Tony Lowden, Jimmy Carter’s pastor at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, is set to join the Trump administration.
On Friday President Donald Trump is expected to announce Lowden as the executive director of the administration’s Federal Interagency Council on Crime Prevention and Improving Reentry. In that position, he will advise the White House and implement and coordinate efforts to aid released prisoners who are reentering life and the workforce.
“It is amazing,” Lowden said. “Only God can do something like this that allows me to be the spiritual advisor for one president and an advisor to another president on criminal reform, from two separate parties.”
Prison reform and workforce development are among Trump’s priorities. In 2018, he established the agency Lowden will head and he signed the First Step Act to address reentry.
“This is right in my wheelhouse. This is a great opportunity to help those who are in our prisons who are coming home,” Lowden said. “There is a no bigger crisis that is facing the nation right now than mass incarceration.”