Examining prisons from the perspectives of sociology, theology, history, and biblical exegesis, Griffith argues that the church has taken a woefully wrong turn by aligning itself with the traditional justice system. He shows how prisons are clearly ineffective at deterring crime and rehabilitating offenders and maintains that Christians should be even more concerned with how the prison fails in principle than how it fails in practice.

Uniquely relevant to a world shaken by recent acts of terror, this provocative analysis of our culture of violence calls people of faith back to the way of peace that has always been the proper Christian response to aggression. With the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other, Lee Griffith takes a frank look at the historical events and modern forces that contribute to terrorism. This is not a book about small guerrilla bands of terrorists nor about so-called "Islamic terrorists" - it is a cogent, open-eyed analysis of a worldwide epidemic of violence. In a discussion that will no...