On May 5, 2023, I had the honor of giving the commencement speech for the graduating class of the Calvin Prison Initiative (CPI) in Handlon Correctional Facility for Men, located in Ionia, Michigan.
The CPI is a joint project of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary. The project is a five-year program of courses offered in the prison by Calvin professors, culminating in a Bachelor’s or Associate degree from Calvin. Each year, a cohort of twenty new students is admitted from applicants around the state prison system.
On several occasions over the past ten or so years I have been invited to participate in a CPI class; each time it has been one of the most moving experiences of my entire career as a professor. The students are bright, eloquent, and extraordinarily self-disclosing. Let me mention just one such experience.
The students in the class had read and were discussing an essay I had written on living with grief. I wrote, in the essay, that part of what makes grief so devastating is that it has the character of an assault – an assault on the self from outside. Something happens to one: one’s child dies, one’s spouse is killed, one is fired from a job one loved, vicious gossip is circulated. I remarked that, at the core of a prisoner’s grief, is the assault of being deprived of his freedom by the justice system.
The response of the men took me aback. No, they said, they were not grieving over being deprived of their freedom. They had committed a crime and deserved to be locked up. Rather than grieving over something that had happened to them, they were grieving over what they hadthemselves done: they had wreaked ruin on their lives, the lives of their family, their friends, their victim, their victim’s relatives and friends. I was brought face-to-face with a form of grief I had completely overlooked. It was an emotion-laden learning experience.
Back to my commencement speech. Over the years I had learned, both from in-class discussions and from informal conversations outside of class, how prisoners were daily demeaned. In a conversation I happened to have with a prisoner that very day, before the ceremony began, he related to me what had happened to him that morning. He was talking with a guard. A trash bucket was standing nearby. The guard kicked over the bucket, the trash spilled out. “Pick it up,” ordered the guard. “Why did you kick it over,” the prisoner asked. “Don’t ask questions. Pick it up,” replied the guard. The unspoken message was, “You are trash.”
When mulling over a topic for my speech, some of the episodes of demeaning treatment that I had learned about over the years came to mind. I decided to base my talk on First Peter 2:17: “Honor everyone.” Children are to honor parents; but parents are also to honor children. Students are to honor teachers; but teachers are also to honor students. Inmates are to honor guards; but guards are also to honor inmates. And so forth.
One of the Calvin professors in attendance told me afterwards that she happened to look around as I was speaking and noticed a number of guards standing in the back of the room, each looking grim, staring down at their shoes. I had not noticed them. Over the course of my career I have given a number of commencement speeches; never before (to the best of my knowledge!) have there been guards in attendance. It didn’t occur to me to look for guards.
A few days after my speech I was informed that the prison officials were deeply offended by my talk. Henceforth, I would not be allowed to enter Handlon Prison (nor, I surmise, any other prison in the Michigan system). How I miss being moved, inspired, and instructed by engaging with those remarkable, honor-worthy, men behind bars in the CPI program.
Here is the text of the talk I gave, on that May morning in Handlon Prison, that so deeply offended the authorities.
HONOR EVERYONE
Scripture readings:
Psalm 8: 3-6
I Peter 2:13-17
Honored graduates, relatives and friends of the graduates:
“Honor everyone,” wrote the author of the New Testament letter that we know as First Peter. “Honor everyone.”
In the Mediterranean world of the time, this was unheard of. People were to honor those of noble achievements – poets and philosophers, for example – and those above them in social status: children were to honor their parents, wives, their husbands, slaves, their masters. Our author mentions the emperor: “Honor the emperor,” for he has the noble God-given task of securing justice in society.
But then he says: “Honor everyone.” Everyone? Honor children? Yes, honor children. Honor slaves Yes, honor slaves. Honor prisoners? Yes, honor prisoners. What we have here is a radical democratizing of honoring, a democratizing that would, over the centuries, slowly transform societies shaped by Christianity,
The author of First Peter addressed his letter to Jewish Christians dispersed across Asia Minor. But he would have said the same thing had he been writing to Gentile Christians. Or to fellow Jews who were not Christians. Or to pagans. Everyone is to honor everyone: children their parents, but also parents their children; wives their husbands, but also husbands their wives; slaves their masters, but also masters their slaves; prisoners their guards, but also guards the prisoners.
Let’s be clear: honoring someone does not mean approving whatever they do. It means not demeaning them, not bad-mouthing them. If they do wrong, it means respecting them while correcting them. If the husband abuses his wife, she corrects him without demeaning him, and vice versa. If the warden abuses the prisoner, the prisoner corrects him without demeaning him, and vice versa. Indeed, correcting someone fairly is a way of honoring them. It is to treat them as a human being capable of hearing the call of morality, and that is worthy of honor. They may, of course, resist the call.
If everyone is to be honored, then, of course, everyone is worthy of honor. So what is it about human beings that makes them all worthy of honor? The writer of First Peter doesn’t say. But we can surmise how he was thinking. As a Jew, he would have been acquainted with Psalm 8. Addressing God, before whose creative powers he stands in awe, the psalmist asks, “What are human beings, that you are mindful of them” – that is, that you care about them? He answers his own question: “You have made human beings a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.”
So why does the writer of First Peter assume that every human being is worthy of honor? Because he has learned from Scripture that every human being is God-like and loved by God.
One of you wrote recently, “I am not defined by the worst fifteen minutes of my life.” Indeed, you are not; nobody is. Those worst fifteen minutes cannot be deleted from your life; that’s why you are here in Handlon. But they do not define you. You are defined by being God-like and loved by God. That makes you worthy of honor. Worthy of being honored by everyone.
I have visited Handlon Prison on five or six occasions. Each time I have heard stories about how you are daily demeaned. The message you are given is, “You are scum.” Don’t believe it, not for a second. You are not scum. Each of you has the ineradicable dignity of being God-like and loved by God.
While recognizing that each of you has the dignity of being God-like and loved by God, we are not here today to celebrate that dignity; we are here to celebrate a special dignity that each of you now has – the dignity of having earned a Bachelor’s or Associate degree from Calvin University. And you have not just squeaked by, satisfying the minimal requirements. You have excelled. Over the years I have talked to a good many CPI instructors; what they have all told me is that their students here in Handlon were the finest group of students they have ever taught. That has also been my experience. The most moving experiences of my entire teaching career are those in which I was a participant in a class session here in Handlon.
We – families, friends, teachers, acquaintances – are assembled here today to honor you, graduates, for having earned a Bachelor’s or Associate degree from Calvin University, and for doing so in exemplary fashion. Accept our congratulations.
15 Responses
In my years as a pastor, I’ve made visits to prisons. Each time I felt overwhelmed by the degree of oppressiveness and dehumanization I encountered there affecting both prisoners and guards alike.
Your words will live on in the minds of the graduates and in the minds of the guards who were there for a very long time. Who knows how God will use them to bring about his kingdom in that facility? I trust He is at work!
Thank you, Professor. What a needed word in our dehumanizing world.
May you be free to return to Hanlon and elsewhere. Speaking truth to power: what a challenge for each and all of us.
It can’t be easy being a prison guard. Who knows why they chose that job. My imaginations are not good. I am assuming the prisoners chose to take the classes offered by Calvin to better themselves. And they did. Your and Peter’s point we need to honor everyone, guards and prisoners offered the guards a different point of view and a choice. It’s a shame the prison(s)didn’t recognize your offer for light in the darkness to the guards by denying you an open door. I hope a seed was planed in some hearts.
I’m reading Bonhoeffer:Pastor, Martyr,Spy. His kindness to his guards offered another point of view and some lives were changed.
Humbling to read. Humbling to reflect on. Truly humbling. Thank you.
It is hard to honor someone for whom I have no respect, but that doesn’t let me off the hook.
I pray God will give me the eyes and heart to see them as God sees them.
Several of the graduates that day, Nick, became my teaching assistants at the Muskegon Correctional
Facility where I teach for the Hope-Western Prison Education Program. They reported being deeply moved by your commencement speech. One class period, as we were discussing lament as an important faith expression, my teaching assistant, Rick, remembered your speech and said that he had a printed copy. I asked him to get it and stand in front of the class and read it out loud. At first he protested but I said it was important for his voice to be heard. He read your words to the class with tears running down his face. It was as holy a moment as I have ever had in a classroom. Thank you so much for insisting on the bigness of God’s love – the ripples of what you spoke continue to hit distant shores.
I remember the Handlon Life Change Book Club also lamenting your being shut out from returning. Your visits to book club were encouraging and important to them–one member said you “made him feel seen.” I grieve the attitude of so many of the guards in prisons, seeing the prisoners as mere storage rather than as precious souls.
I have not been to Handlon Prison. It is clear to me from your description and the stories you have been told by inmates that it is not a perfect place. It may be a very bad place, certainly a place where people often feel demeaned.
I’ve heard many wonderful reports of Calvin’s prison initiative. Your message of needing to honor everyone certainly sounds right, and I suspect it did plant a seed in some hearts. It’s certainly a loss on both sides, and probably an overreaction, that you have been told you will be unwelcome there in the future.
But please also take a look at what I take to be your complete characterization of the prison during your address:
“I have visited Handlon Prison on five or six occasions. Each time I have heard stories about how you are daily demeaned. The message you are given is, ‘You are scum.’ Don’t believe it, not for a second. You are not scum. Each of you has the ineradicable dignity of being God-like and loved by God.”
A worthy message for the inmates. But wasn’t this also the institution that was your host that day, which had helped make it possible for the inmates you were honoring to participate in the program? I understand it’s in the nature of philosophers to put things into categories. But how would this description have affected any prison guards who did NOT fit into this category? Or an administrator faced with how you’ve characterized their institution? If you knew then what you know now, would you have reconsidered or tempered your phrasing? I get no hint of that from your post-reflection. Based on the fact that you were welcomed there, I would not have expected this to be your complete description of the prison. I also can’t help but feel it took something away from the part where the prison guards and administration were also worthy of honor and respect, and of not being equated with their worst actions. I understand they were not the main audience (though this might have been a good reminder for the inmates as well). Maybe you could write them a letter. (Is there like a reverse-parole board?)
In the middle of reading David Brooks’ excellent book, “How to Know a Person”, this rings so true. It harks to seeing that God-print on each and every face you encounter, which is a truly hard thing to do sometimes. Perhaps a deeper understanding and use of restorative justice could bring real seeing for those harmed and those incarcerated.
The Calvin Prison Initiative program is wonderful and should be appreciated and supported for the work they do. No bone to pick there. But wow, having worked in corrections I couldn’t help but read between the lines of your experience. Referring to the staff in your presentation as “guards” rather than their proper title, corrections officers, was the first slight. But then, as Peter Dykstra points out, announcing this: “I have visited Handlon Prison on five or six occasions. Each time I have heard stories about how you are daily demeaned. The message you are given is, ‘You are scum.’”
If I had been one of those officers present, looking grim and staring down at my shoes, I guarantee you it wouldn’t have been out of any shame; rather, it would’ve been out of a barely suppressed irritation with yet another outsider coming in and pontificating how I act as a professional. Truth is, if I was Handlon’s warden, you would’ve been disinvited as well.
Professor Wolterstorff, you have my utmost respect. Dare I say, though, that this statement: “Over the years I had learned, both from in-class discussions and from informal conversations outside of class, how prisoners were daily demeaned” only provides one perspective? Not that unprofessional conduct doesn’t exist, but I doubt you are seldom receiving the benefit of the totality of the circumstances.
“The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him.” Proverbs 18:17
I was a member of the first cohort of CPI in 2015, was released in 2018 due to legislative changes, and finished my degree at the Knollcrest campus in 2020.
I can attest that throughout the MDOC, there are certainly officers who fit the “category” Mr. Woltersdorff references. With certainty, there are officers who would kick over a trash can and give a “direct order” (which must be obeyed on pain of a written misconduct) to pick up the trash. That being said, my experience over twenty-six years of incarceration was that corrections officers often mirrored the attitude given. Truly bellicose corrections officers would relent of taunting if one responded with humility and acceptance, that is, Christlike.
I think Peter Dyksta make an important point in that the presence of a higher education program at Handlon indicates a change in disposition of the MDOC, also with many corrections officers.
It is worth noting that since its inception, Handlon was disciplinary facility which offered minimal programming. The idea of a degree path would have been inconceivable for the generations of corrections officers prior to the arrival of CPI and Vocational Village. Todd Cioffi, who co-founded CPI with Chris DeGroot, said the idea of starting a degree path at a facility notorious for being anti-programming was that if Calvin could change the prison culture at the worst prison, it could change prison culture at the best prisons.
Let us not lose sight that many corrections officers at Handlon were formed by a culture — inside and outside of prison — that believed prisons must be punitive to be effective. CPI flipped this philosophy on its head. Whenever was in a classroom, I forgot I was an inmate because I was only ever esteemed and honored as a Calvin student.
There are, without a doubt, bellicose corrections officers whose sole purpose appears to be demeaning, degrading, and dishonoring inmates. CPI was profoundly “humanizing” for me for the very reason Dr. Woltersdorff spoke on: I was honored. By professors, by peers, and yes, even by corrections officers at times.
Thank you for widening my area of perception from your 26 years of reality on the inside. Congratulations on not just your degree but on your determination to turn your life around for the better. I’m inspired.
As the Director of the Calvin Prison Initiative, I am grateful for our long-standing partnership with the Michigan Department of Corrections and with the staff and administration of the Handlon Correctional Facility. The MDOC and Handlon staff make it possible to offer a robust program that provides a high-quality Christian liberal arts education to our students.
CPI’s long-term success is tied directly to the commitment of MDOC leaders and Handlon administration, staff and corrections officers. Their commitment to higher education is further demonstrated by the fact that there are now 14 college-in-prison programs in the State of Michigan serving more than 1,500 men and women.
What once was known as a punitive system is committed to creating opportunities for rehabilitation, restoration, and transformation. We are grateful for the partnership between MDOC, Handlon, Calvin Seminary, Calvin University, and our students and alumni.
The Calvin Prison Initiative is a terrific program. Let me take the occasion of Lisa’s note to join her in commending all the relevant Michigan prison officials for their enabling of the program, and now of similar programs across the state, and in commending Calvin University and Seminary for their conduct of the program. It’s a blessing to students, teachers, visitors, and many others.