The Iowa Department of Corrections has been promoting a prison ministry named InnerChange Freedom Initiative. Inmates who enter the program receive special benefits not available to others, which means the state ends up promoting evangelical Christianity. Now a federal judge has permitted a lawsuit against the state of Iowa to go forward to trial.
Americans United reports:
U.S. District Judge Robert W. Pratt, in a 29-page opinion issued today, wrote that Americans United had produced "voluminous documentation," in arguing "the InnerChange program is so infused with religion that it is impossible to separate its sectarian from nonsectarian functioning." Americans United is representing IDOC inmates, their family members and Iowa taxpayers.
"Government must not be in the business of religious conversion of inmates," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. "The whole idea of InnerChange rests on accepting evangelical Christianity as a way to rehabilitation. The set-up in Iowa is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and must be shut down."
Pratt noted in Americans United for Separation of Church and State v. Prison Fellowship Ministries, that Iowa's corrections department had paid InnerChange $1,111,553.50 "in direct payments" and that the contract with the religious program has "been renewed and extended annually to the present."
Evidently the judge noted that there was substantial evidence that Iowa's funding of one of Charles Colson's prison ministry schemes violates the Constitution and the trial is to be held as soon as is possible. This program identifies itself as exclusively and explicitly Christian in orientation — and not just "Christian in general" but evangelical Christian in particular. Thus, Iowa's funding of it not only discriminates against non-Christians, but non-evangelical Christians as well.
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