Yes, after the first visit, I learned not to identify my professional calling, as it did attract some of the inmates who wanted to preach to me. And I did encounter several who expressed extravagant claims couched in language they had likely learned in church. My interpretation was that such a context represented the isolation they felt from their mental illness. A.N. Whitehead identifies religion as what we “do with our aloneness,” so the compatibility with the mentally ill does resemble it.

I admit we all might benefit from periods of professional treatment, when the craziness of the society we must cope with gets too much. But religion is closer to that treatment than to the illness.