Morris Curry Jr. leaves his American Canyon home early on Sunday mornings to deliver no-holds-barred sermons at San Quentin State Prison, hoping new inmates at California’s oldest prison will choose God over crime.

Seven out of 10 inmates in California wind up returning to prison after violating parole or being convicted of a new crime within three years of their release, according to San Quentin spokesman Lt. Eric Messick.

“We kind of hit them hard and fast,” said Curry, a former union organizer known in American Canyon for speaking his mind on social, educational and political issues.

During a recent Sunday sermon, as the inmates sat quietly in the church pews, Curry drew a stark picture for them. He told them their children would grow up without their fathers, while other men would drive their cars, date their wives and girlfriends and eat the food in their kitchen.

“It’s time to get right with God! Period!” Curry admonished.

“This is no way to live!” he continued softly. “You tell me this is a way to live!”

“God bless you!” answered an inmate.

For years, Curry led a church in American Canyon. In the 1980s, he would bring his parishioners to San Quentin to sing Christmas carols. Last year, he left his church, and began to serve as Protestant chaplain at San Quentin.

Five days a week, he is up before the sun, heading across the bay to the prison grounds.

Curry usually arrives at San Quentin by 5:30 a.m., well before the guards’ early morning shift change. 

After parking his SUV in the employee parking lot beyond the East Gate, Curry walks toward the main entry point to the more secured areas of the prison, a tower built in 1890.

He pulls behind him a small suitcase loaded with a laptop computer and paperwork for community projects.

After checking out his set of keys from a correctional officer, Curry greets the guards on duty and enters the sally port, which opens into one of the prison’s central courtyards.

As seagulls fly over the guard tower and swoop over the buildings and the pond near his office, Curry walks into the Protestant chapel to pray at the foot of the cross. His two paid clerks, both convicted felons serving life sentences, won’t arrive for another hour.

Another workday has begun.

“I love being here,” said Curry, 61. “There is so much to do.”

As the Protestant chaplain, Curry oversees San Quentin’s biggest religious denomination.

The prison’s chaplains, which also include a Catholic priest, an American Indian chaplain, a Muslim imam and a rabbi, serve an inmate population of about 6,000 men, 600 of whom sit on death row.

At San Quentin, Curry often sees another American Canyon resident, Chuck Cancilla, a Catholic deacon who comes several times a week to assist the Catholic priest assigned to the prison.

Curry attends Mass for men who are up for parole, Cancilla said.

The Protestant and Catholic chapels face the courtyard, where an elderly inmate named Chuck tends the grounds. Across the courtyard is the Adjustment Center — the Hole — where inmates who broke the prison’s rules remain segregated from the general population.

Curry, who said many inmates are more committed to God than people on the outside, never asks the inmates why they were sent to prison.

“It’s not my business,” he said. “My role is to serve them spiritually, regardless of what they’ve done.”

 Inmates make appointments to talk to him for a wide variety of reasons.

Those about to be released on parole come to talk to him as they face the outside world without a job or even a driver’s license.

A man about to be released recently wondered how he could avoid returning to his old, drug-plagued neighborhood.

“It’s too much temptation,” he said as Curry listened in his office.

In another case, a young inmate, a newcomer to San Quentin, came to Curry for guidance after learning that his young daughter had choked to death after swallowing a bolt.

Curry also prays with men who only want to better themselves or have been turned down for parole and may begin to doubt their faith in God.

For the inmates, going to church is as restricted as any other activity. They must sign up in advance and get clearance to attend.

One of Curry’s daily tasks is coordinating the comings and goings of the inmates who want to attend services and the visits of the religious volunteers who come to San Quentin throughout the year.

Curry completes an endless stream of paperwork with the help of his top clerk, Donald Cronk. Incarcerated since he was 24, Cronk, now 51, said he hopes to become a drug counselor in a Christian setting when he is released from prison.

From the paperwork in his sparsely decorated offices, to the sermons delivered to people who may never see the outside world again, Curry loves it all.

A former labor union organizer, and former Napa State Hospital chaplain who continues to be involved in American Canyon’s civic life, he also looks forward to future projects, including replacing the prison’s chapel pews with chairs and organizing church leaders willing to help newly released inmates.

Preaching, however, remains his most important duty.

As the inmates settled in their pews after sharing communion and listening to the choir and the musicians at a Sunday service late in June, Curry was upbeat.

“Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” he intoned, as the 200 men, many of them middle-aged and serving life terms, clapped before him.

Curry invited the men in front of him to stand, join hands and line up along the walls and the pews.

“Everybody, whether you want to or not!” said Morris as the men clad in prison blues stood up promptly and quietly.

“Here you go!”

And together, they began:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.