Underground Eucharist: Reading Carcerality Through the Eucharist

Drawing on my father’s account of ‘underground’ eucharist in federal prison and of anonymised interviews, this article asks what Holy Communion discloses about managed bodies in systems designed to hide them. I argue that the eucharist forms a theology of the body that contradicts carceral logic through perception, belonging and responsibility. In the midst of suffering it makes presence and remembrance tangible, holding pain within thanksgiving. It gathers the church under constraint and sends participants to live what they receive. Engaging Rowan Williams, Gordon Lathrop, Karen O’Donnell, Alexander Schmemann and William Cavanaugh, I trace how carceral power controls, removes and dehumanises; by contrast, the eucharist names and recognises persons, restoring visibility, dignity, and mutual membership, and forming practices of welcome.