It’s time for another installment in our monthly series, Living Questions, in which we examine the role of religion in the public sphere. We’re producing this series in partnership with the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies.
Today, we’re actually going to be talking about the role of religion in a not-quite-so-public sphere. Tom's guests are two Lutheran pastors who bring their ministries to Maryland prisons, and a religious scholar who’s taught classes on the Hebrew Bible for Maryland inmates.
The Rev. Gerry Rickel is the Pastor at St. Dysmas, a Lutheran community in the Maryland prison system. The Rev. Susan Beck is the pastor at The Shepherd of the Glen Lutheran Church in Glenwood. She works with Gerry Rickel in his prison ministry. And joining Tom on the line from public radio station WAMU in Washington is Dr. Jerome Copulsky. He is a Scholar-in-Residence teaching religion at American University’s Department of Philosophy and Religion, and has taught classes on the Hebrew Bible at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup.
