“I really want to say to the Baptist Message readers and to all the Baptists in Louisiana thank you so very much for the seminary. We would not have changed this prison - because it’s a God thing - man couldn’t do it - it’s a God thing that you have provided. God used you to deliver this prison from evil to a prison where we now have moral men and rehabilitation is really occurring and you have less victims of violent crime because of what you have contributed and done to support the seminary and Louisiana State Penitentiary which consequently has had an impact on all the prisons in Louisiana – so thank you so very much.” … [Read more...]
Baptist volunteers ‘bridge gap’ between Angola, the world at annual Angola Revival
ANGOLA – Clarence Frederick wore a big smile as he shepherded a group of Louisiana Baptist men through Camp C at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola on April 11. While the Baptist men witnessed, distributed tracts and prayed with the incarcerated men, Frederick, 52, described the importance of their visit. “The average sentence here is four years - we really have to keep the evangelistical message goin’ here,” Frederick said in his Cajun accent. Now in his 27th year of a life sentence for second degree murder, Frederick is a graduate of the New Orleans Theological Seminary pastoral studies program and leads a 70-member inmate church that meets in the camp chapel. While many of the 6,200-plus men incarcerated in America’s largest maximum security prison are serving life sentences at its five other camps, Camp C holds about 1,100 men, previously held in Phelps Correctional Center before it closed two years ago. They will all eventually be released. “These (Baptist) guys come in here and help us feel like we’re bridging the gap between the Christians in society and the Christians in here,” Frederick said. “They actually reach some inmates that perhaps don’t want to talk to an inmate pastor,” Frederick said. “They are … [Read more...]