God in Jail

I received a phone call from my younger brother Bill the night of August 5. He and eight other members of the Detroit Peace Community were planning to do civil disobedience the next day, on the 37th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. He wanted to tell me what they were planning and ask me to pray for them.

I had often called Bill on the eve of doing civil disobedience, and now he was calling me. It seems we are developing a family tradition. I felt proud of my brother that night, grateful for his faith and life, but also, I admit, a little apprehensive. I was glad he would be with good people. The Detroit Peace Community are fine folk, and I have some very good friends among them. Their history is one of clear Christian witness against our nation's nuclear idolatry.

For one and a half years the Detroit Peace Community has been holding witnesses at Bendix, a corporation which manufactures essential parts for nuclear warheads. Bendix operates a plant in Kansas City, Missouri, where hardened foams are produced that transmit radiation and ignite hydrogen bombs. Bendix also produces electronic guidance systems, locking devices, and environmental sensing components. In 1980 Bendix received $458.3 million from the U.S. Department of Defense.

For many months, Christians have been coming to Bendix to pray, leaflet, talk to employees, and hold worship services. The August 6 witness was to be held at the corporation's headquarters in Southfield, Michigan, the suburb in Detroit where I went to high school and where my parents still live. Fittingly, my brother would be arrested in his hometown.

The plan was for nine Christians to enter the Bendix property to pray for peace. They did, and were arrested.

Judge Gene Schnelz in Oakland County Court had previously issued an injunction prohibiting the Detroit Peace Community from setting foot on Bendix property. For violating this injunction, Schnelz sentenced all nine protesters to the Oakland County jail: seven days for those with previous arrests and four days for first-time offenders. They were also charged with trespassing, for which another trial date was set.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., we had just completed an evening service and candlelight vigil at the White House, to which hundreds of people came. Tess, Bill's wife, called to tell me my brother was in jail. She was in good spirits and felt hopeful about the way the witness had gone.

The condition of the jail, however, was quite bad. For days, Bill was without a bed, blanket, or prison clothes. He slept on a cement floor, his tennis shoe for a pillow, in a crowded one-room holding tank where 15 men shared a single toilet. No hot food was served. Meals consisted of Sugar Pops for breakfast and bologna sandwiches for lunch and supper.

Constant noise, transition of prisoners, and boredom were the round-the-clock routine. There was nothing to read, and nothing to write with. And no visitors, including family, were allowed, except clergy. Fortunately, a phone in the cell provided some contact with the outside for prisoners who waited in line to use it.

Bill works as the director of a daycare center run by the Church of the Messiah, an Episcopal parish and Christian community of which he and Tess are members. On the day of his release, Tess had to be in school, so another member of the community, with her two little girls, came to pick up Bill. Two-year-old Lauren, a favorite of Bill's, gave him a big hug and kiss. Then she peered around behind him as if looking for someone. "Where is God?" she asked. Bill looked puzzled. Lauren's mother, Becky, described the conversation she had just had with her two daughters on the way over to the jail.

"Do you know where we are going?" she asked them. "Yes," they replied, "to jail." "Why are we going to jail?" she asked. "To get Bill out of jail and to get God out of jail." The mother asked, "What do you mean, get God out of jail?" Her little girl said, "All week long we've been praying that God would be with Bill in jail."

A little girl was afraid that God would be left in jail. God is, of course, in jail. Christ spoke of his particular presence among the prisoners. Many have testified to the vivid sense of that presence as they have been arrested and imprisoned for reasons of conscience. I'm glad God was in jail with my brother Bill--and is still there.

Jim Wallis was editor-in-chief of Sojourners when this article appeared.