When Dad Is in Prison

With seven children at home and a husband in jail, Tameyka Powell admits she needs help keeping her kids on track. Two years ago, her young son Kendall Jackson behaved so poorly in his New Orleans school that he was suspended several times a month.

Now Kendall, 7, is doing much better. He's on the honor roll and winning praise for following directions. Powell credits the mentoring her son receives through New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, where she says men teach boys right from wrong.

"He wants to please God," says Powell, chatting in a pew at New Hope after a worship service. "Even when I'm watching TV, [Kendall] says, 'Oh Mama, God's not pleased with that.' This church has been a very good foundation for him."

For years, federally supported mentoring for America's 2 million children who have a parent in prison has banned mentors from initiating talk about God due to guidelines enforcing church-state separation. Between 2003 and September 2011, Mentoring Children of Prisoners (MCP), a $49 million federal program, matched more than 100,000 children with adults. Mentors could discuss matters of faith only if and when mentees raised the subject.

MCP funding ended last September. Yet rather than wither without federal dollars, the movement to mentor children of the incarcerated shows new signs of vitality and religiosity. Churches such as New Hope, which joined the movement without seeking federal funds, are growing robustly religious mentoring programs. Mentors trained under MCP are embracing new freedom to talk about their Christian faith with their mentees.

"There's an extra level of excitement for a mentor when the door is opened to faith conversations" with a mentee, says Jeff Dorn, former director of the Assemblies of God's MCP-funded program in Springfield, Missouri. "Having mentors know up front that [sharing faith] can be part of the program adds incentive for them to volunteer and assists with longevity."

MCP was a Bush administration faith-based initiative that paid to recruit and train volunteer mentors, who typically came from churches. Many felt inspired to work with kids living in chronic poverty with little stable adult influence in their lives.

At Big Brothers, Big Sisters of the Triangle in Raleigh, North Carolina, some 90 percent of MCP-supported mentors are Christians who see mentoring as mission. Chief executive Kim Breeden said many mentors continue despite the funding cut. "We have children who go to church and to Bible study with their [mentors]," Breeden says. "The parents are very supportive of that."

However, not everyone is cheering a surge of faith in mentoring. While religion can be a "shared interest" that facilitates bonding, it can also introduce harmful dynamics if not managed carefully, says Jean Rhodes, director of the Center for Evidence-based Mentoring at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

"There's the possibility of proselytizing and crossing ethical boundaries," says Rhodes, who helped launch MCP. "Let's say you're getting into [mentoring] because you're religious. Then you find out the kid isn't, so you try to convert him. We don't want that.

"The best mentors aren't overly didactic or overly proselytizing. So the mentors who take a faith perspective can't be too heavy-handed about it."

But others insist that exposure to religious faith benefits children. Some programs formerly supported by MCP now prefer mentors with faith convictions. Cornerstone Children in Marrero, Louisiana, offers mentoring for children who ride Catholic Charities buses to visit their parents at Angola and other state prisons.

"Any person can [do mentoring] if they have genuine compassion for children, but a spiritual person is the best candidate," says Leo Jackson Jr., assistant program director for Cornerstone Builders, a Catholic Charities division that oversees Cornerstone Children. "Once you're born again, the fruits of the Spirit—love, patience, concern—are what you become. Those traits are more easily translated into mentoring when you are those things, rather than when you're trying to manufacture those things."

Focus on Virtues

With the federal government out of the picture, religious groups are now working through a patchwork of regional and denominational efforts. Projects vary, but faith is notably a key element where it wasn't before.

New dynamics are on display in New Orleans, where an epidemic of youth violence fuels the nation's highest murder rate. (In 2011, the city of 344,000 saw 199 murders.) In September, Mayor Mitch Landrieu launched the sobering Save Our Sons initiative, in which mentoring would be a pillar. As with MCP, churches would recruit volunteer mentors, but now mentors would be free to help kids know God as the cornerstone of their lives.

"Churches are huge players" in the Save Our Sons mentoring initiative, says Tyrone Walker, special assistant to Mayor Landrieu. "The Bible talks a lot about sowing and reaping. New Orleans is, we think, a fertile ground uniquely positioned for good seed to be sown into the lives of young people through mentorship. The mayor wants to encourage that."

New Orleans churches are mobilizing anew to reach at-risk kids, many of whom have an incarcerated parent. New Hope's program started with 15 neighborhood kids in late 2010. It now draws 75 kids on Saturday mornings for Bible-based lessons in abstinence and other virtue-centered habits. A second, midweek session is expected to launch this year.

In a separate initiative, the Archdiocese of New Orleans is currently piloting Isaiah 43, a new mentoring program that will soon be offered across the archdiocese. It's part of the "New Battle of New Orleans," as framed by Archbishop Gregory Michael Aymond. The vision is to confront a scourge of social problems by strengthening families, mentoring kids, and coaching parents—all by bringing robust Christian principles to bear.

Faith was in the air one February night as an Isaiah 43 pilot session kicked off at Holy Family Parish in Franklinton, north of New Orleans. Peter Hammett wore a collar as he greeted kids whom a middle-school guidance counselor had identified as being at-risk. He led them in prayer before the fried chicken dinner.

After some ice-breakers, every child was matched with a volunteer mentor, all of whom came from either Holy Family or a local United Methodist church. In a get-to-know-your-mentor activity, 13-year-old Jacob Crowe asked Ron Brumfield, a retired city attorney and a devout Methodist, about his goals as a mentor.

"My goal is to make you as good a person as I can," Brumfield told Jacob, whose father was incarcerated. "You can depend on me."

Not Just the Bible Belt

Faith-infused mentoring is gaining traction elsewhere. The 2.5 million-member Progressive National Baptist Convention has developed a new, Bible-based kit for mentoring at-risk children because "Scripture is the driving force to make us do what we're supposed to be doing," says Dee Dee Coleman, co-chair of the Progressive National Baptist Commission on Social Justice and Prison Ministry. The program, which has trained 125 mentor trainers, is being piloted in Detroit, Michigan, and Richmond, Virginia.

In some cases, volunteers trained under MCP feel they're at last able to fulfill their mission as mentors. That's been true for Jack Karnes, a Springfield, Missouri, sales rep who mentors 16-year-old Al Henson, whose father is incarcerated. Al raised questions about religious faith in several text messages last year, but the teenager never followed up in person. Karnes, a self-described "hardcore believer," wanted to talk faith but didn't dare bring up the topic. His program, Shapes Mentoring from the Assemblies of God, received MCP funding.

When Karnes learned MCP would be ending, he saw an opportunity. He broached the topic of God and got a warm reception. Karnes tells CT that "Al said, 'I didn't want to bring up faith because I was afraid you'd think I was crazy.'" Now Karnes and Al do regular devotions along with lifting weights and playing basketball.

"That's what we're instructed to do," Karnes says, referring to the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19. "We're supposed to be disciples and make disciples."

Mentor Shortage

Not all religious mentors are exercising their newfound freedom to evangelize, however. Some still make a point to keep religion out of the relationship. Georgette Santilli of West Warwick, Rhode Island, became Catholic in adulthood and is raising her birth children in the faith. But she doesn't discuss faith with Kenzie Seebeck, her sixth-grade mentee, whose mother has been in and out of prison.

Santilli keeps the focus on other areas: relationships, school, Kenzie's aspirations to be a chef (and an FBI agent). Their bonding happens largely around shared experiences, not religious beliefs. "I truly believe that no matter what religion you are, it all comes down to the same morals," Santilli says. "It's about doing the right thing and living your life the right way."

Santilli knows firsthand what a rough childhood can entail. Her parents were alcoholics, she said. Beatings were common in her home, as were visits from the police. She wants Kenzie to learn that by staying hopeful and playing fair, she too can overcome challenges.

With Santilli's encouragement, Kenzie is having some success. She's gone from being a C and D student last year to a mostly B student now. She looks up to Santilli, who has a happy family life and a steady job. Santilli competed this year in the Mrs. Rhode Island beauty pageant, which Kenzie thought was "so cool," even though some of Santilli's coworkers scoffed at her "quest for the crown."

"It's just cool that you do what you want to do," Kenzie told Santilli in a shopping mall one December afternoon as they painted pottery as Christmas gifts. "You don't let people bother you."

For other pairs, though, faith has become the glue that holds them together. In Pittsburgh, IT professional Michael Pace and his 12-year-old mentee, Keyshawn Corlew, like to play and watch sports together. Whether at a city park or a college stadium, they never miss a chance to discuss God's call on their lives.

Sharing faith "is the most important part of my relationship with Keyshawn," said Pace, who got matched with Keyshawn through Amachi Pittsburgh, a faith-based nonprofit and former MCP grantee. "I always try to mention Christ and make sure [Keyshawn] knows that whatever you're doing, you should keep him in the back of your mind."

With new funds unlikely to come anytime soon from federal or state governments, the future of mentoring depends on support from the religious and corporate sectors. Much hinges on whether volunteers can be motivated to become mentors and stick with it.

Experts say the shortage of mentors remains the biggest challenge. To that end, some expect that a less restrictive environment for faith expressions might help reinvigorate the movement.

"It may be that the best thing that's ever happened for the movement is for the feds to get out of the business," says Byron Johnson, a Baylor University criminologist and author of More God, Less Crime. "I think it could open up some doors that have not been open before."

G. Jeffrey MacDonald is a journalist and author of Thieves in the Temple: The Christian Church and the Selling of the American Soul (Basic Books, 2010). This assignment was supported by the 2011 Knight Grants for Reporting on Religion and American Public Life. The Knight Program in Media and Religion is based at the University of Southern California.

Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Other Christianity Today articles on social justice and education include:

The New School Choice Agenda | Why Christians in Richmond, Virginia, and elsewhere are choosing to send their children to struggling public schools. (April 9, 2012)

Education Is in Our DNA | We should support every effort to upgrade our failing schools. (December 13, 2011)

Signs of the End Times | Our pursuit of justice in the present foreshadows the perfect justice of an age to come. (August 24, 2011)

Prison Partnership: Byron R. Johnson on Christian Criminal Justice | Church and state can join hands to prevent crime and reform criminals. (June 7, 2011)

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