No Godforsaken Place - (T&t Clark Studies in Social Ethics, Ethnography and Theologies) by Sarah C Jobe (Hardcover)

About the Book

A collaborative ethnography on current and former prison chaplains, two years in the making, that integrates theological and biblical reflection.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

Every once in a great while, a book is written that changes the scaffolding of a discipline. Jobe's No Godforsaken Placechanges the scaffoldings of more than one. Her ethnography of prison chaplains is the first-of-its-kind, setting the agenda for the next decade of chaplaincy training. Her reading of Barth's justice-involved history reframes the theological significance of his judicial metaphors and turns tired stereotypes of his method on their heads. Jobe's fearless entry into the roiling waters of soteriology takes one's breath away. These are depths into which practical theologians rarely tread. Her centering of the carceral as the place from which God enacts the salvation of the cosmos gifts chaplains with an unflinching practical theology of atonement, and through the lives and deaths of imprisoned persons, she reintroduces the church to its incarcerated Savior. No Godforsaken Place names the horrors of carceral death, but more courageously, it inhabits the costly possibility of resurrection. It is a book that will change its readers, and in so doing, change the church.
Jerusha Matsen Neal, Duke Divinity School, USA

The God we know in Jesus is peculiar in the ways he identifies with prisoners-not only promising to be present to those who visit the incarcerated, but also facing charges, a trial, and execution at the hands of the state himself. No Godforsaken Place is an invitation to know God better by drawing near to those who experience incarceration. Jobe has not simply written a book about prison chaplaincy; she has given us a revelation of how the experience of entering prison can help you know the Creator of all things, seen and unseen.
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy, USA

This passionate reading of Barth reunites the revolutionary of Romans, at odds with the German state, with the master constructor of doctrine, at the center of the Dogmatics. That is because Barth (despite claims that he stood above human experience) was able to marshal his own criminal prosecution to show Jesus as the Judge judged in our place. A deep book for difficult times.
Eugene F. Rogers, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA

About the Author

Sarah C. Jobe is Co-Director of the Prison Studies Program at Duke Divinity School and Clinical Chaplain for the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, USA.