THE EXODUS:

A United Methodist Chaplain Designed A Program To Help Prisoners Prepare For Life On The Outside

by Robert Maurer (The Interpreter, April 1982)

A maximum security prison known as Green Haven features the Exodus program ministering both to Muslims and Christians. The founder of the program is the Rev. Edwin M. Muller, a United Methodist chaplain.
Mr. Muller has wandered the corridors of Green Haven for the past 13 years. He is that rare combination of a theologian who bases his program squarely on biblical themes and a tough politician doing what he can for the constituents in his ward…he focuses on a prime need of inmates’ preparation to re-enter society. His ministries are attempts to keep inmates from succumbing to destructive dependency patterns fostered by the walls which surround them.

The Exodus

There is a wall inside Green Haven which bears the writings of inmates. Obtained three years ago by Mr. Muller as a part of his Exodus ministry, the wall is a place where inmates announce how they might tear down the walls within themselves and gain control over their lives.

The theme “exodus” was introduced…in a program designed to help prisoners prepare for life on the outside. “Life on the street is a kind of wilderness,” Mr. Muller contends. “Most people leaving prison, however, think it’s the Promised Land and are not prepared for it. No one is ever prepared to be cast into the wilderness.”

But unlike the street where life is largely unstructured, prison life is so structured that an inmate develops a severe sense of dependency. So he mistakenly thinks that he can handle life ‘on the outside because he is functioning fairly well on the inside. The Exodus program uses the biblical motif of the passage from Egypt to Israel to show inmates that if they do not prepare concrete goals to enter the contemporary Promised Land, they’ll still be in the wilderness after leaving prison. “If a convict’s only thought is to get out, he won’t make it when he gets out,” Mr. Muller observed.

The rooms for the exodus are hard-won space where some inmates have the time to try and not be chewed up by the system. “Bama,” a [lifer]; is one of the inmates who understands the spiritual and spatial importance of the program: “Muslims say you got to be Islamic; the Protestant Center says you gotta be born again; the priest says you got to be a saint; if you don’t want any of that, you just come to Exodus where all we got are human beings, period.” […]