This collection includes documents that represent 28 years of our organizations work, initiatives and consciousness that addressed the spirituality of poor and marginalized communities, within the late 20th and early 21st century empire of America.
This brief outline and overview begins with: a letter of support from the County of Erie to our fledgling efforts, in 1994. Following that, in the mid to late 1990’s, we see the efforts to build an organization with the coalescing of professors and ministers, the writing of many grants, establishing relationships with state educational institutions like V.E.S.I.D. (Vocational and Educational Services for Individual with Disabilities) and the granting of nonprofit status. We further see the creation of a faculty, curriculums, standards, values, a course structure, seminars, and lectures. These are specifically designed for and focused upon people with addictions, ex-offenders, people with disabilities and other poor and marginalized communities. Into the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, with a charge and calling to heal and revolutionize both individuals and religious and social institutions, we see initiatives such as certificates in prison ministry, women’s prisoner empowerment, theological education of prisoner’s program, minority churches empowerment, Institute of Public Ministry, a Faith Based Economic Resource Center, and a circuit riders lecture series (black Chautauqua). Throughout the early and mid-2000’s, we see more symposiums and the flourishing of the theological education for prisoner’s program. At Groveland Correctional Facility, an on-site theological program is established and co taught by Chaplain Carmona, fellow inmates and volunteers from our organization, with our material support. This on-site theology course along with our national theological education for prisoners continues for many years. In 2007, this national correspondence program focuses upon a curriculum leading towards the development of a prison theology. That year, 2 articles are published in the Dialog Theology Journal followed by another article in 2009 and a doctoral dissertation on prison theology in 2015. The following years see the publication of 2 more books, and a newsletter (archived in this collection). The letters of these years show a method of spiritual relationship education and the distribution of well over 1000 books to people in prison.
