The church has not been entirely passive in this arena. God Behind Bars, through its Pando app, has reached more than 664,000 inmates across 423 prisons in 26 U.S. states, with cumulative views of faith-based content exceeding 150 million.10 The Covid-19 pandemic, which shut down in-person prison visitation across the globe, forced a rapid adaptation to digital ministry—and that adaptation demonstrated both the feasibility and the effectiveness of technology-mediated ministry to the incarcerated.

Tablet-based programs in California and other states have provided inmates with access to educational content, legal resources, and limited communication—a modest step in the right direction, albeit one hedged about with the state’s characteristic restrictions and surveillance. The Covid-19 adaptations proved what many of us already knew: digital ministry works. Churches that had never considered streaming a service suddenly found themselves reaching men behind bars who had never been reached before. Pastors who had been turned away at prison gates discovered that a screen could bypass the gatekeepers entirely. The pandemic, in its strange and terrible providence, demonstrated that the technology to minister to prisoners exists, that it is effective, and that the primary barrier to its use is not technological but political.

These programs represent the state’s implicit acknowledgment that communication and information access serve legitimate purposes for prisoners. The question, then, is not whether prisoners should have access to communication technology, but who controls that access and on what terms.

The church’s position should be clear: communication is a human necessity, and a biblical requirement for believers, not a privilege to be dispensed by the state at its discretion. Where the state provides adequate access, Christians should use the channels available. Where the state fails to provide adequate access—as it manifestly does in most prison systems worldwide—the church is justified in filling the gap, even when filling that gap requires the kind of courageous disobedience that has characterized the Baptist tradition from its earliest days.

Indeed, the Baptist heritage demands nothing less. We are the heirs of men who went to prison for preaching, who were whipped for worshipping, who were banished for believing. We, of all Christians, should understand that the state’s definition of legality and God’s definition of righteousness are not always the same. God’s word certainly does not categorize cell phone ownership or use as sinful. And when public policy edicts and God’s standards diverge, we know whose voice to follow: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Action Steps

1. Study the biblical theology of civil disobedience. Read Acts 5:29 in its full context (Acts 4–5), along with Exodus 1:15-21, Joshua 2, and Daniel 3 and 6. Develop a personal framework for when obedience to God requires disobedience to the state.

2. Investigate the communication conditions in your local or partner prison. What does a payphone call cost? How often can inmates call their families? What access do they have to legal counsel, religious services, and educational resources? Document these conditions and share them with your congregation.

3. Advocate for communication reform. Contact your elected representatives and urge them to support affordable prison phone rates, expanded video visitation, and access to religious and educational content through tablets and other devices.

4. If you choose to assist inmates in obtaining communication access, do so with clear ethical boundaries: legitimate purposes only, careful discernment about recipients, and full awareness of the legal risks involved.

5. Support organizations that provide digital ministry to prisoners, such as God Behind Bars or—on a much smaller scale, in Spanish-speaking areas, Historic Baptists (bautistashistoricos.com), and similar faith-based technology ministries. These organizations provide legitimate, legal avenues for digital ministry that complement any direct assistance you may provide.

Discussion Questions

1. In Romans 13:1-4, who defines “good” and “evil”—God, by His revealed law, or the state, by its own pronouncements? How does your answer to that question shape your willingness to disobey a particular civil regulation, and how does it relate to Acts 5:29?

2. The Hebrew midwives, Rahab, Esther, Elijah, Daniel, and the apostles all disobeyed civil authority for righteous reasons. How do their examples apply to the question of cell phones in prison? Are there meaningful differences between their situations and ours?

3. How should the church respond to the exploitative pricing of prison phone systems? Is advocacy sufficient, or does the urgency of the situation justify more direct action?

4. What safeguards should Christians put in place to ensure that communication assistance to prisoners is used for legitimate purposes and not for criminal activity?

5. How does the Baptist tradition of civil disobedience—Bunyan, Holmes, Williams, Backus, Leland—inform our response to unjust prison regulations today? Have modern Baptists forgotten their heritage of courageous dissent?

References

Bahnsen, G. L. (1985). By This Standard: The Authority of God’s Law Today, Institute for Christian Economics.

Bahnsen, G. L. (1984). Theonomy in Christian ethics (2nd expanded ed.). Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing. (Original work published 1977 by Craig Press.)

Bunyan, J. (1991). A confession of my faith and a reason of my practice in worship. In The works of John Bunyan (Vol. II). Banner of Truth. (Original work published 1672.)

Cobin, J. M. (2003). Bible and government: Public policy from a Christian perspective. Alertness Books.

Cobin, J. M. (2006). A Christian theology of public policy: Highlighting the American experience. Alertness Books.

Cobin, J. M. (2026/2027). Suffering unjustly: Imprisonment, wrecked families, and property or wealth destruction affecting Christians in modern democratic societies. Publisher to be determined.

Federal Communications Commission (2024). In the matter of incarcerated people’s communications services (Report and Order, Order on Reconsideration, Clarification and Waiver, and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, FCC 24-75, July 18, 2024). https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-404087A1.pdf

Georgia Department of Corrections. (2024). 2024 contraband reports. Georgia Department of Corrections. https://gdc.georgia.gov/organization/about-gdc/agency-activity/research-and-reports/contraband-arrests-gdc-facilities/2024

God Behind Bars (2025). Pando app impact summary. https://www.godbehindbars.com/

Holmes, O. (2008). I have learned what it is to be in want: The life and writings of Obadiah Holmes (E. Gaustad, Ed.). Judson Press. (Original “Letter from Obadiah Holmes,” 1675.)

James VI of Scotland and I of England (1598). The trve lavve of free monarchies; or The reciprock and mutuall duetie betwixt a free king, and his naturall subiectes. Robert Waldegrave.

McMaster, H. (2024). Executive budget summary, fiscal year 2024–2025. Office of the Governor, State of South Carolina. https://governor.sc.gov/sites/governor/files/Documents/Executive-Budget/FY25%20Executive%20Budget%20Summary.pdf

Urban Institute (2023). Cell phone jamming technology for contraband interdiction in correctional settings. Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2023-07/Cell%20Phone%20Jamming%20Technology%20for%20Contraband%20Interdiction%20in%20Correctional%20Settings.pdf

U.S. Congress (2025). Cellphone Jamming Reform Act of 2025, S. 1137, 119th Cong. (and companion H.R. 2350). https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1137

Webster, D. (2024). The cost of communication: How jails and prisons charge incarcerated persons for phone use [Blog post]. Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy. https://www.law.georgetown.edu/poverty-journal/blog/the-cost-of-communication-how-jails-and-prisons-charge-incarcerated-persons-for-phone-use/

Notes

1. The hermeneutical argument summarized in this paragraph is developed at length in chapter 19 above; chapter 26, endnote 12, provides the overview. See also Bible and Government: Public Policy from a Christian Perspective (Alertness Books, 2003); A Christian Theology of Public Policy: Highlighting the American Experience (Alertness Books, 2006); and Suffering Unjustly: Imprisonment, Wrecked Families, and Property or Wealth Destruction Affecting Christians in Modern Democratic Societies (forthcoming 2026/2027). James I’s absolutist version is in The Trve Lavve of Free Monarchies (Robert Waldegrave, 1598).

2. Bunyan, A Confession of My Faith (1672), in The Works of John Bunyan, vol. II (Banner of Truth, 1991), p. 594. The full sentence reads, “I have determined, the Almighty God being my help and shield, yet to suffer, if frail life might continue so long, even till the moss shall grow on mine eyebrows, rather than thus to violate my faith and principles.” The phrase has become emblematic of Baptist resistance to state control of religious practice.

3. Holmes’ own first-person account is preserved in his 1675 letter, “An account of the things that happened to Obadiah Holmes upon his being whipped at Boston,” reprinted in Edwin S. Gaustad (ed.), I have learned what it is to be in want: The life and writings of Obadiah Holmes (Judson Press, 2008). Holmes records that, after the thirty lashes, “having joyfulness in my heart and cheerfulness in my countenance, I told the magistrates, ‘You have struck me as with roses.’”

4. Webster (2024) and the FCC’s 2024 ICS docket data document per-minute rates that, prior to the 2024 caps, ran as high as one dollar per minute for a fifteen-minute domestic call. Securus Technologies and ViaPath Technologies (formerly Global Tel Link) together control over eighty percent of the U.S. prison communications market.

5. FCC Report and Order, FCC 24-75 (July 18, 2024), which capped per-minute rates as low as nine cents in small jails, eleven cents per minute for video calls, and required that per-minute pricing be offered—collectively producing more than a fifty percent reduction in per-minute caps for the majority of Incarcerated People’s Communications Services (IPCS) consumers.

6. McMaster (2024). The $23 million figure was Governor McMaster’s FY 2024–2025 Executive Budget recommendation to expand contraband phone interdiction to all twenty-one institutions of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, building on the pilot at Lee Correctional Institution following the 2018 riot. By the FY 2025–2026 budget cycle, this had grown into a broader $43.2 million package of new DOC appropriations, with contraband interdiction continuing as one of its priority components.

7. Georgia Department of Corrections (2024) reported the seizure of more than 15,500 contraband cell phones during calendar year 2024, alongside more than 150 drones used to deliver contraband.

8. Urban Institute (2023) reviews the empirical literature on contraband cell phone prevalence and reports estimates clustering around twenty-five percent of inmates with access to a contraband phone at any given time. Earlier industry estimates from corrections commissioners and managed-access vendors give roughly the same figure.

9. U.S. Congress (2025), Cellphone Jamming Reform Act of 2025, S. 1137, 119th Cong., introduced March 26, 2025 by Senators Cotton, Lankford, Risch, Graham, Crapo, Cassidy, Capito, Hyde-Smith, Hagerty, and Ricketts; companion H.R. 2350 introduced by Representative Kustoff. The bill would authorize the Federal Communications Commission to permit state correctional facilities to operate cell phone jamming equipment, a practice currently prohibited under the Communications Act of 1934.

10. God Behind Bars (2025) reports that its Pando app is installed on more than 664,000 inmate tablets across more than 423 prisons in twenty-six U.S. states, with cumulative content views exceeding 150 million.