Chuck Colson

CHUCK COLSON -- Chuck was honored in 2007 by being "Man of the Year" from Centers For Decency. Imprisoned during the Watergate scandal, Chuck Colson is founder and head of Prison Fellowship Ministries in Lansdowne, Va., the world’s largest outreach to prisoners, exprisoners, crime victims and their families. Colson is also an author and host of “BreakPoint,” a syndicated national radio show.

His later life has been spent working with his nonprofit organization devoted to prison ministry called Prison Fellowship. Colson is also a public speaker and author. He is founder and chairman of the Wilberforce Forum which is the "Christian worldview thinking, teaching, and advocacy arm of" Prison Fellowship.

Early life

Nixon Administration

In 1969, Colson was appointed as Special Counsel to President Nixon. Colson also became involved in the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP or CREEP). Colson "was Richard Nixon's hard man, the 'evil genius' of an evil administration."[1]. Known as President Nixon's hatchet man, he is purported to have once bragged, "I'd walk over my own grandmother to re-elect Richard Nixon." Colson authored the 1971 memo listing Nixon's major political opponents, later known as Nixon's Enemies List.

In 1971, Colson proposed firebombing the Brookings Institution and stealing politically damaging documents while firefighters put the fire out. [2] [1] "According to Watergate historian Stanley Kutler, Colson sought to hire Teamsters thugs to beat up anti-war demonstrators".[1]

At a CRP meeting on March 21st, 1971, it was agreed to spend $250,000 on "intelligence gathering" on the Democratic Party. Colson and John Ehrlichman appointed E. Howard Hunt to the White House Special Operations Unit (the so-called "Plumbers") which had been organized to stop leaks in the Nixon administration. Hunt headed up the Plumbers' burglary of Pentagon Papers-leaker Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in September 1971. The Pentagon Papers were military documents about the Vietnam War which helped increase opposition to the war. Colson hoped that revelations about Ellsberg could be used to discredit the anti-Vietnam War left. In Colson's 2005 book, The Good Life, he admitted leaking information from Ellsberg's confidential FBI file to the press, but denied organizing Hunt's burglary of Ellsberg's office. In the book, he expressed regret for attempting to cover up this incident.

As Colson was facing arrest, his close friend Tom Phillips gave him a copy of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. This influenced Colson to become an evangelical Christian. Editorial comics in several U. S. newspapers, as well as Newsweek and Time, ridiculed the conversion, claiming that it was a ploy to reduce his sentence.

In 1974 Colson pleaded nolo contendere (no contest) to obstruction of justice in the Ellsberg case. He was given a one-to-three year sentence. He served seven months in Maxwell Correctional Facility in Alabama.

Career after prison

After his release from prison, Colson founded Prison Fellowship. Colson has worked to promote prisoner rehabilitation and reform of the prison system in the United States. He disdains the "lock 'em and leave 'em" warehousing approach to criminal justice. He led the effort that released Elizabeth Morgan from prison. He has helped to create faith-based prisons whose populations come from inmates who choose to participate in them. All of Colson's book royalties are donated to Prison Fellowship.

Colson also maintains a variety of media channels which discuss contemporary issues from an Evangelical Protestant worldview. Colson's views are typically consistent with a politically conservative interpretation of evangelical Protestantism. In his Christianity Today columns, for example, Colson has opposed same-sex marriage,[citation needed] argued that Darwinism is used to attack Christianity,[1] and claimed that the Enron accounting scandals were a consequence of secularism.[citation needed] He has also argued against Darwinism and in favor of intelligent design [2], saying Darwinism helped cause forced sterilizations by eugenicists.[3]

Colson has been an outspoken critic of postmodernism, believing that as a cultural worldview it is incompatible with the Christian tradition. He has debated other prominent Evangelicals, such as Brian Mclaren, on the best response for the Evangelical church in dealing with the postmodern cultural shift.

Where is the hope? I meet millions of people who feel demoralized by the decay around us. The hope that each of us has is not in who governs us, or what laws we pass, or what great things we do as a nation. Our hope is in the power of God working through the hearts of people. And that's where our hope is in this country. And that's where our hope is in life.

In October 2002, Colson, along with several other prominent American evangelical leaders, was a co-signer of the Land letter to President Bush which outlined a "just war" endorsement of the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.

Colson's voice, archives from April 1969, was heard in the movie Going Upriver deprecating the anti-war efforts of John Kerry. Colson's orders were to "Destroy the young demagogue before he becomes another Ralph Nader."

Colson was recently referred to by Martin Nolan as Karl Rove's "spiritual ancestor". "Pretty impressive performance," Colson told Nolan after Kerry testified before a Senate committee. But to his boss, President Richard Nixon, as revealed on tape years later, Colson said, "This fellow Kerry that they had on last week. ... He turns out to be really quite a phony." Colson himself admitted to playing a role similar to Rove in his book, The Good Life.

On June 1, 2005 Colson appeared in the national news commenting on the revelation that W. Mark Felt was Deep Throat. Colson expressed disapproval in Felt's role in the Watergate scandal and suggested that if Felt could not remain loyal to President Nixon, then he should have simply resigned.

References

Charles W. Colson, Born Again, New Jersey: Chosen Books, Inc., 1976, ISBN 90-6067-283-6.
Charles W. Colson, Loving God, New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1983, ISBN 0-06-104003-7.
William A. Dembski, Charles W. Colson, The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design, Inter Varsity Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8308-2375-1.
Burden of Truth: Defending the Truth in an Age of Unbelief (Tyndale House 1998) ISBN 0-8423-0190-9.
Life Sentence (Revell 1999) ISBN 0-8007-8668-8.
How Now Shall We Live? (Tyndale House 1999) ISBN 0-8423-1808-9.
The Body (W Pub. Group 1994) ISBN 0-8499-3579-2.
Being The Body (W Pub. Group 2003) ISBN 0-8499-1752-2.
Charles Colson, Harold Fickett, The Good Life (Tyndale House 2005) ISBN 0-8423-7749-2.

Note: Mr. Colson has a long list of publications, collaborations and has written forewords for several other books. Along with the Roman Catholic Richard John Neuhaus, he edited Evangelicals and Catholics Together : Toward a Common Mission, ISBN 0-8499-3860-0.