Chapter 12:1-5 The State, The Prison

Chapter 12 appears like thunder. Another major theme of the Book of Acts comes to the fore. The followers of the way of Jesus, the Christians, are attacked, some are imprisoned and some are executed. The charges are not always clear, but the basics tend to be that they are charged with threatening the state. They threaten law and order and peace. Sound familiar? We distort and abuse scripture when we assume that Christians were on the side of the power of the state, that Christians were on the side of maintaining the status quo. Since the time of the Book of Acts a troubling thing has happened repeatedly in history and is happening again now. Leaders interested in control and silencing of opponents, governments seeking to maintain control at all costs have co-opted the Christian faith (or a distortion of it) to legitimize their own aims. It happened in Germany. It is happening in Hungary and in Poland now and it is happening in the United States. In these places and at these times, the prison, and violence perpetrated by the state in the name of law and order become a tool against dissent. 

Willie James Jennings, in his commentary, writes; 

“Just as we never leave the presence of the Spirit in Luke’s narrative, we never leave sight of the prison. It is always with us, always offering the antithesis to the good news. The prison always announces worldly power and reveals those intoxicated with the lust for violence, but not primarily from the site of the cell but from the place of the warden, the guards, and those benefiting financially and politically from the mechanisms of incarceration.”