Down in the Chapel
Religious Life in an American Prison

A bold and provocative interpretation of one of the most religiously vibrant places in Americaa state penitentiary Baraka, Al, Teddy, and Sayyidfour black men from South Philadelphia, two Christian and two Muslimare serving life at Pennsylvanias maximum-security Graterford Prison. All of them work in Graterfords chapel, a place that is at once a sanctuary for religious contemplation and an arena for disputing the works of God and man. Day in, day out, everything is, in its twisted way, rather ordinary. And then one of them disappears. Down in the Chapeltells the story of one week at Graterford Prison. We learn how the men at Graterford pass their time, care for themselves, and commune with their makers. We observe a variety of Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, and others at prayer and study and song. And we listen in as an interloping scholar of religion tries to make sense of it all. When prisoners turn to God, they are often scorned as con artists who fake their piety, or pitied as wretches who cling to faith because faith is all they have left. Joshua Dubler goes beyond these stereotypes to show the religious life of a prison in all its complexity. One part prison procedural, one part philosophical investigation,Down in the Chapelexplores the many uses prisoners make of their religions and weighs the circumstances that make these uses possible. Gritty and visceral, meditative and searching, it is an essential study of American religion in the age of mass incarceration.