What It's Like to Be a Prison Chaplain

Before she became a prison chaplain, Kelly Raths was in school to become a massage therapist. She had gotten a degree in divinity from Harvard and had spent time working on kids’ programs at a Methodist church in Montana—“they prepared me well for working with inmates,” she said. Life intervened, and now, eight years later, she is an administrator in the Oregon Department of Corrections, working on inmate advocacy and community-building. For more than half a decade, though, she helped provide the spiritual-support system for the men in two medium- and maximum-security penitentiaries.