By Jonathan M. Pitts
Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE — Reginald Bellamy was playing poker with his buddies in the back of the day room at the old Baltimore City Detention Center when he heard the voice that changed his life.
A religious service was underway in the room at the same time. As the female preacher spoke of God’s mercy, Bellamy rushed toward the pulpit, threw his arms around her and blurted out that he needed help, tears in his eyes.
“My homeboys called me a sissy for going up there, but I asked God if he would save me from me, and he did save me from myself,” recalled the 74-year-old, who said he’d reached “the end of my rope” while serving time for failure to pay child support.
Thirty-five years later, Bellamy is chaplain of the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup, the longest-serving clergyman in that position in the state. He has counseled, prayed for, baptized and otherwise spiritually served thousands at the medium-security facility in Anne Arundel County during that span.
Hundreds of those men are among the roughly 68% of former Maryland inmates who avoid reincarceration for at least three years after their release. The 32% recidivism rate is about seven percentage points better than the national average, according to the most recent U.S. Department of Justice figures.
Last week, the East Baltimore resident was doing what he typically does during the holiest week of the Christian year: praying, leading Bible studies, cajoling inmates of all religious traditions, and preparing to deliver the sermon for what is usually the best-attended church service of the year.
Easter, which falls Sunday, marks the moment Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead, giving humans a chance at resurrection from their mortality and sin.
Bellamy said the holiday reflects what the religious services program seeks to do for everyone who is behind bars in his native state.
“Easter is so important to us,” he says. “It makes us realize that when he rose, we all got up with him. No matter what we’ve done, no matter what we’re accused of, we’re given another chance.”
Transformation
Ask him to describe the winding road that brought him to his calling, and Bellamy makes it clear he’d rather focus on the lives and progress of the 700 or so men incarcerated at MCI-J in Jessup, the medium-security prison whose religious life he oversees.
It’s one of 19 prisons in the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, or DPSCS, which houses about 16,000 incarcerated individuals — “I-i’s,” in state jargon. All are required under the First Amendment to offer inmates access to religious services.
They have 46 varieties to choose from in Maryland, more than a dozen at MCI-J. They range from the most populous (nondenominational Christianity, with some 3,000 adherents statewide, and Sunni Islam with about 2,800) to less common denominations such as Buddhism, Judaism and Wicca.
Working on a salary of $80,000 per year — about 8% less than average for DPSCS employees, according to public records — Bellamy oversees services for “I-i’s” of every represented faith, a responsibility that sees him regularly bringing in volunteer clergy from churches, mosques and temples around the state, and offering counsel to all.
Religious services are not listed as a separate category in the department’s annual budget of nearly $1.9 billion.
The East Baltimore resident doesn’t hesitate, when asked, to recall how he got involved in the drug scene in his late 30s, grew angry toward family members who “threw me to the curb,” and ended up in prison on child-support charges.
“I grew up in the church, but as I got older, I went my own way,” he says.
His encounter with the pastor in the day room was a turning point, he remembers, partly thanks to the passage from Second Chronicles she wrote on a scrap of paper and handed him. “‘If my people will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways,’” he said in an interview last month, quoting from memory, “then I will hear from heaven … and forgive their sin and heal their land.’ I prayed that over and over.”
In Bellamy’s view, it was encouragement from mentors in the religious services program that solidified his commitment to thinking less about himself and more about others.
After his release in 1994, he said, he founded and ran a Baltimore halfway house for men, studied the Bible, married a seminary student, Iris Jones, became ordained as a pastor in the Apostolic tradition, and landed his chaplain’s job at MCI-J in 1999.
The Rev. Keith Kitchen, chief of religious services for DCSPS, said Bellamy’s story reflects a fact that keeps him energized in his own often challenging work: Participation in vocational and educational programs in prison keeps recidivism rates about 20% lower, and immersion in religious service programs drops the numbers further than that.
In his view, the fact that “I-i’s” are well familiar with Bellamy’s past only adds to his credibility.
“Chaplain Bellamy brings authenticity in his faith and his work; his experiential knowledge is outstanding, he is well liked and well respected by the incarcerated individuals at MCI-J, and his longevity as a chaplain and commitment to the work are to be commended,” Kitchen said.
Faith on the inside
Those qualities resounded inside MCI-J on Palm Sunday as Bellamy, having signed himself in at the security entrance as he does every day, patrolled the grounds in his minister’s garb, a gold cross around his neck and a quiet smile on his face.
He wasn’t above needling several who were out during rec time, asking them if they were “staying humble.” Some smiled and raised a thumb.
“I talk to the chaplain every day, and that’s like his mantra,” said Kevin Thompson, 42, an “I-i” in his second year at MCI-J, with a friendly shake of the head. He had signed out of his cell during his two-hour recreation period to attend the nondenominational Palm Sunday service in the prison chapel. “I take it as a personal message.”
Bellamy’s ubiquitous presence, seemingly steady mood, whatever the circumstances, and willingness to take the time to talk and listen to “I-i’s” are rarities even among chaplains, said Thompson, who has served time in other state facilities. Along with the Sunday services and prayer sessions he attends, he said the interactions help him deal with an anger problem.
“I’m realizing that when something happens, you can take a moment and think about it from the other person’s point of view,” Thompson said. “You don’t always have to respond violently.”
Another “I-i” joked that Bellamy seems to show up unannounced everywhere at MCI-J.
“He just pops out of nowhere,” Darius Langley, 33, said. “I tell him, ‘You be floating around, Bro. I don’t even hear your footsteps.’ He’s like the big eye in the sky.”
Langley said when he was a child, his grandmother had to force him to go to church. Today, he volunteers as an usher in the chapel most Sundays. One of his favorite duties is handing water to others as they worship — a form of selflessness he said he never experienced before meeting Bellamy and taking part in DCSPS religious programs.
“I’ll be honest with you. Before this, I would’ve never poured water for nobody that wasn’t my homeboy,” he said.
Holy time of year
Thompson and Langley were among the more than 40 “I-i’s,” most clad in blue work shirts, rocking and swaying to music from a praise band in the MCI-J chapel last Sunday as Bellamy stepped to a wooden podium, a Bible in one hand and a palm frond in the other.
It wasn’t the first service he’d overseen during a stretch of weeks marked by holidays in the three Abrahamic religions. He’d worked with Kitchen to provide food options and revised daily schedules for inmates who wished to carry out fasting during Islam’s holy month of Ramadan. He’d helped bring in symbolic foods for a seder and a rabbi to conduct services for the start of Passover on Wednesday. And he has baptized more than two dozen “I-i’s” this year.
The passion in his normally calm voice rose as he touched on the meaning of the morning, Holy Week, Easter and the relevance of the occasions to his gathered congregation.
When Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Bellamy said, it was on a donkey, “not in a Lexus or a stretch limo,” and the choice set a tone for the crucial holiday of Easter, when his ultimate self-sacrifice “gave us a chance to live again.”
It seemed a fitting comment from a man who gave himself to faith behind bars and shares it with others there today.
“He calls us to live with humility, putting others before ourselves,” Bellamy added. Then he repeated his trademark message, leaning toward his listeners: “Are you living with humility?” And the air filled with “amens.”
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