St. David’s Episcopal Church in Austin hosted “Answering the Call,” an interfaith event and vigil on Sept. 23 to raise awareness of extreme heat in Texas prisons and advocate for access to air conditioning.
Organized alongside Texas Prisons Community Advocates and the 85 to Stay Alive Campaign, the event centered on a shared conviction: every person deserves dignity, compassion and protection from dangerous conditions, including those in prison.
The exhibit featured a full-scale, heated replica of a Texas prison cell, inviting visitors to spend seven minutes inside to better understand the conditions incarcerated people face. The program also included a prison conditions exhibit, an art gallery, and an evening press conference and vigil for prayer and remembrance.
“Every human being deserves dignity, including those who are held in our prisons,” said the Rev. Hope Tinsley Benko of St. David’s in a statement shared ahead of the gathering. “Our faith compels us to prevent the cruelty of needless death and illness in unairconditioned facilities. As Jesus said, I was in prison and you did not visit me, whatever we do the least of these, we do also to him.”
According to event organizers, approximately 90,000 people in Texas state prisons lack adequate air conditioning. The campaign emphasizes the human lives behind that number: mothers, fathers, sons and daughters whose health and safety are at risk.
Statements supporting the gathering included voices from Episcopal clergy and leaders representing Jewish, Presbyterian and Unitarian Universalist communities. Together, they emphasized a responsibility that crosses faith traditions: to care for vulnerable people and recognize the humanity of those behind prison walls.
For St. David’s, the gathering offered a way to put that responsibility into practice through prayer, education and public advocacy, answering the call to remember those in prison.
