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This thesis is a theo-criminal justice comparative investigation of the intersections between punishment, the phenomenon of mass incarceration, and “death” (both physical and civil [civiliter mortuus]) in the prisons of the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) (Scotland, and England and Wales) through the experiences of prison chaplains. Considering the various shifts to penal harshness after 1970, it provides a data-driven analysis of the consequences of longer sentences reflected in the high rates of ageing, dying and death of prisoners as convicts and non-convicts on remand, in jails and imprisoned for violent and non-violent crimes. In so doing, it contends that these penal conditions describe the normalization of the prison cultures within which prison chaplains function as religious caregivers to ageing, dying and dead prisoners. An underlying exploration in this research is the theoretical and empirical analyses of prison chaplains’ recollection of their prison experiences under the shadows of the “turns” to penal harshness. It argues that prison chaplains have witnessed these consistent penal shifts, their existential consequences, and their theological implications as the basis for their theoretical and practical understanding of the prison cultures of the US and the UK penal systems. In contrast to the argument that crime is the fundamental reason for the normalisation of penal punitiveness and its production of mass incarceration, I also argue that other factors have played central roles that are both historical and contemporary. The research contends that the processing and incarceration of prisoners, many of whom are economically poor and racially marginalised, (poor Whites, Blacks and Hispanics in the US; and poor Whites, Blacks, Asian, Minority ethnic groups in the UK) is disproportionate to that of any other group in the wider population and that this holds true ̶ notwithstanding the differences of scale between them ̶ for both the US and the UK. It is these penal conditions of harshness and mass imprisonment that prison chaplains have described as “the normativity of darkness” (PCS 111) based on their years of prison chaplaincy. The research asserts that a historical, criminal justice reform centred, and theological critique is needed in prison research described as (1) A penal crisis; (2) A moral crisis; and (3) An ethical crisis. While previous prison research includes comparative penal analyses between the US and the UK, my research provides a critique that sheds new light on the phenomenon of mass imprisonment and efforts to confront it. As theoretical and empirical research, it is distinct from previous research in three ways: (1) The theoretical aspect explores how each nation after 1970 has arrived at the shifts to penal harshness from an emphasis on rehabilitative sentences through penal laws and policies; (2) It comparatively explores the continuities between the shifts to penal harshness and the high rates of ageing, dying and death of prisoners (“natural in-prison deaths, homicides and suicides) in the US and the UK penal systems; (3) The empirical portion explores the prison recollections of prison chaplain participants’ in ministering to ageing, dying and dead prisoners in the US and Scotland. The empirical analysis is in addition to theoretical perspectives on the roles of prison chaplains in England and Wales particularly from the Church of England. I do not assume that the penal systems of the United Kingdom are monolithic. The UK has three different legal systems: Scotland, England and Wales, and Northern Ireland. This research will focus specifically on the penal systems of Scotland, England and Wales while recognising the three penal structures associated with the United States penal system: Federal, State, and County. Similarly, this research does not assume that the prison recollections of prison chaplains and their various interpretations are monolithic. Instead, it provides a descriptive analysis of the prison chaplain participants’ reflections based on their diverse religious, social, educational and penal experiences within the scope and limitation of this research.

The aim of this dissertation is to undertake a study of the trinitarian ecclesiology of the North American evangelical theologian Stanley J. Grenz (d.2005), along with his imago Dei theology, revisioned social trinitarianism, narrative theology, incorporation of theosis, and theology of triune participation. This dissertation also utilizes the hermeneutical philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, in conjunction with Grenz’s trinitarian ecclesiology, to propose a missional and hermeneutical ecclesiology. Chapter one begins with an overview of Grenz’s theology and a discussion of the current state of Grenz scholarship. It then introduces Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the self and theory of narrative identity. The chapter concludes with an overview of chapters two, three, and four. Chapter two traces the manner in which Grenz’s social trinitarianism and imago Dei theology yield a social imago. The first section overviews Grenz’s The Social God and the Relational Self, the social imago, the ecclesial self, his notion of ecclesial eschatological prolepsis, and his theology of triune participation. The second section responds to key criticisms of social trinitarianism, discusses Grenz and Ricoeur on the relational self, and outlines the manner in which Grenz’s theology of theosis and triune participation “in Christ” and through the Spirit yields an ecclesially oriented communal theo-anthropology. The final section takes up Grenz’s social imago and triune participation in relation to female/male mutuality in ecclesial participation and community. Chapter three discusses Grenz’s narrative theology and the development of a narrative imago. The first section overviews Grenz’s The Named God and the Question of Being and his development of the narrative of the divine name as the saga of the triune God, his further use of theosis, and the narrative imago arising within storied participation “in Christ” through the Spirit. The second section examines the continuity of Named God with Social God and argues that Grenz presents a revisioned social trinitarianism. The second section also considers Grenz and Ricoeur on the narrative self and proposes that Grenz’s ecclesial theo-anthropology now becomes a cruciform Christo-anthropology. The third section takes up the narrative imago and female/male mutuality and cruciformity as it arises from the ecclesial relation of storied and communal theotic triune participation. Chapter four treats the development of a Grenzian ecclesial imago and proposes a missional and hermeneutical ecclesiology. The first section presents Grenz’s ecclesiology as it is oriented towards mission and the connection of theosis, triune participation, and ecclesia. This section then proposes a missional grammar for the church as God’s ecclesial hermeneutics of community. The second section discusses potential charges of ecclesiological foundationalism, considers Grenz and Ricoeur on the summoned self, and extends Grenz’s theo-anthropology and Christo-anthropology into a missio-anthropology. The third section considers the mutuality and cruciformity of ecclesial “male and female” relation “in Christ” and through the Spirit, manifest in ecclesial friendship and hospitality, as the coming-to-representation and hermeneutics of community of the triune God. The conclusion offers a summary and possible avenues for further investigation.

This thesis centers on Lutheran theologian Paul Althaus (1888–1966), one of the most contentious figures of twentieth-century Protestant theology and an architect of the Erlangen Opinion on the Aryan Paragraph. Althaus has been the object of a polarising scholarly debate on account of his ambiguous relationship to National Socialism and his ambivalent views on the so-called ‘Jewish Question.’ The investigation of the latter of these two points is the chief research objective of the thesis. That is, how did Althaus understand the ‘Jewish Question,’ especially in its theological dimension, and what did he envision as its solution? In the following pages, I suggest that Althaus fits together two separate but coherent strands of thought—inclusion and exclusion—into a paradoxical socio-theological vision for the Jews. The predominance of the scholarly literature falters on his theology of Jews and Judaism because it interprets the evidence more or less according to a binary model (philosemitism/antisemitism or inclusion/exclusion). But on this point Althaus resists facile classification because his approach to the ‘Jewish Question’ is dialectical. As such, it requires a dialectical interpretive approach to account for the function of ‘Jews’ within the wider logic of his theological system, including his doctrines of creation, the church, and the state. The study’s ultimate conclusion is that Althaus comes to interpret Jewish existence according to a dialectic of pathology and performance (according to which Jews are both a danger to and an indispensable factor for the life of the German Volk), resulting in an inclusive quarantine of Jewish persons within both civil and ecclesial communities. The argument proceeds along four movements. The first movement considers Althaus’ völkisch writings during the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) in order to uncover the basic categories—pathology and performance—through which Althaus interprets Jewish existence. Movement II surveys Althaus’ attitudes toward the Jews under National Socialism (1933–1945), with special reference to the Erlangen Opinion on the Aryan Paragraph, a document which recommended that Jewish men be restricted from pastoral office in the Deutsche Evangelische Kirche. Movement III demonstrates that, even in the knowledge of the Nazi regime’s crimes against the Jews, Althaus relinquished the dialectic of pathology and performance only gradually and incompletely in the postwar period (1945–Althaus’ death in 1966). The dissertation’s fourth movement approaches Althaus as a case study in the viability of Lutheran social ethics in light of his xenophobic articulation of the doctrine of the orders of creation. Insofar as Althaus brought this doctrine to bear on questions concerning the place of Jews in German society and in the German churches, his example raises broader dogmatic questions for a post-Shoah world. The thesis concludes with a proposal for doctrinal repair with resources found within the Lutheran tradition itself, with particular attention to the theologia crucis.