Darius Huntington walks back and forth behind a podium situated on the free-throw line of the gym-turned-prison chapel. He preaches so loudly that he doesn’t need the microphone.
“Every man under the sound of my voice,” he booms, “I pray that you know the authority that our Heavenly Father has given you, to overcome all enemies — the enemies of addiction, of loss, of loneliness, of hate, of false prophets.”
The audience is rapt. Huntington is a stocky man, wearing Michigan’s navy blue prison uniforms. When he lifts his arms to the sky, the crowd follows in unison.
“I’ve been where you’ve been,” he says. “I’ve been an alcoholic. I’ve been in a gang I thought was everything. None is more powerful than God, and none can give you the love and peace that only God can bring!”
Not bad for a man that came to prison as a teenager who could barely read and write.
Today, at 36, Huntington is the inside leader of Thumb Correctional Facility’s Protestant Christian church, a role that involves directing services, introducing guest speakers and organizing events like baptisms.
When no volunteer pastor from outside is available, Huntington, who is serving a life sentence, preaches himself — a fact that would have astonished his younger self.
The religion of gangbanging
Huntington grew up in a neighborhood of Muskegon, Michigan, that was dominated by gangs.
“Gangbanging wasn’t really a choice to someone born there,” he said. “You’re told, ‘This is who you are and what you’re a part of.’ It’s its own religion.”
“His neighborhood is somewhere I’d never walk through at night,” said Jeff Abrahamson, also from Muskegon.
For Huntington, the gang life was one of hopelessness. He felt his life was missing something essential. To fill the void, he used drugs and drank heavily as a young teen. Soon, he dropped out of high school.
The darkness was all-consuming. A brief reprieve came after the birth of his son, but the peace of that moment would be short-lived. In 2009, at 19, Huntington met a group of friends at a party store who were getting ready to rob a nearby house. During the robbery, he shot and killed the homeowner. He was convicted and automatically sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Finding faith
In prison, Huntington carried on gangbanging and abusing drugs and alcohol. He was quick to fight cellmates as well as rival gang members. He stole from the prison and from other prisoners.
“I was all about getting what I could to fill the void I felt inside,” he said.
Huntington recalls attending church with his beloved grandmother as a child. When she became sick, he began talking with her again about God and faith over the phone. She soon died, and he missed their talks. He began to pray to God for his family, for those he had harmed, and for hope.
Huntington was eventually transferred to a cell with Brian Coleman, whom he described as large and intimidating. But when Huntington entered the cell, Coleman reached out for a handshake.
“God loves you and has a plan for you,” Coleman said to Huntington.
The cellmates began having daily discussions about faith, God and the Bible. Coleman, known as Brother Brian, motivated Huntington to sign up for church, where he experienced something he felt had been missing.
“I felt a sense of community there, in the best possible way,” Huntington said. “It was like gangs just imitated that. I felt a sense of purpose being there, like I could help bring about something good instead of everything bad.”
Learning to read
After a few months of attending church, he met with the chaplain, who said he should preach about his newfound faith at the next service.
There was one problem.
“I didn’t know how to read,” he said.
Huntington didn’t want to admit that or appear scared, so he accepted the invitation. “I learned to read by studying the Bible.
“I opened up to Jeremiah 29:11, and slowly went over the Word,” he said.
Two years after his conviction, Huntington preached for the first time before a congregation of over 100 men at Macomb Correctional Facility in southeastern Michigan.
“I was so nervous, and I was astonished that I got through it and that people clapped afterward,” he said.
But his past life would catch up with him again.
Dark night of the soul
A year later, Huntington was transferred to Earnest C. Brooks Correctional Facility in his hometown.
There, he ran into people from his former life. Friends from his youth, as well as current members of his former gang, approached him on the yard on his first day. They controlled the drug trade, making tens of thousands of dollars, Huntington said.
“I thought I was at one place with God,” he said. “[But] they tempted me with getting high and making large amounts of money that I could use to pay for a lawyer to try to get me out of prison.”
At first he resisted. But then his 3-year-old son died of a genetic disorder.
Anger and bitterness sank him into despair. He briefly fell back into old ways — gangbanging, fighting and using drugs to cope.
“My pain just felt overwhelming,” Huntington said.
“All I felt was hopelessness, and I was trying to cover a wound,” he continued. “And that’s when my friend Brian Coleman came to me and told me I had a choice: I could serve a gang, or I could serve God.”
“I knew that something greater existed,” Huntington said.
Huntington renounced his gang — “folded his flag,” in prison slang. He can’t ever go back.
“They could have stabbed me over it, but instead they told me I was dead to them and let me go, which was God’s work,” Huntington said.
He began preaching again.
Folding his flag
One day in 2014, Huntington called his mother from a phone on the prison yard. As he spoke with her, he noticed a man repeatedly walking by, staring at him. Huntington’s senses heightened. He told his mother he would call back.
Sensing danger, he acknowledged the man and positioned himself to fight.
“Are you Darius Huntington?” the man asked.
“Yeah,” he responded.
“You killed my grandfather,” the man said, stepping forward.
To Huntington’s shock, the man reached out, gave him a hug and said: “I forgive you.”
The man’s name was Tyreke. He told Huntington he had followed him for seven days to determine what kind of person his grandpa’s killer was, and to decide what to do about, or to, him.
“The villain I had heard about was not the man I saw,” Huntington said Tyreke told him.
The two men became friends and talked daily until they both were transferred to different facilities.
“That was the grace of God at work,” Huntington said, “and I remember that every day.”
