No Godforsaken Place: Prison Chaplaincy, Karl Barth, and Practicing Life in Prison

How does the life, arrest, trial, conviction, execution, and release from state-supervision of Jesus Christ enact the salvation of the cosmos? How does that one carceral life-in-death link up with life in the face of prison death today?

Jobe explores the spiritual and religious life contained within America’s prison systems as it shows up in the profession of prison chaplaincy. The theological foundations of the text coherently link Barth’s experience of prison chaplaincy and his Christological theology with the theological understandings in the chaplains’ interviews; and Jobe’s ＂practical soteriology＂ emerges in a thoroughly intricate and compelling contextualized vision.

This book weaves careful ethnographic work, the systematic theology of Karl Barth, and biblical interpretation to craft a textured exploration of life-after-death work.

Sarah Jobe is Associate in Research at Divinity School, Duke University, USA.