The Freedom From Religion Foundation is demanding that the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, based in Bloomington, immediately stop sponsoring Christian devotional events at the correctional facility, including pressuring inmates to undergo baptisms. 

FFRF received a report that the sheriff’s office and Monroe County Correctional Center organized a religious event encouraging inmates to display adherence to Christianity and be baptized. A May 31 post from the official Monroe County Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page contained multiple photos, including a banner featuring the message “Where You at Redeemed?” along with a cross, detailing the event as such:
Forty-nine individuals publicly declared their faith in Christ through baptism. Christian hip-hop artists Redeemed and J. Truth shared their testimonies and performed music that inspired and encouraged those in attendance.

The evening was marked by healing, forgiveness, accountability, and redemption. 

According to the Facebook post, not only were the baptisms administered with the participation of Monroe County Correctional Center staff, but they were also organized and supervised by multiple law enforcement leaders. Some of the officials are pictured in the Facebook post in their official uniforms.

Multiple residents contacted FFRF about constitutional concerns regarding the baptisms. Community members expressed concern with the sheriff’s office’s promotion of the event on its official social media. As one individual contacting FFRF pointed out, the inmates likely would not have felt free to refuse to participate in the baptisms or the event because it was clear that the sheriff’s office, the center and leadership wanted inmates to attend and be baptized. Another individual contacting FFRF expressed concern about nonreligious inmates who did not participate being treated worse than inmates who did. 

“By organizing, hosting, and promoting inmate baptisms and celebrating inmates’ conversions to Christianity on its official social media, the sheriff’s office is unconstitutionally favoring religion over nonreligion, and Christianity over all other faiths,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence has written to Sheriff Ruben Marté.

A correctional facility is an inherently coercive environment — and inmates and detainees are literally a captive audience, as FFRF points out. When the sheriff’s office entangles itself with religion and makes it clear that it’s encouraging inmates to convert to Christianity, inmates will no doubt feel pressured to convert and participate in religious activities to be seen as cooperative and well-behaved. Inmates and detainees who are aware of the sheriff’s office’s promotion of Christianity will not genuinely feel free to refuse to participate in its religious activities. This is constitutionally impermissible. 

FFRF emphasizes that law enforcement must be even-handed and avoid any appearance of bias toward some citizens and hostility toward others. Sheriff’s Office employees are not permitted to use the machinery of government or taxpayer money to promote their personal religion to inmates or the wider community. And such activity needlessly marginalizes the 31 percent of Indiana residents who are religiously unaffiliated.

“It is egregious and unacceptable that a sheriff would arrange Christian baptisms for inmates, using the sheriff’s department time and staff to push a specific belief system on a literal captive audience,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says. “A county jail is not a church and a sheriff is not a pastor. U.S. citizens are entitled to their right to be free of religious coercion, and that right cannot be revoked for the incarcerated.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With over 41,000 members, including more than 500 members in Indiana, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

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