{"id":2271,"date":"2021-10-05T22:12:20","date_gmt":"2021-10-05T22:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/michelle-clifton-soderstrom-an-evangelical-professor-and-her-students-inside-a-maximum-security-prison\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T16:39:43","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T16:39:43","slug":"michelle-clifton-soderstrom-an-evangelical-professor-and-her-students-inside-a-maximum-security-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/michelle-clifton-soderstrom-an-evangelical-professor-and-her-students-inside-a-maximum-security-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom: An Evangelical Professor And Her Students Inside A Maximum Security Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--article-hero \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--article-hero\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n<div class=\"inner-wrapper\">\n          \n<div class=\"f--field f--image\">\n\n    \n    \n    \n    \n    \n    \n              \n      <img\n                            data-src=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/105\/2021\/10\/90-1-768x432.jpeg\"\n          data-srcset=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/105\/2021\/10\/90-1-1280x720.jpeg 1280w,https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/105\/2021\/10\/90-1-768x432.jpeg 768w\"          data-sizes=\"(min-width:1200px) 75vw, (min-width:768px) 83vw, 100vw\"          class=\"lazyload\"\n        \n                  alt=\"woman smiling in front of mural\"\n        \n        \n                                      \/>\n\n    \n    \n  \n  \n\n<\/div>\n  \n  \n  <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n    \n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--page-title\">\n\n    \n  <h1>Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom: An Evangelical Professor And Her Students Inside A Maximum Security Prison<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n    \n    \n          <strong class=\"author-field\"><span >By<\/span>Monique Parsons<\/strong>\n    \n          <span class=\"post-date-field\">October 5, 2021<\/span>\n      <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--social-share \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--social-share\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n  <div class=\"content-wrapper\">\n    <span class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list\" style=\"line-height: 32px;\">\n      <span class=\"title\">\n        Share\n      <\/span>\n                        <a class=\"a2a_button_copy_link\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"\/#copy_link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"Link\">\n            <span class=\"a2a_svg a2a_s__default a2a_s_copy_link\">\n              <svg height=\"19\" viewBox=\"0 0 19 19\" width=\"19\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\"><path d=\"m7.43475275 9.52380952-2.17490843 2.26076008c-1.08745421 1.058837-1.68841575 2.518315-1.68841575 4.0350275 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xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\"><path d=\"m8.14285714 9.42857143c-.17142857 0-.34285714 0-.51428571.08571428l7.28571427 6.34285719c.3428572.2571428.6857143.2571428.9428572 0l7.2857142-6.34285719c-.0857142-.08571428-.2571428-.08571428-.4285714-.08571428zm-1.28571428 1.11428567v.1714286 8.5714286c0 .6857143.6 1.2857143 1.28571428 1.2857143h14.57142856c.6857143 0 1.2857143-.6 1.2857143-1.2857143v-8.5714286c0-.0857143 0-.0857143 0-.1714286l-7.2 6.3428572c-.7714286.6857143-1.8857143.6857143-2.6571429 0z\" fill-rule=\"evenodd\" transform=\"translate(-6 -9)\"\/><\/svg>\n            <\/span>\n            <span class=\"a2a_label visually-hidden\">Email<\/span>\n          <\/a>\n                  <\/span>\n  <\/div>\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n \n\n\n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--rich-text \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--rich-text\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n      \n<div class=\"f--field f--wysiwyg\">\n\n    \n  <p><em>This radio documentary was originally produced by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/spiritualedge.org\/s1-sacred-steps\/inside-an-illinois-maximum-security-prison-with-a-theology-professor-and-her-students\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">KALW&#8217;s The Spiritual Edge<\/a>, with the support of CRCC\u2019s global project on\u00a0<a href=\"\/topic\/engaged-spirituality\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">engaged spirituality<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"width: 100%;max-width: 660px;overflow: hidden;background: transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/sacred-steps-inside-an-illinois-maximum-security\/id1565909025?i=1000536629127\" height=\"175\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>To hear this and other profiles, subscribe to The Spiritual Edge podcast in your favorite podcasting app, including <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-spiritual-edge-promo\/id1565909025?i=1000520076383\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/1WZVzWzzPwm7zmecZ5dy1t\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Spotify<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/feed\/aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVzcGlyaXR1YWxlZGdlLmxpYnN5bi5jb20vcnNz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google Podcasts<\/a>. Find out more on <a href=\"https:\/\/spiritualedge.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Spiritual Edge website.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom grew up poor, completed college and graduate school, got a great job at a Christian university in Chicago and a cabin in the Michigan woods. As many evangelical Christians would, she thanks Jesus for her good fortune. But when Michelle searches the Bible, she doesn\u2019t go straight to the Jesus parts for inspiration. She says she finds it in \u201cthe stories of failure. Which are all over Scripture, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Take King David\u2019s failures, for example. Beyond famously slaying Goliath, David messed up a lot, committed adultery, ordered assassinations and ignored God. Michelle looks beyond his example to \u201cthe failure in the garden, or the failures of society, wherever you see those, to be able to read those stories and know that the whole story is one of healing, restoration, reconciliation, redemption, all of that, and when you put those two things together you have the safety to then to fail yourself and know you\u2019re going to be picked up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Michelle is in her early fifties. She\u2019s got unfussy, long brown hair, dresses a bit like she\u2019s ready for a hike, and looks you in the eye when she talks. When she walks across the campus at North Park University, where she teaches theology and ethics, a lot of people say, \u201cHi\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>With biblical stories of failure on her mind, Michelle did something a few years ago that no one at her seminary, or in her state, had done. She took those stories straight to men in a place that symbolizes their failure and society\u2019s: Stateville Correctional Center. Michelle started Illinois\u2019 first master\u2019s degree program inside a maximum security prison.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDefinitely when we first went in,\u201d Michelle says, \u201ca lot of them were like, \u2018What is this white woman doing in here? What does she want?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<p>She wants the men inside Stateville to get an education. She wants some of those men to get out. And she wants to abolish, or at least profoundly reform, an American prison system she sees as deeply unjust.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe public wants higher sentences because they\u2019re scared of violence and crime. But yet,\u201d she adds, \u201cit\u2019s not based on real statistics and probability, so that\u2019s part of our work, is changing that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Michelle believes a lot of that change involves showing up and listening.<\/p>\n<p>Before she started going to the prison, Michelle taught a course on mass incarceration at North Park Seminary. One of her students there, a young Black man, really challenged her. He urged her to do more than talk, she recalls. \u201cBasically he said, \u2018Michelle, you teach all this great stuff, how are you really living this?\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n<p>In 2010, he inspired her to ask the school for a semester off, a sabbatical, and she made a plan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI started thinking, okay, who doesn\u2019t have access to theological education?\u201d Michelle says. \u201cI thought: prisons. Prisons lock up disproportionately people of color, people who have been through trauma, people who come from low income, economically distressed neighborhoods, victims of domestic abuse and violence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She made the first of many drives west from her house in Chicago, across the Des Plaines River to a notorious maximum security lockup in the middle of 2,000 acres of corn fields and meadow, down a wide driveway lined with trees. At the end of that road, Stateville looks stuck in time: tall iron gates; a red brick guard house almost a century old, the words \u201cIllinois State Penitentiary\u201d carved in stone above the door. Beyond the gatehouse runs a 30-foot wall stained with decades of mud and rust. Beyond that: 2,000 men.<\/p>\n<p>Michelle walked through metal detectors and checkpoints and gate after gate after gate. She wound up in a classroom with men serving life sentences. In a course called \u201cWomen in the Bible,\u201d she saw them grapple with Scripture and with themselves. In those Bible stories about Sarah, Rachel, and Mary, they saw their own sisters and mothers, girlfriends and wives.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was so moved by some of their stories, and the ways they were owning how they had dehumanized women in their life and how they had seen that modeled in their homes and yet they weren\u2019t able to break those cycles,\u201d Michelle says.<\/p>\n<p>Discussing the Bible behind bars felt powerful to her \u2014 and to her students.<\/p>\n<p>Benny Rios says she\u2019s one of the best teachers he\u2019d ever had.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a sense of love,\u201d he says during a phone call from Stateville. \u201cThere\u2019s a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. Once you\u2019re done with the program, it doesn\u2019t just end: \u2018Bye Bye, Have a nice life. We hope you do well.\u2019 No, there\u2019s a connection. When we took the second class, they started giving us credits and then from there, we asked for more. We wanted a degree.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Benny is 43 years old. In his Latino neighborhood in Chicago, he grew up around gangs and joined one himself. In his early twenties, a jury convicted him of shooting a man to death. He\u2019s been in prison for 19 years.<\/p>\n<p>Benny\u2019s got a wife who loves him and two step-daughters. He\u2019s taken just about every class he can take behind bars: writing, urban studies, theology, and law. He saw that Michelle took his ambition seriously. She saw he wants to be more than a missionary or a model prisoner: he wants to go home. Michelle\u2019s classes focused on restorative justice, peacemaking and prison reform, skills the men could use inside and, for those able to get there, outside. So far at Stateville, it\u2019s reached more than 200 men. When we spoke, Benny was one of 80 on track to earn master\u2019s degrees from North Park University.<\/p>\n<p>Benny says, \u201cThey\u2019re looking out for every aspect of our lives. Any type of ministerial work you want to do, all the way down to helping you manage your finances, and so it\u2019s not just a spiritual thing but it\u2019s holistic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The relationship between the prison and the university continues to grow. North Park covers tuition. In non-pandemic times, graduate students from the seminary drive to the prison and join the classes. Undergrads help the Stateville students publish a newsletter, and a teacher helped the men write a play based on their life stories. A Chicago theater plans to stage it when the pandemic eases.<\/p>\n<p>Michelle grew up outside Minneapolis. Her divorced mom taught life skills and coached basketball in a juvenile detention center.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t have a beautiful house or a lot of other things, but people liked to be at our house,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I think a lot of that was because my mom loved kids and young people. And she was just welcoming. Even when she wasn\u2019t there, you could feel it.\u201d After school, Michelle often found a neighborhood kid at the kitchen table.<\/p>\n<p>When she went off to college and graduate school, Michelle read widely and kept her mind open. She studied liberation theology, a field that blends Christian scripture, spiritual practice and social justice,and read works by people like James Cone and Gustavo Gutierrez. Their books inform what she teaches her students inside Stateville.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey see themselves in the sources that we\u2019re reading,\u201d Michelle says. \u201cThey find themselves in historical narratives, in biblical narratives. And they exercise their voice in ways that amplify the injustices in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her student Benny Rios says her classes felt real.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI came in and I saw she wasn\u2019t here trying to impose any kind of white savior complex, you know. She was there for us,\u201d Benny says. \u201cShe listened to us, she understood us, she came with the goal to not only teach us social justice and of course Christianity, but she also came with an open mind and heart to hear us out, which really got my respect.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, Michelle wonders: \u201cWhy am I doing this? Who is it for? Who is it serving?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>America\u2019s prisons and jails incarcerate about two million people, and a disproportionate share look like most of Michelle\u2019s students: Black and Latino men. Black men get locked up in state and federal prisons at five times the rate of white men. COVID-19 hit them hard. By spring 2021, one of every three prisoners in Illinois had tested positive for the virus, three times the rate on the outside.<\/p>\n<p>Stateville locked down in mid-March 2020 to try and stop the spread. Authorities banned volunteer and family visits, along with in-person education. COVID-19 nearly destroyed Michelle\u2019s program. Before figuring out, fast, how to save it, she had to say goodbye. At least 88 people in Illinois prisons have died. Two of them were Michelle\u2019s students.<\/p>\n<p>She led their funerals over Zoom. She got prison officials\u2019 permission to use that platform, invited their family members, North Park professors and classmates from the seminary.<\/p>\n<p>Michelle began one ceremony: \u201cWelcome to this service of witness to the resurrection and celebration of the life of Joseph Tremaine Wilson.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Joseph spent half his life locked up on a murder conviction. He was 44 years old when he died. One by one, his teachers and friends sang, prayed, read his poetry. Many called him by his nickname, \u201cBig Fella.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His widow didn\u2019t have an internet connection, so one of Michelle\u2019s colleagues got her on FaceTime and held a cell phone up to the computer so she could watch. She heard them describe her husband as a gentle soul, a man of faith, a good friend. Many people on the outside saw only his murder conviction. Michelle\u2019s other student who died was doing time for sexually assaulting and killing a child.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe did receive some contact from the victim\u2019s family, you know, \u2018How could you take this student and celebrate [him]?\u2019 It was really hard,\u201d Michelle says. \u201cAnd so to say to the persons who reached out to us, \u2018We see you. We hear your voice. We claim him as our own and we also know this is one of the deepest forms of brokenness that anyone could weather.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n<p>To deal with Stateville\u2019s COVID restrictions, Michelle and her team at the seminary scrambled with prison staff to keep its courses going. Together, the institutions managed to transform an intensely personal master\u2019s degree program based on face-to-face instruction and deep conversations into a kind of old-fashioned correspondence course.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA sort of small army on the ground\u201d makes that work, Michelle says.<\/p>\n<p>It begins with her students inside Stateville. They do all their studying and writing in their cells. The guards don\u2019t allow real pens or pencils, they fear those writing tools can become weapons,so the men write with tiny, rubbery pencils and pass their finished essays through the bars. Every Tuesday morning, the Stateville education director collects the homework and carries a cardboard banker\u2019s box filled with paper out front to the parking lot, where Vickie Reddy, the North Park program\u2019s assistant director, waits.<\/p>\n<p>Vickie puts the box in her trunk and drives an hour back to the seminary. There, she scans the homework and emails it to professors and fellow students for feedback. Later, she prints and collates everything in packets for each student, to take back to the prison.<\/p>\n<p>They use a lot of paper. \u201cYesterday it was like 3,000 pages,\u201d Vickie says when we talk.<\/p>\n<p>Michelle says the Stateville students work hard and get creative. \u201cWhen the lockdown happened and they weren\u2019t able to get easy access to writing advisors, we had these students who were in the same cell block house. They were on different galleys or floors, and one was a writing advisor, and the student who needed help literally tied his paper to a string and then to a water bottle and threw it out the galley down to the guy and said, \u2018I want the guy in cell number, whatever, 640, to get this and read it and give me feedback and then I\u2019ll pull it back up.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n<p>Everybody calls Oscar Parham \u201cSmiley.\u201d It fits, he smiles a lot. When we\u2019re on the phone and I call him Oscar, he corrects me. He enrolled in Michelle\u2019s program early on. She got him writing poetry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019d get us involved by having us get up in front of the class,\u201d Oscar says. \u201cI\u2019ve always been scared to speak in front of people. She gave me a voice. She gave everybody a voice in the class.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This training helped a lot when he went before the Prison Review Board to ask the governor for clemency.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was locked up for 30 years for a case I didn\u2019t do,\u201d Oscar says. It involved a double murder: two men shot during a drug deal. Prosecutors knew Oscar didn\u2019t pull the trigger; he wasn\u2019t even at the scene of the crime. Oscar got sent to prison under a guilt-by-association law meant to round up gang members. When he refused a plea deal, his sentence got even longer.<\/p>\n<p>Michelle showed up for him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe was there at my clemency hearing,\u201d Oscar says. \u201cThat was the thing that shocked my family. They thought that they were the only ones that were going to be there. Michelle led a charge where she brought a whole bunch of people from the school, which made a big difference, because it showed that I not only had support from my family, I had support from people outside my family.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Out of 1,000 clemency petitions in the state each year, usually only two or three prisoners go free. In 2019, Oscar was one of them. The day he got the news, a group from North Park showed up to congratulate him in person, and they brought along Lauren Daigle, a Christian rock star who\u2019s one of his favorite singers.<\/p>\n<p>When Oscar got out, Michelle helped him find a job, got him a dorm room at North Park, helped him sign up for classes. Oscar\u2019s married now. He owns a house, and mentors young men and boys. He\u2019s pursuing a master\u2019s degree in pastoral ministry. He knows his story gives hope to his classmates on the inside.<\/p>\n<p>Hope is all some of them have. The laws aren\u2019t really on their side. Illinois has one of the most punitive sentencing systems in the nation. In 1998, the state determined that anyone convicted of murder had to serve their full sentence.<\/p>\n<p>No time off for good behavior, no consideration for their studies or for skills they\u2019ve learned. No parole. This surprises a lot of people, even some politicians. Illinois is a blue state. Democrats have run politics there for decades. There\u2019s no death penalty in Illinois, thanks in part to George Ryan, one of several governors in recent years who did prison time after he held office. He argued the capital punishment system was \u201chaunted by the demon of error.\u201d Still, the law doesn&#8217;t allow for these guys to get second chances.<\/p>\n<p>Michelle wants politicians to see the real effect of that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe work with state legislators,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019ve contacted the governor\u2019s office. In fact, the lieutenant governor has met with a number of our students to get their feedback on sentencing laws.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One of those was her student Benny. \u201cI got locked up for first degree murder and sentenced to 45 years in prison under the Truth in Sentencing Act, which means I have to serve 100% of my time,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>If things don\u2019t change, Benny will be in prison until the year 2047. He\u2019s one of Michelle\u2019s best students.<\/p>\n<p>The Evangelical Covenant Church invests in Michelle\u2019s program with money, support staff, faculty and students\u2019 time. \u201cIt\u2019s gotten so much buy-in from the church,\u201d Michelle says, \u201cbecause this is what the church is supposed to be doing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She says it manifests the New Testament gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25, where Jesus says: \u201cI was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat\u2026.I was a stranger and you did not invite me in&#8230;I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese are the people we lock up\u2026.it\u2019s the poor, the sick, the stranger, right?\u201d Michelle says.<\/p>\n<p>But in 2021, she adds, too many white Evangelicals of all denominations cling to false notions of identity, and miss Jesus\u2019 message. Michelle\u2019s seminary, North Park, is the flagship school of the Evangelical Covenant Church. Swedish immigrants founded this tiny Protestant denomination more than 100 years ago. And while there are still plenty of Swedes, like Michelle, people of color make up nearly one-third of the denomination. It\u2019s one of the most diverse mainstream Protestant churches.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs we\u2019ve seen in the last few years,\u201d she says, \u201cthe way especially white evangelicalism has associated with power, misused power, has been part of the insurrections that took place in early January, the Christian nationalism which is very deeply embedded in our evangelical world, that kind of racism and white supremacy is not new.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a kid, and later as a student at a small Christian college in Minnesota, Michelle knew a lot of white Evangelicals: people who looked like her, worshipped beside her in church. She knew some who looked down on people who weren\u2019t like them. Within her small, relatively diverse denomination, racism persists.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was there when I was growing up. I saw it,\u201d she recalls. \u201cDidn\u2019t recognize it for what it was. But I think the reason I was so late to that was because I did feel the kind of racial superiority that is very much a part of white evangelicalism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The word \u201cevangelical\u201d is pretty loaded these days. Lots of whites in that category supported former President Trump, so many people assume all evangelicals are politically right-wing. But the term is more about an attitude toward Jesus. Evangelicals see Jesus\u2019 death and resurrection as a story with transformative power, one they feel called to share.<\/p>\n<p>That student who inspired MIchelle to visit Stateville, he\u2019s an ordained Evangelical Covenant minister now. His name is Dominique Gilliard. He trains other clergy in racial reconciliation, and he taught a course with Michelle at Stateville.<\/p>\n<p>Michelle \u201cnever presents herself as a finished product,\u201d Dominique says. \u201cFor me personally, it\u2019s even more powerful than her ability to talk about the work she\u2019s had to do. But her willingness to continue to say, there\u2019s still work before me, as much as I\u2019ve already done, as much as I\u2019ve already learned, that this is a lifelong journey that I\u2019m constantly going to have to be unlearning to be the best version of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jamal Bakr is 37 years old. He\u2019s been locked up since he was 18, serving a 60-year sentence for murder. When we speak on the phone, I want to get a taste of what it\u2019s like to sit in class with him, something nobody\u2019s been able to do for more than a year. He tells me about his favorite books on a reading list filled with intellectuals and activists: \u201cGustavo Gutierrez, anything that he writes. \u2018Theology of Liberation.\u2019 Any James Cone, \u2018The Cross and the Lynching Tree\u2019, \u2018Black Theology\u2019. My favorite author\u2019s James Baldwin, so anything that he writes. \u2018The Fire Next Time\u2019 is my favorite book.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jamal tells me about seeing a man get shot when he was a kid and talks about the times he got shot when he was a teen. He walks me through his recent essay on theology and suicide. A scholarly journal plans to publish it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy father\u2019s a Muslim. I\u2019m a Christian. My mother\u2019s a devout Catholic,\u201d he says. \u201cI also try to engage the Torah and Judaism, on their theological understanding of people that commit suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the photos of Jamal on the North Park seminary website, he has a chiseled face and an intense gaze. He looks that way in his mugshot too. On the streets, Jamal was known as \u201cLil\u2019 Capone,\u201d a nickname he took on when he realized his birthday is the anniversary of Al Capone\u2019s death. Inside, he\u2019s a different kind of leader. He\u2019s on a new council to give prisoners a voice about prison conditions; he also mentors other men. He has a wife, a family. As our 20-minute call nears its end, he tells me that Michelle\u2019s program is in high demand inside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been my experience, most churches come to prison and they give you the same spiel. They\u2019re here to save you, but there\u2019s nothing beyond that,\u201d Jamal says. He\u2019s seen Michelle, her colleagues and the seminary students go beyond that. They\u2019ve shown him that being Christian is about more than saving souls.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven if we were successful, and we were, like, saving every person in prison in Illinois, there\u2019d be 40,000 Christians in prison. Then what? You know what I mean?\u201d Jamal says. \u201cMichelle and I have talked about this at length. That would be the equivalent of being on a sinking ship, and instead of passing out life vests, we\u2019re passing out Bibles.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jamal turned 18 two days before the murder that sent him to prison. If the court had tried him as a juvenile, he would have been eligible for parole. He\u2019s appealing his sentence. If Michelle can testify, she\u2019ll say that Jamal is a powerful teacher and role model in prison; that he\u2019s taught her about empathy and perseverance, that he\u2019s earned a second chance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve never been part of a community so saving, so invested,\u201d Jamal says. \u201cAll I can say is, we save each other. That\u2019s what a community\u2019s supposed to do, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jamal hopes to get out of Stateville one day. If he does, Michelle and her community at North Park will be waiting. Until then, they\u2019ll meet him where he is.<\/p>\n<h4>Click here to listen on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/spiritualedge.org\/s1-sacred-steps\/inside-an-illinois-maximum-security-prison-with-a-theology-professor-and-her-students\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">thespiritualedge.org<\/a>.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michelle did something a few years ago that no one at her seminary, or in her state, had done. She took biblical stories straight to men in a place that symbolizes their failure and society\u2019s: Stateville Correctional Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":813,"featured_media":2274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[14,86,80,10,81],"class_list":["post-2271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audio","tag-christianity","tag-covid","tag-engaged-spirituality","tag-evangelicalism","tag-spiritual-exemplars"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom: An Evangelical Professor And Her Students Inside A Maximum Security Prison<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/michelle-clifton-soderstrom-an-evangelical-professor-and-her-students-inside-a-maximum-security-prison\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom: An Evangelical Professor And Her Students Inside A Maximum Security Prison - Center for Religion and Civic Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Michelle did something a few years ago that no one at her seminary, or in her state, had done. 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