Aaron Griffith analyzes the evangelical desire to convert prisoners and the mainline Protestant desire for prison reform:
One commonality in how American Protestants from across the theological spectrum think about prisons is their reliance on Jesus’ discussion of “the least of these” in Matt. 25:31–46. These verses have been and continue to be everywhere in prison ministry rhetoric. They were quoted in a statement in the 1787 constitution of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons. In recent years mainliners have used the passage to justify their broader social justice outlook, while evangelicals take it more literally to validate their in-prison proselytization.
But both those interpretations may be off target.
The general consensus of many in biblical studies circles as well as most of the Church Fathers is that “the least of these” are not the oppressed, hungry, or imprisoned masses that the church goes out and helps. Instead, the phrase refers simply to Christians. Those who are being judged before the throne of God are non-Christians, evaluated by how they treated Christians living among them.
Why have both mainliners and evangelicals in America missed this insight? Probably in part because this reading requires a relatively technical understanding of Greek phrases at work in the passage. But perhaps it also has something to do with the fact that evangelicals and mainliners, despite their differences, both understand their prison work as bringing something badly needed to prisoners. Yet they hesitate to see the convict and prison as a person and place that are close to the heart of the crucified God.
The Dish 