This article considers how the Christian obedience of male prisoners inside the ‘faith dorm’ of a maximum-security prison in the US state of Alabama overlaps with penal compliance. I argue that prisoners’ devotion to faith-dorm strictures is not straightforward rule-following but forges social and Christly intimacy. Faith-dorm obedience foregrounds the theological, and it reveals non-church institutional domains as theologically dynamic and capable of spiritually infused material work. To explore this, I describe how spiritual governance became a technique of Alabama's prison population management. Then I show how the resulting compliance is transfigured into critical notions of obedience that elicit practices of care and mutual support among prisoners through theological imaginaries of grace and Jesus’ crucifixion. Ultimately, I advance prisoners’ obedience as ‘dark wisdom’, which draws on the paradox of a crucified messiah to derive justice and intimacy from the prison's coerced living conditions.

中文翻译：

---

阿拉巴马州监狱信仰宿舍的遵守和服从

本文探讨了美国阿拉巴马州最高安全监狱“信仰宿舍”内男性囚犯的基督教服从如何与刑事服从重叠。我认为，囚犯对信仰宿舍的忠诚并不是简单的遵守规则，而是建立社交和基督般的亲密关系。信仰宿舍的服从突出了神学，它揭示了非教会制度领域在神学上是动态的，并且能够在精神上注入物质工作。为了探索这一点，我描述了精神治理如何成为阿拉巴马州监狱人口管理的一种技术。然后，我将展示由此产生的顺从如何转化为批判性的服从观念，通过恩典和耶稣被钉十字架的神学想象，在囚犯之间引发关怀和相互支持的实践。最终，