Video Transcript: Healing Communities

Unknown Singer - You made me deep in my despair to show me,  

Dr. Harold Dean Trulear - we look at people who are incarcerated as inferior.  We define them in light of the worst thing they've ever done. We make them  subhuman. We don't want to consider them as being children of God. We don't  want to consider them as being created in the image of God. There's a stigma  our society has given to be incarcerated. And even though Paul was  incarcerated for righteousness sake, were he incarcerated today, he would bear  the same stigma, and he would have to struggle with the gap between  expectation and experience piled on by the stigmatization of society and the  church.  

Unknown Singer – All you have planned for me, and nothing can separate me  from your love when there's so much more still worth fighting for. Now I'm  moving by faith and not by sight, towards victory by the power of your minds,  you're straightening out my path, opening every door. I am your child.  

Dr. Harold Dean Trulear – If you can't deal with inmates, you can't tell the story  of John the Baptist. If you can't deal with inmates, you can't talk about Paul,  because when he wrote, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,  he was an inmate. Now, a good Christian brother came up to correct me one  day, and he said, You know, there's a difference between people who do the  wrong things and get locked up and people that you mentioned. We're talking  about people who do the wrong things. I said, You mean like the man who was  walking down the street one day and saw one of his friends being beaten up by  his boss, and he jumped in the middle and killed the boss. He said, Yeah, that's  the kind of guy you lock up. I said, you just locked up, Moses. 

Unknown Singer 2 – And we can't run from your grace, because your grace is,  chasing, come On, Your Grace is chasing me down, chasing me down.  Goodness and mercy is following me. Your grace is chasing me down, chasing  me down, chasing me down. Your goodness and mercy is following me. No  more condemnation no more separation from you. Your love for me is coming. 

(On screen no dialog) – “Healing Communities train Pastors, Leaders, and Laity  to build relationships of healing, redemption and reconciliation in families and  communities impacted by crime and mass incarceration. Bishop Darren  Ferguson. The United States makes up 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prison population. 1 in 106 white males are in prison. 1 in 36  Hispanic males are in prison. 1 in 15 black males are in prison.” 

Bishop Darren Ferguson -I went to jail a boy and I came out a man. And I'm not 

breaking my arm patting myself on the back, I'm telling you that there are  hundreds of 1000s of other nameless, faceless men like me who've gone  through the prison industrial complex and have come out on the other side  knowing that they can't just go back to their community and act like it's business  as usual. We have to go back to the community and talk to the young men there  and tell them that there's another way.