Teaching Religion Behind Bars: exploring academic freedom in a place that is not free

On the first day of my Spring 2025 class at the South Unit of the Central Florida Reception Center in Orlando, I asked my incarcerated students to write their definition of the word ‘religion’. They shared these definitions which included words like faith, commitment, higher power, moral laws, social networks, belief, practice, ritual, god, and Jesus. I listed these on the board, placing ‘Jesus’ apart from the general concepts that could potentially describe a range of religious traditions. Writing ‘Jesus’ on the board elicited a few amens. Their response gave me insight into my audience—many of whom I assumed may be born-again or evangelical Christians. As I placed the word ‘Jesus’ on the board, I thought I might lose a few students. In Spring 2023, the first semester I taught this class in prison, one student turned in their book after reading that we would explore a pluralistic approach. That was not a part of their faith journey, and they admitted this was not the class for them. Still, many, even those with exclusivist views, chose to stay and grapple with diverse ideas presented to them. In this respect, these religion classes— full of male incarcerated students, many much older than myself, several with worn face tattoos, and shaved heads—opened new ways of thinking, both for those students who elected to stay and for myself as an instructor.

Based on my limited experience teaching and volunteering inside Florida’s state prisons (2023-2025), religion is often misconstrued as Christian theology or Bible study. The idea that individuals could study religion in and of itself, that is apart from Jesus, is still a relatively new thought in these spaces. Drawing from four semesters teaching religious studies to incarcerated students through a secular group called the Florida Prison Education Project (FPEP), this paper explores what constitutes academic freedom within prison by examining freedom of thought. 

 Though hidden, incarcerated students grapple with how to understand freedom in their daily confined lives. By investigating the intersection of religious studies and academic freedom in such restricted spaces, I ask: can knowledge set us free? As a humanities instructor, I find that when engaged appropriately, knowledge can expose new narratives thereby opening new worlds, possibilities, and opportunities for those who pursue it. This is not without its downfalls, as those who teach in (Dubler, 2014; Gellman, 2022) and write about these spaces (Erzan, 2017; Sullivan, 2009; Stoddard 2021) recognize the challenges of working in a constrained world.

The following explores teaching religious studies as a form of academic freedom and freedom of thought. More specifically, I explain how a Religion in America class at a men’s state prison has elicited a sense of hunger for learning, focused on exploring different ways of thinking and talking about religion within prison. 

Though this comes in the wake of severe state-wide limitations on academic freedoms imposed by Florida government officials impacting K-12 and higher education classrooms (Insider High Edu 2024), as a volunteer prison educator, the main difficulties I experience fall outside of these impositions. I suspect this may be due to limited attention given to prison-based education. Such challenges include: 1) the inability to recognize the nature of the academic study of religion among students and prison staff and 2) limited resources for teachers and students. I embrace such challenges as a way of rethinking my classroom and my approach to teaching. 

To begin, religion is often conflated with theology, namely Christian theology, and viewed solely from an insider perspective. This is a problem that occurs frequently in a range of public spaces, particularly in the southeastern U.S. Some of the misunderstanding could, in part, be due to the rise in faith-based prisons or faith- and character-based institutions (FCBI), state owned institutions which allow for Christian volunteers to run some of the programming. Florida leads the country with three faith- and character-based prisons and 32 faith- and character-based correctional dormitories (Stoddard 2021). While the theological role of religion, may paint a particular picture of what it means to study religion inside Florida’s prisons, as I explain through my class engagement, there are opportunities for religious studies as an exploration of the humanities to offer another outlet for students behind bars thereby furthering religious literacy and alternative ways of thinking. 

Using large group discussions and structured questioning, religious studies as a field within the humanities may open additional avenues for incarcerated individuals, providing them with the academic freedom to express different ideas and opinions inside such confined spaces. I have found this to be the case in my class as students reveal that they rarely have the opportunity to engage in pluralistic conversations that venture beyond one particular faith tradition. 

These teaching and learning reflections also arise in the midst of limited resources. As many of my colleagues grapple with the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI), my work arises in a space that is free from technology and therefore set apart from any kind of AI. Instructors are not allowed to bring cell phones, computers, and/or tablets inside the correctional facilities. Furthermore, while some students have tablets, they do not bring them to class and internet use is not permitted. Even with such limitations, I have found the prison classroom to be rich with opportunities for academic freedom in ways that meet students where they are and expand their viewpoints. 

After wrapping up the first class at the South Unit, a student approached me and said, you know, a lot of these guys don’t have religion. There are places in Polk County where you don’t see any religion, all you see is meth. Reflecting upon this comment, I was reminded of what a former student at the CFRC East Unit told me, he appreciated the space to think, reflect, and consider views apart from his own. It may be limited, but such academic freedom is changing the conversation and helping people in some of the most confined spaces find a sense of freedom.