Sarah Jobe

With rising public focus on the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States, scholars have increasingly produced articles and monographs addressing carceral issues from a wide variety of fields. This Special Issue, “Carceral Intersections: Christianity and the Crisis of Mass Incarceration,” addresses the relationship between various constructions of Christianity and the crisis of mass incarceration, especially as it plays out in the United States today. Mass incarceration is a complex issue which elicits and requires multiple and interdisciplinary engagements, and this issue is intentionally interdisciplinary and intersectional in its responses. We acknowledge that there are very different perspectives and wide-ranging types of engagement with prisons in the United States and this issue seeks to bring those various perspectives into one location for scholarly comparison and cross-pollination.While brief descriptions of the problems of mass incarceration are included here for unfamiliar readers, this issue presses beyond description to name how Christian theologies and practices are woven into the fabric of ongoing carceral systems, in both death-dealing and restorative ways. “Carceral Intersections” explores theologies, biblical interpretations, and past and present Christian practices that exacerbate, remediate, and arise from within the prison context. Not simply a study of mass incarceration and the theological disciplines, these articles prioritize prison as a site from which and a lens through which to interrogate Christian theology, interpretation, and practice.