Christocentric Concreteness versus the Religion of Empire
Which Side Do You Stand On?
About the author: Lyle C. May earned his BA in law and sociology from Adams State University, is an incarcerated journalist and author of Witness: An Insider's Narrative of the Carceral State (Haymarket Books, 2024), and The Transformative Journey of Higher Education in Prison: A Class of One (Routledge Academic Press, 2024). To learn more about his work go to lylecmay.com and sign up for a free newsletter.
The following are prepared remarks given via telephone on June 17th, 2025 at the Incarcerated God Conference hosted by the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. These remarks were a response to Dr. Chris Boesel’s plenary lecture, “‘The Criminals with Him?’: The Promise and Eclipse of Christological Concreteness in Barth's Prison Sermons.”
Karl Barth says God's reconciliation with the world comes through Jesus Christ's solidarity with the two criminals who were crucified beside him. It is because of this relationship, claims Barth, that God shares their criminal identity, though only in the loosest sense.1 Christ's was a false condemnation and wrongful execution, instigated by Pharisees afraid of losing their control and power. Since they couldn't outsmart Jesus, they used the already corrupt and merciless Roman criminal justice system against him. Their coconspirators—Judas and Pontious Pilate—were mere cogs in the Roman Empire's manifest destiny. Is God's redemptive work for a sinful broken world possible in the material belly of a system designed to colonize, subjugate, and oppress under the illusion of “justice”? While all things are possible with God, I dare say that whether a thing occurs depends on God's will.
Consider for a moment what the Empire's system is and who it works for. Also consider the Talionic law the Pharisees used to plot against Jesus is now a principle and purpose of the 21st century American criminal legal system. An “eye for an eye,” or retributive justice, is championed by merciless elected officials who use tough-on-crime narratives to mask sadistic impulses, ignore constitutional protections, and seek to purge the country of non-whites, non-heterosexuals, and non-citizens. I am certain, in their hatred and envy of Jesus, those who fomented His death convinced themselves the law hid what they truly were. Throughout history countless others would follow the same machinations under the color of the law to perpetrate their brand of evil.
I was raised in the Catholic Church. As a child, my siblings and I had a good understanding of Christianity because our mother taught CCD (Sunday school) classes. What we did not learn about is the sociopolitical influence and contextualization of Empire on the Church, or the corruption of Church leaders in the absence of Christocentrism. Those lessons came to me the hard way, through criminal justice policy and incarceration.
In 1994, as a 16 year old in the Maine Youth Detention Center, every Sunday morning we were lined up and counted, then marched to a chapel service on the property. It was not a choice. While at chapel, we listened to biblical excoriation about the wages of sin, penalties of disobedience, humility before authorities, and loving one's neighbor. We sang the usual prison hymn “Amazing Grace,” and then went back to the dorm where we sat in forced silence and hunger.
Eventually, one or more of us would be verbally degraded, beaten, maced, trussed like a pig in zip ties, and put in solitary confinement. When it was my turn to face similar abuse in a different youth prison a few years later, I don't know if God heard my pleas. Maybe it was just a teachable moment on power dynamics. The beating by the guards was bad enough that I lost consciousness and control of my bladder. When I came to feel the concrete floor of my cell, hot stale air, fear, and despair greeted me. It's hard to imagine a time and place where I felt more alone. When a guard returned, I thought it was for another beating and stood to fight. Instead, he opened my cell door and threw a tattered Bible on the floor. Before slamming the door shut, he said “Only God can save you now, boy.”2
Reading about Christocentric concreteness and how Christian action should intersect with the incarcerated, on an organizational, body-of-the-church level—it's a tepid presence at best. As a result, the idea that God always addresses the Church, calls believers, judges them, and saves the world—all in the company of those crucified with Jesus—seems like one of those things promptly forgotten at the end of sermon.3 God's reconciliation with the world through Christ's solidarity with the condemned isn't something I would witness until I was sentenced to death.
In the book of Hebrews, chapter 13, verse 3 instructs “Remember those in prison, as though you were in prison with them… .”4 It seems obvious that Christian stewardship should extend to everyone in prison. Yet, that message is often ignored, or worse, corrupted by factions within the Christian church that have capitulated to Empire and consented to become a religion of racist oppression, rather than Jesus Christ.5 How have Christians in the U.S. so distanced themselves from Christ they stand behind White Christian Nationalism, swear on the Bible then commit perjury, sentence their neighbors to death, decry shelter or mercy shown to immigrants, and manipulate scripture to support inhumane laws that devalue the lives of anyone?
The answer lies in an ugly history, one often revised or left out of history books altogether. It's no secret that in early modern Europe, the Catholic Church controlled access to the Bible at a local level. Books were uncommon and valuable, and reading ability amongst the peasants and serfs was rare. The tight control of scripture allowed unscrupulous priests and local Church leaders to mislead and oppress the poor through their ignorance. This ultimately enabled an estimated 60,000 to 9 million public hangings and burnings at the stake—innocent people who were “suspected of witchcraft,” a practice that carried over into colonial America, championed as it was by the Puritans. “Puritan sensibility” was the central sign in Christian culture, with the cross—an implement of torture and death—retaining its physical significance, one used in the genocide and "reeducation" of Native Americans, and by slavers kidnapping Africans for sale as property.6
I bring up these historical examples because it was the intersection of slavery, genocide, Puritanical punishment, and the night rides of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction that forged mass incarceration. Much of the corrupt interpretation of Christianity comes from the Roman Empire, through the Catholic Church, through the Protestant Reformation, and into “blood and soil” of American Christian Nationalism. Extralegal lynchings of former slaves by the Klan as an unofficial police force were eventually legitimized through tough-on-crime rhetoric and modern policing.7 Make no mistake about what I am saying—corrupted forms of religion may have been involved in these horrors, but they were not Christocentric. If one were to hazard a guess, keeping Jesus distinct from those crucified with Him is all the justification needed for the devaluation of human life amongst the poor and black, indigenous, and people of color. Fleeting identification with the so-called “criminal” not only erases their visibility in society as members of a community, it leads the public to believe “less than” is the natural order for anyone convicted of a crime. They don't just disappear amidst the transfiguration of Christ, they are entirely removed from the discussion. This is something of a revelation, one illustrated by the sociopolitical place of the cross.8
The Son of God was not identifying with people who committed crimes. God was not assuming the label of a law breaker. Such a premise attempts to confine the ocean in a child's hole-filled bucket. In three days, Jesus rebuilt the temple HE tore down, a radical act that defies human power dynamics and injustice, the act of a God that cannot be constrained. And yet, humanity still attempts to bend God toward its will, rather than God's will. Here I'll quote the penal philosopher Michel Foucault: “In the darkest region of the political field the condemned man represents the inverted figure of the king.”9
A capital trial is traumatic and punctuated with the judge's pronouncement of the verdict: “This jury hereby sentences you to death. May God have mercy on your soul.” I had just turned 21 in the spring of 1999 and arrived on death row a few weeks before an execution was carried out. In a state of shock, struggling to comprehend the fact that I could be executed, I had been blessed in a way. Though I could not yet see it, God looked out for me through condemned men who stepped up to help. They knew I needed guidance and would flounder and suffer if they didn't provide it. It wasn't just empathy, community, and solidarity—I was shown the most certain form of Christocentric concreteness one could imagine.
A few months after my arrival on death row, I got into a fight and was moved to another cell block, where I met Harvey Green. What I could not have known is that Harvey would become a manifestation of Jesus as a man on death row. Endless patience. Unconditional love. Mercy.10 Harvey and I exercised together and grew close. He urged me to pursue God. Ask my questions. Be angry over my suffering, but bring it to God in prayer, confess my sins, and be constant with God. Harvey was one of several brothers who mentored me on death row. He admitted his crimes and repented and pushed others to do the same.
In Harvey, I witnessed the rebuke of the second criminal crucified with Jesus.11 In Luke, chapter 23, verses 39-43, as Jesus hung on the cross between the two criminals, one reviled him, saying: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.” The other rebuked him and said, “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.” Then he said "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Jesus replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”12
I had been on death row less than a year when the state of North Carolina executed Harvey Green. Before they took him away, my friend told me not to let death row or prison define me as the state intended it: a criminal worth only exile and death. With tears on his cheeks, Harvey said, "You. Are. Valuable.”13
How do you reckon with the shadow of the valley of death? The enemy uses despair, hatred, self-loathing, ignorance, and doubt to make it seem as if the center has moved or become indistinct. It has not. My friend's death hurt me in ways that would take years to fully understand. I would go on to experience 33 executions before the state put them on hold in 2006. Harvey's execution was one of the most memorable, both because I saw God manifest in him, but also because he taught me how to live.
By dividing Christ from those crucified with Him, Christianity becomes a religion of Empire, one complicit in its atrocities, one that ignores the afflicted and whitewashes the physical reality of Golgotha: colonial subjugation, brutality, and death. It is a division that should have every self-described person of faith asking themselves where they stand: in the center with Jesus Christ, or the machinations that put Him to death.
In the First Letter of John, chapter 3, verse 13, says "We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. Whoever does not love remains in death."14 The Lutheran minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, before he was executed by the Nazis for speaking out against Hitler, taught that the ongoing incarnation of Christ happens in community. The Church is the Son of God working among us. Bonhoeffer wrote “Not only does this contain the notion that social interaction is the point of departure for understanding Christian faithfulness, it means when I encounter another I encounter Christ, and that person places an ethical demand on me. To be disciples of Christ, to follow after Him, we are called to act vicariously on behalf of others, wherever we find them.”15
Lyle C. May earned his BA in law and sociology from Adams State University, is an incarcerated journalist and author of Witness: An Insider's Narrative of the Carceral State (Haymarket Books, 2024), and The Transformative Journey of Higher Education in Prison: A Class of One (Routledge Academic Press, 2024). To learn more about his work go to lylecmay.com and sign up for a free newsletter.
Chris Boesel, “‘The Criminals with Him?’ The Promise and Eclipse of Barth's Christocentric Concreteness,” Center for Barth Studies, 2025 Karl Barth Conference, “The Incarcerated God: Thinking with and beyond Barth on the Prison System,” (June 17, 2025).
Lyle C. May, “High-Rise,” The J Journal, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY (2015).
Boesel, “‘The Criminals with Him?’”
Hebrews 13:3, New Revised Standard Edition.
Boesel, “‘The Criminals with Him?’”
Boesel, “‘The Criminals with Him?’”
Brian Jarvis, Cruel and Unusual: Punishment and U.S. Culture (Pluto Press, 2004).
Jarvis, Cruel and Unusual.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
Lyle C. May, Witness: An Insider's Narrative of the Carceral State (Haymarket Books, 2024).
May, Witness.
Luke 23: 39-43, New Revised Standard Edition.
May, Witness.
1 John 3:13, New Revised Standard Edition
May, Witness.
Thank you Mr. May for your profound reflections. This sentence in particular caught my attention:
"Fleeting identification with the so-called “criminal” not only erases their visibility in society as members of a community, it leads the public to believe “less than” is the natural order for anyone convicted of a crime."
If we must have the iconography of a cross in a church building, (the Puritans found them "papistical" and had none in their North American meeting houses), perhaps there should always be three of them, with two others flanking that of Jesus. Perhaps they should all be crucifixes for any who neither yet know nor can recall the story of "the criminals with him." And, perhaps the artists should portray these three tortured bodies in the present-tense as it were, rather than as museum pieces of supposedly "sacred" art.
Your reflections have prompted these musings.
Thank you,
James Kay