Joshua Hays

The Star Wars films have maintained a tremendous following for almost forty years, attracting successive generations of audiences while sustaining their appeal for lifelong fans. As viewers return to these stories again and again, the movies exert tremendous influence on their perceptions of the world. Star Wars offers an accessible starting point for considering substantive issues of faith, philosophy, and ethics. In A True Hope, Joshua Hays explores some of these challenging ideas through the sayings of the Jedi Masters, encouraging Christians to reflect on them thoughtfully. In so doing, Hays examines the ways the worldview of the Jedi is at odds with that of the Bible. Readers who accompany Hays on this journey will continue to enjoy the entertainment of the Star Wars galaxy while strengthening the stability and coherence of their faith.

Jedi Perils and the Way of Jesus

A True Hope

Michael Hallett

Byron R. Johnson

Sung Joon Jang

Grant Duwe

Corrections officials faced with rising populations and shrinking budgets have increasingly welcomed "faith-based" providers offering services at no cost to help meet the needs of inmates. Drawing from three years of on-site research, this book utilizes survey analysis along with life-history interviews of inmates and staff to explore the history, purpose, and functioning of the Inmate Minister program at Louisiana State Penitentiary (aka "Angola"), America’s largest maximum-security prison. This book takes seriously attributions from inmates that faith is helpful for "surviving prison" and explores the implications of religious programming for an American corrections system in crisis, featuring high recidivism, dehumanizing violence, and often draconian punishments. A first-of-its-kind prototype in a quickly expanding policy arena, Angola’s unique Inmate Minister program deploys trained graduates of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in bi-vocational pastoral service roles throughout the prison. Inmates lead their own congregations and serve in lay-ministry capacities in hospice, cell block visitation, delivery of familial death notifications to fellow inmates, "sidewalk counseling" and tier ministry, officiating inmate funerals, and delivering "care packages" to indigent prisoners. Life-history interviews uncover deep-level change in self-identity corresponding with a growing body of research on identity change and religiously motivated desistance. The concluding chapter addresses concerns regarding the First Amendment, the dysfunctional state of U.S. corrections, and directions for future research.

Joshua Hays

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