg. 36

About the Author

Joshua Dubler is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Rochester and the coauthor of Bang! Thud: World Spirit from a Texas School Book Depository. He has also taught at Haverford College, Columbia University, and Villanova University's program at Graterford Prison.