biggest private prison corp. holds hands with Xian fundies

[donsu]

http://www.alternet.org/rights/21457/


Beyond the God Pod

-snip-

Officially this is the Life Principles Community/Crossings Program. It's a program officials consider the real "success story" within the confines of NMWCF. As a housing pod, Crossings has been around for four years with the enthusiastic support of the prison administration and Chaplain Shirley Compton. More recently, CCA picked Crossings as one of eight sites nationwide to pioneer a new partnership with a fundamentalist Christian ministry named the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP).

Although it is not the only religious activity at the prison it is, by far, the most institutionalized and structured. In many ways, it also is the most problematic from a First Amendment point of view. It is in this unit that the blurring of the line between church and state is most evident, harkening a new turn in corrections toward Christian-based programming that has begun to truly influence (or, depending on one's perspective, to infiltrate) the nation's prisons.

-snip-

In fact, two adult prisons in the Florida corrections system are now entirely faith-based, while Florida's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has launched the nation's first Faith and Community Based Delinquency Treatment Initiative. (Funding from the federal government has placed such an emphasis on the faith element of juvenile programming that many previously secular treatment and residential facilities for youth have made the decision in the past year to center their programs on "faith" in order to keep receiving money.)

-snip-

"Have you received Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?," asks one of the sections of the various IBLP workbooks given to prisoners. "The first function of faith is to believe in Christ for salvation," reads another section. "The Holy Spirit then takes up residence in your spirit and confirms that you are a Christian ... Disobeying the promptings of the Holy Spirit will cause Him to be grieved and will quench His power in your life."
-snip-
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america, the country that tortures

[JDPriestly]

1. Is this brainwashing or what?

[AllegroRondo]

2. Just great

go bankrupt, go to debtor's prison, come out a fundie.

[FreedomAngel82]

3. Yep

But if you tell the right that there's a thing called church and state they'd happily tell you it's a myth and there's no such thing. :argh:

[Roland99]

4. Here's your answer....the Almighty....DOLLAR

The text is, despite what CCA's officials say, clearly intended to convert people to a particularly fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity that revolves around a man named Bill Gothard.

Bill Gothard, the 71-year-old unmarried real estate mogul at the head of the Illinois-based IBLP, has been in the business of American evangelism since 1964. Originally named the Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts, IBLP officially changed its name in 1990. All totaled, IBLP boasts that at least 2.5 million people have attended IBLP's seminars and ministries in the U.S. and many other countries, including Russia, Mongolia, Romania and Taiwan.