INTO THE LIGHT: EVANGELICAL REHAB AND THE SEDUCTION OF NEW LIFE

Teresa Gowan and Jack Atmore

ABSTRACT
Purpose Religious addiction treatment has experienced a rise both in its reach and exposure to attention from medical professionals. Largely autonomous conversion-based programs have received unprecedented support and legitimacy. We investigate Victory Ministries,1 a large Midwestern evangelical rehab facility, exploring the similarities and differences between formulations of addiction-as-disease found in secular rehab and the moral binaries that guide Victorys program. Methodology/approach Qualitative case study: Interviews and ethnography. Findings Working from in-depth interviews, we explore the inner workings of Victorys curriculum and program design, as it transmutes dominant therapeutic concepts and methods into its own Manichaean frame. Aided by superior nancial resources and support of a tight-knit network of churches, it delivers its most successful clients into a new life redeemed by Christ.

Critical Perspectives on Addiction Advances in Medical Sociology, Volume 14, 155178 Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1057-6290/doi:10.1108/S1057-6290(2012)0000014011

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Social implications Proponents of conversion-based service provision position religious institutions as the primary agents of willing compassion and generosity beyond the family compass, stripping the rest of civil society of any claims to promote the greater good. In Victorys metaphor of invisible war, a Manichaean vision is quite explicit. Every denition of recovery and reintegration in terms of conversion and submission to religious authority inherently suggests that substance use stems largely from immorality and that the unsaved in general are sinful and dangerous. By funding a conversion-based shadow welfare apparatus, we argue, the US government is intensifying the criminalization of poverty, the steady downgrading of more inclusive institutions, and ultimately the materialization of Victorys Manichaean vision in a polarized nation. Keywords: Addiction treatment; Charitable choice; faith-based services; criminalization of poverty

In black slacks and a shapeless white blouse, Ruby stood before an intent congregation, working her way through a tale of booze and family dysfunction redeemed by God and treatment. God has lifted the scales from my eyes, and I can now see that just because I failed, doesnt make me a failure, she offered meekly, her thoughts punctuated by ums and ahs. And I really appreciate the support of churches like you guys, if it wasnt for the support of churches like you I would not have the opportunity to be here and to really allow God to work in my life the way he intended to. Soy her voice trailed off. The congregation clapped enthusiastically in spite of Rubys at affect and lackluster conclusion, the energy from earlier, more lively testimonials lingering in their ngers. As the applause faded, a man strode to stand rigid at the podium, sleek gray hair, and a pencil mustache lending his face the gravity of a wearied centurion. On risers behind him the Victory Ministries choir waited attentively. Its interesting, Pastor Mike, he said, the last three testimonies, all three of them have been people from this church. And you know what? Thats the way it should be, because you are a church reaching out to people in the community. Nods of knowing agreement could be seen across the room. Jean-clad legs shifted on folding chairs and full, weathered faces looked up to the stage. Families, friends, and couples were spread throughout the massive hall, the mood informal but excited.

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The word of God is not silent on the subject of addiction, continued Pastor Don, director of Victory Ministries. There are 200 references in the word of God that talk about chemical dependency and drunkenness, and its never really referred to as a biological disease. How many believe the word of God? The congregation murmured its assent, rapt eyes xed on the pensive pastor. Its always called a moral decadence, Pastor Don explained. yWay back in Solomon of oldyHe wrote this in Proverbs Chapter 23, and Im gonna read this to you, Victory Ministries, and men youve gotta be my rooting section. Who are the people who are always crying their blues? Don asked the Victory students. Silence from the choir. Perhaps it wasnt such a familiar exercise after all. Pastor Don chuckles at the lack of response. Who are they? Us the choir mumbled at last. Us? Who are the people who reek of self-pity? yIm reading this from the bible. More silence. So, Solomon is asking the questions and you have to help me Victory Ministries. Don now seemed irritated by the delayed reactions. The choir seemed half-asleep. Who are the peopley Us! yelled one eager man in the back of the choir, unable to contain himself as comprehension dawned on his face. Pastor Don continued uninterrupted. ywho reek of self-pity? We are! We are! We are! Finally correct responses from the risers, and the Victory students were warming up. Who are the people who keep getting beat up for no reason? yIm reading from the Bible here, Im not making this up, Pastor Don checked himself as laughter lled the room. Who are the people whose eyes are bleary and bloodshot? We are! They hit me youll say but it didnt hurt, and then they beat on me, but I didnt feel a thing. And when I sober up Im not going to manage it, just bring me another drink. That doesnt sound fun at all does it Victory Ministries? The choir and congregation shook their heads together. Amen, what a horrible lifestyle! How many are glad those days are over? Amen! Cheering and clapping erupted from the risers and leapt through the rows of parishioners. As Don cheered Were not going back, Victory Ministries! music swelled into another worship song y

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OF BRAINS AND BAD BEHAVIOR

In 1997 Alan Leshner, head of the National Institute on Drug and Alcohol (NIDA), published a landmark manifesto in Science Magazine titled Addiction Is a Brain Disease, and It Matters. It was time, he argued, to leave behind the centuries-old stigmatization of people with addictions and to instead see them as suffering from an illness that manifested in antisocial behavior.
The more common view is that drug addicts are weak or bad people, unwilling to lead moral lives and to control their behavior and gratications. To the contrary, addiction is actually a chronic, relapsing illness, characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use. The gulf in implications between the bad person view and the chronic illness sufferer view is tremendous. (Leshner, 1997, p. 45)

Leshner cited recent evidence from neuroscience to nally refute the longheld metaphysical commonsense that addiction derives from preexisting immorality or lack of willpower. And indeed the neuroscience revolution of the last two decades (Clarke et al., 2010) has transformed scientic understandings of substance abuse, sitting disease within compulsion mechanisms that become hard-wired through molecular processes in the brain (Volkow & Li, 2004) The medias new This is your brain on drugs messages no longer serve up the much-ridiculed fried egg of the past, but instead Day-Glo graphics of dangerous oods of dopamine forcing toxic superhighways through the mesolimbic reward system (Courtwright, 2010; Vrecko, 2010). The public may have been swept up in the neuroscientists claim that the brain holds the keys to understanding just about all that is human, yet in the eld of addiction treatment, at least, the revolution is notably uneven. Since Leshner left NIDA, there has been a rapid expansion of buprenorphine prescription for (middle-class) opiate addiction (see Hansen & Roberts, 2012). Yet residential addiction treatment remains largely resistant to the use of psychotropic medications, informed by the traditional therapeutic community (TC) position that addiction is a psychosocial rather than a medical problem (Perfas & Spross, 2007, p. 70). Indeed, in the residential eld, a far more notable, though understudied, change has been a massive increase in funding opportunities (and publicity) for residential rehab based on religious conversion. What is going on here? How can we explain the rise of faith-based treatment in the age of biochemistry? In these polarized times it is tempting to summon up a resounding clash of cultures, to set the realm of science against the community of faith, the wealthy secular public of The New York

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Times against less educated heartlanders, the rationalist brights against the literalist Biblical Christians (their term). The reality, of course, is more complicated. Sympathetic scientists like Leshner want to drag addiction, along with schizophrenia or depression, down the timeworn trail from moralistic stigmatization to therapeutic reprieve. Yet, across lines of class or religion, Americans remain deeply attached to seeing drug and alcohol addiction as a moral sickness. These ideas have been deeply shaped by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), whose 1930s Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1976; White, 2002) characterizes addiction as a inextricable union of sickness and sin, of helpless dependence and culpable character traits. These notions drove the development of modern drug treatment from the late 1950s, with residential therapeutic communities instituting full-time AA in the form of habilitation, moral refashioning the individual through a global change in lifestyle: abstinence from illicit substances, elimination of antisocial activity, employability, and pro-social attitudes and values. y Rehabilitation, therefore, requires multidimensional inuences and training, which for most can occur only in a 24-hour, long-term residential setting (De Leon, 1989, p. 140). The more extreme tactics, like forcing rebellious clients to wear diapers, have generally been dropped for milder forms of confrontation under the rubric of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) (SAMHSA, 2010, p. 3). Yet the content reinforced by CBT is still highly normative. Healthy behavior tends to be dened by deference and middle-class comportment, and healthy cognitive skills by taking personal responsibility and resuming a normal (middle-class, heterosexual) life course. In effect, the late 20th century biochemical revolution has exacerbated a gulf between brain research and behaviorist treatment norms, simultaneously dividing drug users along race and class lines. HMOs are energetically shunting middle-class clients toward outpatient and pharmaceutical treatments (Hanson, 2003), but the concurrent rise of the drug courts has increased the overall numbers of people mandated to strongarm residential treatment (Whetstone & Gowan, 2011). The criminal justice system is now responsible for more than 40% of all national admissions to rehab, inpatient or outpatient (Moore, 2007; SAMHSA, 2007), reinforcing authoritarian CBT as the treatment of choice for the poor. Equally crucial for the expansion of faith-based treatment has been the political muscle of evangelical conservatives, and in particular the momentous overhaul of American social policy initiated by the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (P.L. 104193). PRWORA dismantled the long-standing secularizing rewalls

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that had segregated and secularized health and social service provision by religious organizations. Under the provision of Charitable Choice, proselytizing religious organizations were encouraged to bid for government contracts, both conversion-based programs and exclusionary hiring practices now protected under the principle of religious freedom. George W. Bush had strongly supported the funding (and deregulation) of faith-based treatment in Texas, and brought the same energy to the presidency. Activating Charitable Choice with a series of executive orders starting in January 2001, Bush initiated a massive transfer of institutional power and wealth to religious organizations. By 2003 faith-based groups were eligible for nearly $20 billion in potential funding for welfare, antipoverty, and drug treatment services. These new incentives for faithbased programs coincided neatly with the substantially increased ow of people offered or coerced into treatment by criminal justice. It is tricky to assess the growth or indeed the current scope of faith-based treatment. In 2008 there were only 527 licensed faith-based drug treatment programs (compared with over 10,000 non-faith-based facilities, most of which incorporate 12-step spirituality) (SAMHSA, 2010, p. 1). This small gure indubitably represents the tip of the iceberg, given the relatively recent move toward licensing faith-based treatment. Given that many religious organizations and individuals have long offered services without a conversion agenda, we suggest conversion-based as a better term for proselytizing programs like Victory Ministries. Most conversion-based rehabs including very large players appear to be unlicensed.2 Rather than conforming to the methods sanctioned by state licensing, they can draw generic state benets such as food stamps, or, like Victory Ministries, state funding for individuals with substance abuse problems to live in sober group residential housing, as well as broadly targeted social service block grants. Licensing is becoming less crucial as politicians supporting conversion-based treatment and other services bypass the still-problematic constitutional question of secular services within pervasively sectarian organizations by instituting voucher systems for individual choice (Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life, 2003).

Researching Victory Ministries One of the largest and most inuential treatment centers in a Midwestern state, Victory Ministries runs a 13-month residential treatment program based upon Christian principles and practices, housing roughly 200 men

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and 100 women. Funded through a combination of state money and donations solicited from evangelical patrons and local churches, Victory boasts a large endowment, visible in its high staff ratio and well-kept facilities. Denied permission to conduct research inside Victory Ministries, we interviewed former clients. In our rst round we conducted nine interviews: three with graduates staying in homeless shelters (two of them African American and one white); four with former students in local Christian sober houses (all African Americans); and two with more prosperous graduates contacted through our own social networks (both white). In interviews lasting from one to two hours, we elicited broad life history narratives centered around the themes of family, community, pleasure, using, control, and religion, with particular focus on detailed accounts of their experiences both during and after the Victory program. Despite a wide range in nancial status, most of the rst round interviewees could be considered successful graduates, having completed the program and remaining committed to working sobriety. In the summer of 2011, we used street yers to recruit 13 more interviewees: seven graduates, four dropouts, and two kick outs. Twelve of these interviewees were white, and one African American, again with substantial differences in their economic situations. We interviewed three of the graduates multiple times, revealing some changes in disposition toward the Victory experience (and Biblical Christianity) as their tenures in the program became more distant. We retained our broader research programs focus on addiction treatment for men, but two women (one graduate, one dropout) offered thoughtprovoking context. Beyond our 27 interviews we also attended several church services featuring Victory choirs. We begin by showing how a dramatized Christian semiotics underlies the Victory structure, thoroughly quarantining the students from the sinful external world. Strict discipline is complemented by extensive and rigorous class work, exemplied here with the anger management curricula. Victory teachings, we argue, take the latent morality of therapeutic discourse and supercharge it, transmuting the concepts into Biblical terms. The goal is freedom, but rather than foregrounding the battle against drugs in particular, they exhort and train students toward a holistic liberation from their sinful selves achieved through total submission to a stern but loving God. Together the programs discipline, chapel spectacles, and curriculum afrm a stark world of embattled believers besieged by active evil. This Manichaean vision is concretized with dramatic consequences for those who resist submission and loving guidance for those who walk the line.

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The people who become recovered in Christ ideally follow a path leading beyond the program to integration into local congregations. The Biblical Christian community is presented as the extension of Victory, the celebrated graduates new Christian habitus cushioned with both spiritual and material support. We conclude with a short discussion of conversionbased treatments growing academic and political legitimacy, speculating on implications for the future of drug treatment and indeed for social policy at large.

Tough Love In a once-wealthy neighborhood marred by a massive freeway trench, the low-rise Victory Ministries headquarters rests tucked away from the main road alongside shabby Victorian neighbors. The nerve center of an operation boasting several buildings across the city, it houses the administration, the chapel, much of the mens housing, and many classrooms. The expansive building gives off a white glow that has a piercingly luminous effect on the drab streets around it: whimsically vague young dropout Dene began his description with Its a mansion! Denes nostalgic description of the program facilities came not only from the bold whiteness shining out upon a darkened city but also from the inviting sense of community within. Victory Ministry Students, are welcomed into the program from the rst day, often in a ritualized manner: The rst day I got there, okay, they want to pray me in recounted Brendan. And so I got like thirty of their guys around me putting hands on me, praying me in before dinner. Yet with the welcoming hands come a world of numerous rules and prohibitions. With the help of a very large staff3 the program creates an environment of constant and intimate control. Violation of Victorys comprehensive ban on smoking earns a minimum of a 30-day setback (an extension of program length that constitutes the primary punishment in the facility). 30 days for smoking? Mitch was still outraged. Thats y you dont eveny you ght in jail and you dont get 30 days. Personal stashes of candy are conscated, and coffee given out sparingly in the mornings. With punishments frequent and severe, the loving outreach is tempered by a constant defense of the moral line. Mitchs comparison with jail was grounded in very material connections between the two. Holding a privileged place within the states criminal justice system, Victorys representatives recruiting directly within the jails.

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Those facing long drug-related sentences can have their sentences waived by their judge if they agree to complete the Victory program. Once they join the Victory family, students still facing charges benet from the paternal protection of the staff, as Mitch explained:
Pastor Don will go to court with youy And Victory has some pull in certain court systems. And Ive heard people get out of their sentences, or get big time reduced sentence, or whatever. I gured I needed that because I was facing 3 years for doing some crap that I dont remember doing.y [It was] a deciding factor in the beginning. Along with the fact that I knew I was messed up. I needed treatment, severe treatment.

Though we cannot say how many enter the program hoping to avoid incarceration, our informants estimated the proportion as between 50% and 75%. For these people, 13 months become an alternate prison sentence, backed up by the threat of a much longer spell in the event of being kicked out. Unsurprisingly, as much as there was dislike of various aspects of the Victory Ministries program, those who chafed under the quarantine mostly did so in silence. Are you vocal about your disagreements? we asked current student Daryn:
No, no. No I am not. One of the big problems there is that you feel like youre almost stied in the fact that you cant really express your opinion y because you dont want to be labeled as a non-believer, and a target put on your head. And I dont think that necessarily they would, you know, punish you openly for having that opinion but it just feels like youre not put in the same group as the othersy

Working the Victory program in lieu of prison, Daryn made it clear that his primary interest was staying out of trouble until graduation. When others described the notable conformity within the program, they gave similar interpretations. The mobilization of criminal justice backup can be very immediate, as Finn recounted. When he was caught sneaking a cigarette, a friend suffered devastating consequences:
Were on the bus heading back to [our house,] and theyve got two sheriffs standing outside waiting for the busy [They] get onto the busy put a DOC [Department of Corrections] hold on his ass and dragged him offy He had already been in the program for thirteen and a half months, had six more to goy and they pulled him off the bus, making this scene in front of everybody in the house y (Now) The dean called me down (afterwards)y [and I just yelled at him:]

Subsequently called before the Dean, Finn lost his temper. Do you realize what happening in that mans life right now, because he didnt tell on me? Do you care at all about us? he shouted. He was expelled the next day.

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It is interesting that Victory explicitly created a public drama around the mostly invisible threat of criminal justice backup (violating the usual treatment condentiality norms). The program might be quarantined away from the world, but, as they showed, its protective powers could dissolve at a moments notice. Put the Cotton in Your Mouth It would be unfair to suggest that either fervent appreciation or silent acceptance of the program is solely linked to coercive control. For people struggling with addictions, external control can be very helpful, even alluring. Many of the students throw themselves wholeheartedly into the program, not only internalizing the messages but glamorizing the discipline and academic difculty. Graduate Roland showed that he had accepted the ministrys mantra Dont do the program, let the program do you:
[T]hey addressed the issues there. All you have to do is put the cotton in your mouth and listen. Go there and shut up. Dont say anything. Just go there and listen to people. Then you can get to that place where you just want to listen because you dont know anything, and you stop trying to talk and tell people that you know anything. Victory Ministries is vital in that. It saved my life. Although I ended up relapsing, the things that I learned there, I know that they are still a part of my lifey

The internalization of the Victorys message manifests in shared pride in the programs fetishized structure. A parishioner asked a Victory brother at the Living God service: Did you guys really get up before 6 AM? Yep. Thats the Victory Ministries way! Students have ample time to work their way toward such serious commitment. Andrew described how he gradually lost his intense attachment to meth, refocusing himself on his new Christian identity:
Six months into the program something cooked into me and I stopped. Three months after I quit doing meth my skin would tingle, my palms would sweat. My heart would race just from thinking about it. Sometimes I would be lying there and thought about the mechanics, of it melting in the pipe, the smoke rolling, and the taste of it, stuff like that. Youll start thinking about it and youll not be able to sleep. y I was still an addict. Six months into the program I was like This is it, I am never going back. I was in the back of Chapel and looked around, and I was like Wow! This is my life now. I am not coming back.

Andrews account also shows how important the 13-month length was to the success of the Victory Ministries program. If Andrew had been sent to

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secular treatment through the local drug court, he only would have had three months and might well have slid right back to meth. Not only is the program longer than most of its secular equivalents, but its daily routine is noticeably more demanding. Each day begins with an hour-long chapel service, immersing the students in an emotional and rhythmical religious performance. The service starts with prayer, the most fervent forming spontaneous circles in the worship hall and praying loudly together. Then the singing starts, cycling through a small playlist of contemporary Christian hits. Outstretched hands are raised to match the rising excitement, and unschooled voices belt ecstatic choruses of the most popular songs. After this moment of expression, visiting preachers share their testimonies and thoughts, some of which had a memorable effect:
ySomeone comes in and gives a message and its anybody. Sometimes its a pastory.Famous Dave of the Barbecue place he came and spoke there once. The guy who wrote When the World starts singing it. I hear it on the radio all the time. You have all kinds of people, pastors and everybodyy I loved that. Famous Dave probably wasnt the most inspiring guy I ever heard speak. y But the overall experience of hearing that Famous Dave is a Christian and hearing his story was cool.

While the parade of visitors elicited a sense of connection to a broader Christian community, the embodied, emotional practice of music and prayer gave some enthusiasm for the classes and labor to come. The brothers and sisters saw their moral trajectories delineated with the pomp and circumstance of the theater, each element personal enough to raise the question: What does this mean for your life? Bible Boot Camp Chapel is followed by two classes of one hour apiece, the rst according to the students Level, then a more personalized session on contracts. The two months of Level One centers on chemical dependency itself, but the curriculum moves quickly onward, Levels Two through Four developing a broad understanding of moral sickness and its cures. If chapel represents the word of God performed, the classes are the word studied and applied. Students must fulll their moniker, developing weekly written responses to both numerous Bible passages and other evangelical articles and books, and memorizing substantial passages of scripture for weekly tests. Victory Ministries is a hard program, said Brendan. I mean, itsylike going to Bible boot camp. Its like being in school, you know? Rigorous.

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A number of our informants lamented the difculty of the class work, occasionally citing attention decit disorder or other issues but often just balking at the requirements. Not completing class work or not passing the weekly tests extends time in the program, and can land Victory students on restriction,:
It was anywhere from 4 days to a week, and you couldnt use the phone, couldnt go outside, couldnt go to rec, couldnt do anything. You basically had to just get your scriptures right, and then you could get the little bit of freedom that you had back (Finn).

Transmuting the Therapeutic Contrary to chapel, where eschatological and heroic imagery takes a primary role, the class work adapts established methods of therapeutic selfimprovement to transform the individual disposition. This process can be seen clearly in comparing the Victory Ministries workbook on Anger and Personal Rights to a similar section in a (secular) Hazelden-produced text: Socialization. As in other institutions managing Americas poor, anger management training is one of Victorys key tools for transforming deance into receptive humility. The way that the two texts introduce the topic of anger is not so different:
Victory Ministries: Lets be honesteveryone gets angry. God isnt surprised or angry either. He made us with the ability to experience feelings. He created anger and He gets angry some times. When Jesus was here on earth, He expressed anger several times. So lets set the record straight right from the start it is not a sin to feel angry. But anger is usually the beginning of problems. Many times we do sin when we get angry. Hazelden: Anger is one feeling that youve probably tried to deal with by getting high. Anger usually comes from fear, frustration, or hurt. Its the knotting up inside. Anger is an emotion that tells us something is wrong. Everyone gets angry sometimes, but some of us use our anger as a way to control others.

Though the Biblical grounding of the Victory text is distinctive, both treat anger as a normal part of human experience and not inherently problematic. In this way, Victory sets up its message as a natural extension of therapeutic hegemony. Thereafter Victorys text begins to diverge from Socialization. The Hazelden text depicts anger as an umbrella to protect us from the cold rain of uncomfortable emotionsySome of the feelings that anger protects us from include sadness, loneliness, confusion, and fear. We still feel these feelings, but by blowing up, we hide these feelings from other people.

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Victory Ministries heads off in a different direction. Anger becomes a product of excessive pride, pride based on asserting Biblically unwarranted personal rights. Rather than reading anger as hurt, students should forfeit their personal rights to the heavenly Father.
[H]ow can a Christian demonstrate his/her love to Jesus? One way is to give your personal rights to GodyPersonal rights belong to the person who has the power to use them. When you become a Christian, you need to allow God to become your nal authority. Lets face it. When you were in control of running your own life, making your own rules, trying to get other people to respect your rules, how successful were you? For many, their efforts have led to failure after failure and a lot of anger!

Students are instructed to Write down as many personal rights as you can think ofy [T]hen when you are faced with a situation where one of your rights is involved, you will be able to see and remember that you have given that right to God. This surrender becomes the foundation for selfdiscipline and obedience. Ones personal rights now belong in Gods hands, and failure to relinquish them becomes a grave offense.
In our society, the laws are made by those in authorityy James 4:17 [K]nowing what is right to do and then not doing it is sin. If you know the right thing for you to do is to give your personal rights to God, but you dont do it, you disobey God and sin.

The Victory Ministries curriculum takes this interpretation further still, suggesting that though God may return personal rights to someone, they come now in the form of privileges.
If you give God your personal right of eating three meals a day you cannot demand or expect three meals a day, but you can be thankful for having the privilege of eating each meal. yIf you do not expect or demand God to give back your personal rights, then you will not be disappointed or angry when He doesnt give them back.

New Freedom With Victorys moral transmutation of the therapeutic, hurt and anger are pulled away from the individual emotional trajectory, cast instead as the result of the typical pride of the unreached sinner. Yet the denition of anger as sin does not rest as a lasting judgment, but as a step toward liberation. Through lial surrender, both to God and to earthly (Christian) authority comes true freedom. Placed after the unit Obedience to God (which takes a look at the relationship between love and obedience, and offers practical ways to submit even the most rebellious heart to His authority, and Obedience to Man (which teaches obeying your leader with love), Anger

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and Personal Rights directly addresses the deep equivocation at the heart of the foundational US rhetoric of freedom. Freedom is explicitly not about the rights of man, but freedom from the egotistical and wrongheaded demands of the sinful self: When you learn to thank God each day for whatever happens, you will experience a new freedom from anger and worry. The mens program director explained that behavior reform is the tangible practice of faith:
[M]y approach has always been not pray for 4 hours a day and you gonna get the faith to overcome it. [F]aith is not a leap into the unknown; faith is very real. And if your faith is not tangible, then you just guessing, and you hope you guess right. I want to take the guesswork out of it by applying principlesy And the principles is this, and its Biblical. If you dont like people to talk to you a certain way, dont talk to them a certain way. Its the old golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

After the rst two months there are very few mentions of drugs or addiction in the group curriculum. By encouraging students to give themselves to God, and transforming aggressive, prideful and greedy behavior into humility and civility, the program aims to cut off drug desire and habit at the root. The second period of daily study addresses the addicted past more closely. Contracts, using workbooks assigned individually by counselors, steer individuals toward reframing their biographies, again translating mainstream secular therapeutic terminology into explicitly spiritual terms. In his workbook summary of an article titled Meds, Brendan wrote:
This article y speaks about how meds are frequently used to treat spiritual problems, that conditions that impact the spirit will also impact your emotional or behavioral health. Many doctors prescribe medication for an illness that stems from a spiritual issue.

The contract then asks Brendan to relate the idea of pharmaceuticals lling the void to his own life. After summarizing another article, he memorizes some scripture, again followed with personal reection. Hundreds of hours of contract work draw emotionally invested problems understood within a competing secular therapeutic framework into a more explicitly spiritual register, solidifying a new moral self, oriented to future participation in the broad but tight-knit Biblical Christian community. Within the tight discipline of Victory, punishment is a constant, yet even the dropouts acknowledged that kind guidance was more apparent than castigation or hellre. The programs evocation of sin is primarily

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directed not at the students but the evils of the secular environment and of their lives prior to their current redemption.

The Invisible War Program material can take on a dramatically Manichaean character, as in this excerpt from a class handout:
We are involved in an invisible war. This cosmic conict has eternal implications; lives are at stake. The enemys strategies affect us every day. When was the last time you honestly considered that some struggle or relational conict was rooted in Satanic opposition?

This dramatization of everyday choices as part of an omnipresent struggle between good and evil teaches students to see themselves as warriors for Christ. Not every student aspires to this role (nor are they required to), but some successful graduates seem to have found this a powerful motivating goal. Even those that do not reconceive of themselves as warriors seemed to accept the frame of spiritual conict all the same, recasting the fear of falling out of the program as falling back into sin and evangelical outreach as saving souls. The ongoing drama of spiritual warfare then becomes a key mechanism in reinforcing the split between the previous selfs habits and desires and those of the new Christian. While AA and the therapeutic communities (TCs) offer a (partial) moral reprieve by interpreting addiction as a biological disease, Victorys moral judgment comes hand-in-hand with the offer of rapid redemption from addiction by God himself. Paradoxically, by accepting moral judgment on their using lives, students can develop an exhilarating sense of profound liberation and rebirth. Joined with their Christian brothers and sisters, and armed with their new knowledge and self-discipline, they can defeat the forces of sin and deviance.

Youre Going to Sing in the Choir Although Victory Ministries quarantines its students carefully from the temptations of the outside world, they do come into close contact with Christian congregations. Victorys public face is its choir, and every Sunday all but the most senior students are packed into vans to visit local churches, where they sing and offer testimonies to their recovery. In return the

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program receives plentiful donations, helping it to maintain its relative independence from government oversight. Daryn stressed to us the centrality of the choir to the Victory Ministries experience.
Thats pretty much the most important thing, you go to Victory Ministries, you sing in the choir on Sunday, period. Anything that you have [going on] is secondary to that. y They dont put so much emphasis on how you sound, its just the fact that youre out there singing.

Daryn was not entirely comfortable with the stylistic register of evangelical Christianity:
[P]rimarily y the evangelical and Pentecostal type situations is where youre going to see [the choir]. y [A] lot of [the churches] are into speaking in tongues, and you know, healingy and getting in the spirit. Real, real heavy evangelical Pentecostal churches. Its not my styley

He smiled and shrugged. Regardless of their feelings about the religious practices of the churches, the choir visits require students to present themselves as (emerging) upright citizens. As they stand face-to-face with a straight godly public for over an hour, closely watched by staff, there may be a few subterranean nudges, but few dare even a momentary knowing or sarcastic grin. Even if they do not reach enthusiasm, they are constrained to maintain an earnest demeanor, standing straight, their eyes wide and direct. The new role is symbolized by the formal attire:
[Y]ou have to wear a suit and a tiey People hate that, but I think thats awesome. I never had to wear something decent like that before. When I got out I knew how to tie a tiey Normal people do that. I never experienced that.

As Andrew explains, being out there singing pushed him to embody the new or renewed Christian on the way to redemption, and in doing so liberated him from his criminal identity. For the many who had moved early into drug use and criminality, the programs conation of Christian as the apotheosis of normal fused together the projects of taking on a Christian identity and joining the American middle class-becoming normal in Andrews words (See Zigon, 2011). For ve of our interviewees, this narrative represents a growing reality.

If It Wasnt for the Support of Churches Like You Back at Living God church, Pastor Don wraps up his plea for donations.

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We dont take any state dollars for any Christian program because were going to be sued if we do that. And so this is our bread and butter, this is how we keep the program open. y If we can help anyone, maybe there is someone out in this audience that needs Victory Ministriesy send them our way, wed love to help you. So God bless you, Pastor Sam

As the applause faded, Pastor Sam took the microphone, gesturing earnestly to the members of the choir:
As Don just said, who cares more about what happens to them then we do as Christians? As believers? I look up there and Ill say it again there are beautiful faces. And OK faces. [Laughter bubbles through the church.] Sorry guysy But you dont see right now the pain that grabbed themy letting people downy and stealing from them. This is where their lifestyle has taken them. Its interesting, some of you saw Art come over to talk to me, and he said Sam, its interesting, I was Tonys arresting ofcer y he was one of the nastiest young guys. One of the nastiest. And he said Now hes a young many That is so cool. And thats where the power of Jesus Christ makes a difference.

Then Sam added his muscle to Dons plea:

Ive got a 67 Barracuda sitting right now in my garage up on the left. I want to restore it, and oh man Im excited! So you know how guys, you squirrel a little money away, y when your wife asks what youre squirreling it away for you say evening wear. y Ive got 800 dollars here, and Im ready to buy more parts for the car, but Im sitting there and thinking: Lord, seeing lives restored is way more valuable than restoring a 67 Barracuda. y So, youll see me giving a check, and Im going to be giving 1000 dollars this morning for Victory Ministries! Some of you are going to give way more than that, but some of you are probably sitting there thinking I dont know if I can affordy Surely there is something you can sacrice. If there is one time for a special offering, this is it! Amen?

The church visits explicitly afrm the place of Victory Ministries within a local Christian social compact. Victory Ministries helps churches heal their families by restoring addicted parents or children, and in turn the churches nancially support their work (supposedly), uncontaminated by the hands of government. At a church like Living God the compact is quite direct Victory Ministries is shown to be directly healing the lost children of the congregation. At the more prosperous suburban churches, though, this direct healing of the church body is much less signicant, and the compact shifts to a more abstract level. Dramatized horrors of life on drugs are drawn through every testimony, emphasizing the meaningless desperation of the using life and its inevitable consequences in extreme poverty. Testimonies would turn in a disjointed fashion toward the iconic claim to have slept under bridges, leading the congregation to collectively draw breath. But these wealthier suburban congregations were not only reafrmed in their fears of the wages of sin. They were also rewarded with

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spectacular redemptions, demonstrations of Gods power far more telling than the repetitive saving of law-abiding middle-class citizens. As students near graduation they are required to nd a home church, to make connections with the pastor, and to take an active role through a Bible study group and some form of ministry. The size, wealth and vitality of the local Biblical Christian community has already been brought home by the scores of choir visits and chapel speakers. Graduates may still have little in the way of secular human capital, but the spiritual capital they have accrued over the long year of the program lends them an immediate comfort and even expertise within the evangelical milieu. They know the songs, can recite the verses, and know how and when to raise their hands in praise. Church participation reinforces the simple binaries of the Victory cosmology, helping to avoid the massive challenges posed by coming out of treatment into a far more gritty and complex moral universe. Though some church members may be trepidatious, Victory Ministries impressive reputation positions new graduates more as celebrated converts than as despised felons. New pastors take over Victorys loving guidance, tying graduates continued sobriety to the pleasures of a new-found faith community. Like AAs sober networks (Kaskutas, Bond, & Humphreys, 2002), new church relationships seem to be vital to graduates success. Though still struggling nancially, trailer park kid Mitch was now excited to study the Bible and play golf with one of the wealthiest businessmen in town. Furthermore, the widespread incorporation of 12-step ideas and practices into evangelical Christianity gives graduates an honored place among those struggling with hurts, habits, and hang-ups. Whereas the AA fellowship would keep them always an addict, among Biblical Christians they can be proudly recovered in Christ. Church participation can bring substantial material advantages to the many people leaving Victory in nancial straits. While the program itself employs some graduates, staff work their networks to nd others jobs and housing. One local business celebrity routinely employs Victory graduates through his hotel and construction business. Where work does not materialize, new churches provide a variety of support, from childcare to housing. Of course Victorys vision of a transition into nancial independence under pastoral protection does not always hold up to realities at hand, particularly during the Great Recession. Our interviews suggest that less than half may stay the long course. Even among the graduates, many head off on their own, quickly lost to sight, while others seem to remain stuck in unemployed limbo in sober houses. Our limited view

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indicates that such Christian warehousing may be more likely for African American graduates, less likely to move out of the city, and with substantially more limited chances in the labor market (Pager, 2007). Nevertheless, there is no doubt that for many of the successfully churched Victory graduates, continued pastoral support and community directly manifest membership in the Christian family foreshadowed by the curriculum and choir visits, as the Biblical Christian community continues to protect its new children.

From Faith to Health The mainstreaming of evangelical Christianity within American government has slowly ltered into academe, with new think tanks boosted by large grants from foundations and both Bush administrations. A glossy survey of faith factor research introduced by the rst faith czar John DiIulio resurrects a host of positive correlations between religiosity and broad measures of health and well-being, arguing that religion is good for you in every way raising well-being, self-esteem, educational attainment and hope, and substantially reducing hypertension, substance abuse, depression and mortality itself (Johnson, Tompkins, & Webb, 2002). In relation to substance abuse, the argument that faith sustains health has become commonplace. Think tanks trumpet correlations between low religiosity and drug use, reviving the hellre hypothesis of the 1940s and 1950s with unbounded generalizations about the protective powers of churchgoing (The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, 2001). More cautious research by addiction psychologists makes less grand claims, yet here too, the growth of conversion-based treatment has been welcomed. Galvanized by the eminent Bill Miller (1990), research continues on the crucial missing variable of spirituality and religious participation, with spiritual treatment elements given randomized clinical trials (Miller, Forcehimes, OLeary, & LaNoue, 2008). This favorable reception is not too surprising. AA and the therapeutic communities already understand rehab and recovery as an essentially moral cure, and the two approaches contain similar elements (Hood, 2011; Neff, Shorkey, & Windsor, 2006). The intense discipline in many conversionbased facilities lies close to the authoritarian habilitation within their strong-arm counterparts (Gowan & Whetstone, 2012). As Hazeldens John MacDougall puts it, It is not really wrong to be alcoholic, but to recover the person needs a way of life that is more moral than that of the

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rest of the population. The [Twelve] Steps are a way to convert shame to guilt, guilt to responsibility, responsibility to amends, and amends to freedom (Ringwald, 2002, p. 133). In conversion-based treatment, however, spiritual renewal becomes the center: The road to freedom is cemented to the evangelical Christian bedrock, suffusing the experience with higher intensity and excitement. After graduation, the rich social capital circulating among Biblical Christians can enable converts to better integrate into middle-class networks, a process seamlessly welded to the churches interest in saving souls and gaining members and one likely to yield further positive evaluations (Longshore, Anglin, & Conner, 2009, p. 180). Scientic evaluations of conversion-based treatment focus on the psychology and health outcomes of the aficted person, the methodological individualism of psychology and micro-sociology obscuring the signicant social and political implications of conversion-based rehabilitation. Particularly relevant is the way that church resources may distort comparisons between programs, most noticeably in regard to two crucial factors: stafng levels and program length. Poor stafng levels and short program length are endemic problems in nonconversion-based rehab for the poor. Yet with their combined support from the Biblical Christian community and the state, Victory students are not only disciplined and supported by a large staff they are also given three or four times as long for changes to cook in, as Andrew put it. Others said they didnt start to feel free of drugs till seven or nine months in. Our research also suggests that comparisons between conversion-based treatment and other strong-arm facilities with many court-mandated clients may be skewed by signicant differences in recruitment. Victory appears to have more privately funded middle-class clients, notably fewer mandated for petty drug charges, and more avoiding long terms for multiple felonies. Clearer is the conclusion that church wealth and labor translated into the seriousness indicated by program length, superior staff ratios, and some notable successes is becoming mirrored by state privileges, not only with jail recruitment but in the form of substantial block grants on top of the individual housing allowance.

Free at Last The architects of PRWORA hoped to power a profound ideological transformation. By stripping the secular state and empowering the faithful,

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they planned a death blow to discourses of structural disadvantage, demolishing any remaining notions of entitlement to welfare support. In their place would blossom a lush regrowth of pre-welfarist Protestant ideas, interpreting the problems of the poor as varieties on a fall from grace, redeemable through moral renewal. This vision is well realized in the sharply dichotomized world of Victory Ministries. Either raised under the cloud of disrespect that hovers over the US poor or thrust outside the moral boundaries of their communities by the stain of addiction and criminality, many of those arriving at Victorys door had developed a personal style uniting deant individualism and direct demands for respect. Victorys curriculum worked directly to break down such assertiveness and independence, offering instead the protection of God and Christian fellowship. Such teaching ultimately inverts the democratic touchstone of personal freedom: instead of the bold assertion of an independent will, it reduces liberty to cowed protection from Satanic corruption. Conversion-based rehab presents an excellent example of how the benevolent halo and nancial muscle of the churches are propelling Biblical Christians into a major role in service provision. Proselytizing institutions employ the combination of criminal justice backup and social service funding to create new converts and in the process spread their inuence and reputation. Scientic assessment focused primarily on the health rewards of religiosity creates medical legitimacy for the process, lubricating a rapprochement of technocratic social policy and religious authority. The state in turn takes advantage of these faith-subsidized institutions to impose intimate social control at a low cost-benet ratio, further driving down the funding for secular alternatives. As a report recently concluded in an evaluation of a conversion-based program for prisoners:
[I]t is worth emphasizing that LiveFree relies heavily on volunteers and program costs are privately funded. From a cost-benet perspective, the program is appealing because it exacts little cost to the state while providing a tangible benet in the form of reduced recidivism, which includes fewer incarcerations and victimizationy this type of programming may provide a cost-effective alternative that more states should consider implementing.

Proponents of conversion-based services position religious institutions as the primary agents of willing compassion and generosity beyond the family compass, stripping the rest of civil society of any claims to promote the greater good (Johnson et al., 2002). While secular institutions of solidarity

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and integration, from schools to libraries to community centers, have suffered decades of devastating cuts and declining morale (Giroux, 2011), sympathetic or cost-cutting politicians bolster religious service-providers with nancial support and public honors. Institutions like Victory reach out a loving hand, guiding some recruits to an extraordinary and lasting transformation, but they simultaneously amp up a generalized culture of fear (Simon, 2007), feeding distrust of not only the dangerous or dispossessed, but the skeptical or agnostic. In Victorys metaphor of invisible war, the Manichaean vision is quite explicit. But any denition of recovery and reintegration in terms of conversion and submission to religious authority inherently suggests that substance use stems largely from immorality, and that the unsaved in general are sinful and dangerous. The typical positioning of Biblical programs as embattled islands within a sinful and collapsing secular world poisons the progressive vision of democratic governance, where inclusive institutions mitigate inequality and suffering across a diverse nation. When government itself joins in, funding neotribal orthodoxies to build a conversion-based welfare apparatus, it contributes the further criminalization of poverty, the downgrading of more inclusive and public institutions, and ultimately the materialization of Victorys Manichaean vision in a polarized nation.

NOTES
1. The organization Victory Ministries is a pseudonym. Any resemblance to actual locales of this name or similar is entirely coincidental. All names have been change to protect the identity of the participants. 2. We base this speculation on our own local research, supported by personal correspondence with SAMHSA researchers, but more thorough investigation is needed. 3. At the time of writing, the mens program employed upward of 50 staff members for roughly 180 students, and the womens program around 40 staff for 100 students. Many of the staff were themselves former students.

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