I strongly suspect there is far more to the story that meets the eye, and it was in fact a flawed reporter (perhaps who was rushed to throw together a follow-up report on ‘that chaplain who was complaining about prisoner’s religion’) that is the “weak reed” and whom I blame for being largely responsible for the confusion in our ability to analyze this completely issue here.

If discerned by perfectly objective observers. Evidently real-life chaplains do not fit that description.

Who said prison chaplains were perfect, or perfectly objective? But they do see what most of us can’t, and discern what can be done to make it better. I hope we see a follow-up column on this issue in a few months telling us what’s happened.

This is a rather obvious case in which gaming can be recognized and minimized.

If discerned by perfectly objective observers. Evidently real-life chaplains do not fit that description.

You should give up the notion that you can ever stop inmates from gaming the system. It’s endemic to corrections.

I’ll take your word for it that it’s endemic to the system, but I would never urge anyone to “give up” on anything of value, including the better management of prisoners. This is a rather obvious case in which gaming can be recognized and minimized.

[…T]he warden surely has every right to not allow prisoners access to items that can be used as weapons or pose a danger to security - other prisoners and the guards.

Absolutely. I gave an example of that regarding Wiccan ritual knives and candles.

Does the warden have the added discretion to know when the prisoner is gaming the system and have the right and authority to stop it?

You should give up the notion that you can ever stop inmates from gaming the system. It’s endemic to corrections.

Sure, we should certainly respect anyone’s right to “mix-and-match” religious beliefs and have complete freedom to do so. As noted above, there are now Episcopal Muslims, and we’ve previously discussed Episcopalian/Druidic priests.

But the issue here isn’t denying prisoners the right to think and pray as they please. Surely we’re all for that, as was Fr. Suss. As I said before, I don’t think Suss was upset that the prisoners were not all Catholics, or that the Catholics weren’t practicing the faith the right way (although surely he felt the latter, as most American priests must feel about their FREE parisioners.)

The problem here - which goes beyond, somewhat, what Suss initialy felt or didn’t feel about “made-up” religions in a philosophical sense, as expressed in the story - is that the warden surely has every right to not allow prisoners access to items that can be used as weapons or pose a danger to security - other prisoners and the guards.

For example, the accommodation of prisoner’s reasonable requests for prayer books, prayer rugs, icons, etc. certainly is the intention of the court ruling, and that’s all well and good.

But the unanswered question in these articles is this: Does the warden have the added discretion to know when the prisoner is gaming the system and have the right and authority to stop it? Such as when a prisoner who identifies himself as a Catholic one week all of a sudden sees that the Santeria believer in another cell got some neat stuff that he didn’t get, and “amends” his faith to include them, too. That’s what we mean by gaming the system.

This story fails the test of depth because it does not deal with that underlying issue, except in a very vague way, leaving us instead dealing with the frustrations of a priest who is upset that people are mixing religions (and thus, the implication of bigotry where none probably exists) rather than with the story BEYOND the initial story: the use and possible abuse of the system by prisoners.

No, it’s clear that he just doesn’t want to be required to participate in it.

If you mean Fr Suss, the problem was that as chaplain he was the gatekeeper for such requests, and turned his disinclination into de facto policy.

Makes one suspect that the real issue is the old-line chaplains’ discomfort with the messiness of religious freedom.

No, it’s clear that he just doesn’t want to be required to participate in it. Outside the prison, he would not be required by the state to be part of somebody’s messy religion.

I think we just see the basic nature of religion differently. You see a religion as something a person or group makes themselves. I see a religion as something that exists which a person accepts. I think that’s the same conflict that’s going on in the story. The prison treats religion as something prisoners can create themselves while Fr. Suss is arguing that it’s the religion not the individual that says who’s a member and who’s not.

Anyone, incarcerated or not, can believe any combination of religions they want. I’m not arguing that prisoners can’t have their own convictions. But someone outside of prison can’t belong to a Religion-A/Religion-B religious group if that group doesn’t exist and I don’t think that prisoners should be able to either.

Let’s put it it this way. If the prison wants to make a big list of approved religious articles from all different faiths and let prisoners pick what they want from that list(or pick up to X number of items) without asking prisoners what religion they are that’s fine with me. My objection is to treating religion like its on the same level as rooting for your favorite sports team.

The part that seems odd is that you can apparently belong to made up religions such as the ones on in the article, “Protestant/Catholic, Jewish Orthodox/Seventh-day Adventist, Buddhist/Protestant/Sikh, Asatru/Catholic.” These are not religions. Where is a Protestant/Catholic church or a Jewish Orthodox/Seventh-day Adventist synagogue? If one of these groups existed and were on the prison’s list of religions with a set group of religious articles associated with it, then go nuts. But one inmate making up his own beliefs does not constitute a religion.

Jason Pitzl-Waters has replied to this very well, so I can keep this short. People outside of prison are free to mix and match in this way, so people inside prison must be free to do so, too. As on the outside, the existence of an institution to harbor that mixed path is unnecessary.

The real strain the prison system can cite in objecting to multi-path inmates is that such inmates can ask for a rosary and a prayer rug, or some such combo. Makes one suspect that the real issue is the old-line chaplains’ discomfort with the messiness of religious freedom. If the prison system wanted to make a case against multiple paths it should, eg, investigate whether multi-path inmates have a higher recidivism rate or a higher rate of violence while incarcerated.

It is the nature of freedom. It’s messy, it’s often uncomfortable, and it usually offends at least some percentage of the population.

When considering religious freedom in prisons, once you open the door to real diversity, you also open the door to oddities, strangeness, and to many religious authorities, heresy and blasphemy. This was bound to happen once the courts, and legislators, decided that prisoners have many of the same fundamental religious rights as free men and women. It should surprise no-one that in a societal pressure-cooker like prison that odd and unusual ideas about faith would arise.

Allowing multi-faith adherence, I’m guessing, isn’t so much about that Asatru fellow getting Catholic communion, as it is about him tailoring his religious life to some internal vision. Perhaps one that includes a re-appropriated rosary and other Christian-oriented supplies. In essence we are allowing prisoners to create new religions within prison. In fact, in a generation or two I wouldn’t be surprised if we see new syncretic “hybrid” faiths found only within prisons. Will we see messianic forms of Paganism? Christ-centered faiths that look and act like Sikhs? Meditative mystic Judaism? It is certainly possible, since some faiths like that exist in the “free” world already.

The challenge, outside of concerns about “gaming” the system, is how to handle the marriage of the religious freedoms associated with the “outside world”, with the unique atmosphere of punishment (and one hopes, rehabilitation) inside of prison. Getting caught up in what a Catholic priest or Jewish rabbi will be “forced” or “pressured” to do is, in my opinion, missing the point, and targeting the wrong issue.

Like I said earlier, a real in-depth examination is needed here. One that interviews these prisoners, those that minister to them, and why they feel called to take advantage of these new rules.

He was arrested during World War I for anti-war activities, and filled out a form at the jail. The officer, noting that Russell had defined his religious affiliation as “Agnostic” commented: “Ah yes; we all worship Him in our own way, don’t we.” This comment allegedly “kept [Russell] smiling through his first few days of incarceration.”