Chuck Colson vs. the Fundamentalists

...Colson has even added to Prison Fellowship a registered political lobby group called Justice Fellowship, which, since its founding in 1983, has been involved in everything from the fight against Congress's recent Crime Control Act to the drafting of the 1983 Nunn-Armstrong "Sentencing Improvement Act...

...This time LaHaye is certain: "I shook hands with him twice and got absolutely no spiritual response...

...The contrast between this narrow mandate and the Moral Majority is obvious...

...Today the two men are at odds...

...Even as he works for prison reform he recognizes that "penal institutions can't deal with the ultimate problem: the human heart...

...In the fundamentalist panorama men have repented from crime or alcoholism or even—as in the case of Pat Robertson—a bad case of secular humanism...

...But it is worth recalling that in 1971 Moynihan did offer some thoughts, rather different from his present ones, on the infection of paranoid thinking...

...The present critique of the press, itself now labeled paranoid by Moynihan, ad-dresses itself—or should address itself—to a similar reportorial credulousness whenever the press deals with the left or extreme left in politics...

...Colson is frustrated by politics...

...In fact, when the Nunn-Armstrong bill was tabled by the Senate, Colson reacted by including the addresses of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives in his Prison Fellowship newsletter...

...It is tempting to speculate that Moynihan's resort to the paranoid style as a means of accounting for present criticism of the press by others is of-fered as a covert confession that he himself previously suffered from delusions...

...And what of born-again Jimmy Carter...

...In the fifties that meant that Oral Roberts, in preaching to a largely rural and poor audience, recast the gospel into a variation of the American dream...

...Armstrong and Nunn approached Colson in the drafting of their crime bill, not the other way around, and Van Ness stresses the symbolic importance of the bill's bipartisan sponsorship...

...Political terms and the implications of ideology seem to have little meaning for Colson...

...If we withdraw from imposing the views and the beliefs of the cosmopolitan elite on the whole country," he concludes, "we will find the new fundamentalism returning to its modest role in the American kaleidoscope...

...Today Colson the prison preacher is also Colson the prison reformer, an outspoken critic of capital punishment and prison conditions...

...Yet the imperiousness of the political in our culture is such that for many Christians the actual state of fellow-ship, how they relate to other Christians, is determined more by what one thinks of Ronald Reagan than by what one thinks of God...

...Is he tight-lipped...

...20005...

...Consider the two rules from Pat Robert-son's 1982 manifesto The Secret Kingdom...

...That's why the gospel of Christ is the only real answer...

...Neuhaus, although he con-cedes that the activist fundamentalists "are not going to go back to the wilderness," stresses the modesty of their eventual goals: " . . . the country cousins have shown up in force at the family picnic...

...One of the major things that led to my conversion," he recalls, "was that when I walked out of the White House I realized most of the problems I had worked on there were worse when I left power than when I had begun...

...We don't expect to be able to usher in the Kingdom of God," says Justice Fellowship director Daniel Van Ness, "but there are biblical principles we think we can apply to the specific question of criminal justice...

...I began to understand why God views society not through the princes of power, but through the eyes of the sick and the needy, the oppressed and the down-trodden...

...It has always been true, of course, that some of the bitterest critics of the newly politicized evangelists have been other evangelists...

...Michael Cromartie, one of Colson's early aides, explains that "Chuck set up Justice Fellowship to authenticate his concern for prisoners...

...This is the freedom Col-son has found in being born again...

...Another evangelical within the Administration speaks sharply of Col-son's refusal to provide Christians in politics with guidance about how to square faith with secular responsibility: "I will tell you for a fact that if I were in any way uncomfortable with the use of power I wouldn't survive...

...At the center of Colson's ministry is his individual work with prisoners...

...Drawing heavily on the work of French legal philosopher Jacques Ellul, Colson often argues that political power is an illusion, that the governing institutions are incapable of dealing effectively with human problems...

...By this standard, Colson is a giant, whose power as an evangelist is owed entirely to the sinfulness of his political past...

...Those who know Colson don't take this rhetoric too literally...

...He must be a melancholy temperament...

...Chuck Colson is not simply the most powerful internal critic of the religious right...

...Tim LaHaye has on the cover of his monthly "Report from the Nation's Capital" a picture of himself on the Senate steps...

...Malcolm Gladwell CHUCK COLSON VS...

...The Vietnam war, he wrote, had brought out a mirror-image, Mc-Carthy-style, "conspiracy-oriented politics" on the left (though this was a left that he preferred to designate as neofascist...

...We must, if necessary, defy immoral authority...

...There are only 275,000 of them, but they control everything—the mass media, government, and even the Supreme Court...

...Justice Fellowship is simply conceived as a complement to this work...

...No, he's smiling, and somehow that seems entirely appropriate...

...In other words, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the fundamentalists have taken to the political process so quickly and completely...

...As for defying authority and working outside of the system, Col-son's ministry with inmates is possible only because of a special dispensation from Norman Carlson, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons...

...On the state level, Justice Fellowship avoids the endorsement and support of organizations and interest groups, preferring instead to set up state caucuses of concerned individuals...

...This is a seductive argument, especially for those with an interest in quieting what Neuhaus calls the "increasingly hysterical and increasingly hollow alarm" over the religious right...

...There is a substantial difference, however, between Colson's political activity and that of the fundamentalists he criticizes...

...They might have been—after all, one of Col-son's tasks as a young secular humanist in the Nixon White House was to be the administration's liaison with the religious community—but somehow history got in the way...

...Richard John Neuhaus, in an essay...

...Ladies with puffed-up coiffures that look like spun candy probably form the backbone of Prison Fellowship's financial contributors...

...Colson's objections to this politicized Christianity are not particularly radical, nor are they particularly new...

...In fact, these arguments have long been made against the religious left...

...I wondered," said the transformed Colson, "how I could have spent three and a half years in the White House and missed so many things that really matter...

...22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1986 usually involve Mother Teresa"she has no power in the worldly sense . . . but she has enormous authority...

...But they're hardly close friends...

...Almost everything is political these days," he continues...

...The fact is that in some sense fundamentalism has always been a political movement waiting to happen...

...As he remembers the moment: "I looked at the smiling, white, scrubbed-clean faces of the audience . . . the ladies with puffed-up coiffures that looked like spun candy...

...Colson gives me no help in how to use political power in a place like the White House...

...for Commentary entitled "What the Fundamentalists Want," portrays the fundamentalist entry into politics as an understandable response to an assault on their cultural and religious values...

...A number of years ago, University of Chicago historian Mar-tin Marty pointed out that the Moral Majority's evaluation scale for politicians would have given then Congressman Paul Simon, a committed Christian, zero, and Florida Rep...

...Because, ultimately, he seems to hold the capabilities of politics in disdain, he seems to be above it, unfettered by its restrictions...

...Glazer too argues that the fundamentalists are 'Available in reprint from the Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1030 15th St, NW, Suite 300, Washington, D.C...

...In it the people will get the government they deserve...

...Falwell was still grounded in Lynchburg, excoriating the ghost of Martin Luther King for mixing religion and politics, when Colson was wooing religious leaders from the White House...

...Colson speaks from personal experience...

...God uses oak trees," he says, somewhat obscurely, "not mushrooms...

...They want a few rules changed right away...

...If we comprise thirty percent of the people in this country," he maintains, "we should hold thirty percent of the elected offices...

...He is also, in a sense, the most sophisticated...

...By the time Falwell had his celebrated epiphany on the road to Washington, Colson too had changed, finding God and in the process turning his back on everything he had stood for in the past...

...but my mind saw expressionless men in dirty brown, marching in cadence along steel and concrete ramps...

...The point is that Colson uses the language of radical Christianity simply for effect, to shake up the traditional fundamentalist passivity toward social problems that manifests itself either in narrow evangelism—one Oral Roberts aide described his organization's prison ministry to me as "distributing 100,000 bibles and bible cassettes free of charge"—or, on the political level, as an arid "law 'n' order" mentality...

...In other words, no...

...If a per-son is continuously in sickness, poverty, or other physical or mental straits, then he is missing the truths of the Kingdom...

...He became a prison preacher, a minister to the hopeless and forgotten, working as closely with those who wield no power as he once did with those who do...

...His text was John 3:2"I wish above all things that thou may prospereth and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth"--not the book of Job...

...The press proved to be culpably credulous of the false conspiracy charges typical of this politics, and as a result became "a too-willing outlet for mindless paranoia...

...He's a real enigma to us," says LaHaye...

...But it is one thing to say that the fundamentalists arrived at the public square reluctantly, and another thing to say that once they got there their inhibitions remained...

...The purpose of the historic founding meeting of the Moral Majority was, according to its organizer Robert Billings, no less than "to draw up a plan to save America...

...His was a comfortable position when we enjoyed a Christian consensus," says LaHaye, "but that's been eroded by secular humanists...

...An activist by temperament—"Jesus forgave sin and fed the hungry...

...They may have been pushed into politics, but now they like the game an awful lot...

...There is little doubt who Colson is referring to when he calls for "sober soul-searching" in the evangelical cornMalcolm Gladwell is a writer living in Washington, D.C...

...For some on the religious right, advancing a political agenda has come to take precedence over even the most basic ethical considerations...

...Nor does Col-son make political endorsements, urging Christians to vote only for men and women of demonstrated integrity...

...The power broker for Nixon is now a power broker for Jesus...

...For Colson these were serious, critical battles...

...The fundamentalists, above all else, want their struggles to be taken seriously...

...A religion based on conversion," Garry Wills has said of fundamentalism, "tends to measure the height of a man's rise by the depth of his fall...

...Once, on Jim Bakker's television show "PTL Club," Colson stunned the audience by suggesting that the word of God was more real in the prisons where he took his ministry than there in the TV studio...

...Second, it is possible to have total favor with the ruler of that abundance...

...Richard Kelly, who was fingered in the Abscam investigation for pocketing a $25,000 bribe, a perfect rating...

...Can an obedient follower do less...

...As Notre Dame historian Nathan Hatch sums up the modern evangelists: "[They] spoke the language of peace of mind in the 1950s, developed a theology of `body-life' and community in the wake of the 1960s, and are currently infatuated with a gospel of self-esteem that correlates precisely with the contemporary passion for self-fulfillment...

...He is for criminal restitution and innovative sentencing for nonviolent of-fenders...

...Chesterton said the great sin is to call a green leaf gray...

...Bob Jones's quarrel with Falwell is theological...

...The religious right, he says, is in the grip of this political illusion: "Many evangelicals have sought to solve our culture's problems from the top down, by `taking dominion over America.' Such rhetoric may make us conspicuous in the news, but for the most part we are also conspicuous by our absence from the day-to-day battles where human problems are most acute...

...He may sound off against the middle-class ethos, but the Prison Fellowship has its headquarters in an old mansion in Reston, Virginia, an "attractive edifice in a location near a growing suburb and as far away from crime-infested downtown as possible...

...Colson is so dismissive of the whole issue that when it comes to providing role models for the Christian use of power he will only make vague references to the English parliamentary reformer Wilberforce and render recondite theological distinctions that "I wonder how I could have spent three and a half years in the White House and missed so many things that really matter...

...LaHaye claims Col-son has no sense of urgency...

...Presumably this is not the case...

...Melancholy temperaments are such supersonic idealists that they are often highly impractical...

...I learned that power did not equal justice...

...It is the dullest gray to call salvation politics...

...Other than that they promise to behave, provided we do not again try to exclude them from family deliberations...

...That strain in fundamentalism that believes in an abundant God, what Colson calls the notion of God as a "rich and benevolent uncle," has easily adapted to modern America's emphasis on acquiring and using political power...

...He can be biting on the subject of the "middle class church"—that "attractive edifice in a location near a growing suburb and as far away from crime-infested downtown as possible . . . [with] committees organizing concerts, covered-dish suppers, Bible studies, slide shows, and the like...

...We've begun to realize that government is the most powerful human force in the world...

...Yes, says Tim LaHaye: "If I had to choose between a rascal like Kelly and an anti-moralist, I would be inclined to vote for the rascal...

...Today, as some of the fundamentalists are guilty of these same sins, it is left to Chuck Colson, the Nixon hatchet-man turned evangelist, to sound the alarm—not over what a politically ascendant fundamentalism is doing to the rest of America, but over what it is doing to itself...

...munity because "worldly power—whether measured by buildings, budgets, baptisms, or access to the White House—is more often the enemy than the ally of Godliness...

...Indeed, even though Colson uses the political process to advance certain of his goals, he seems to have little respect or patience for it...

...For LaHaye, times have changed...

...For Tim LaHaye, making it in America means making it in Washington...

...This is yuppie theology: "First, there is absolute abundance in the kingdom of God...

...Does this mean that Christians should still vote for Kelly over Simon...

...Nathan Glazer, among others, has argued that the agenda of the religious right was only a response to the success of secular and liberal forces in America...

...His auto-biography, Born Again, sold in the millions, but he would seek none of the trappings of evangelical stardom—the television show, the crystal cathedral...

...He has spoken and continues to speak directly to state legislatures in support of reform legislation because, as he puts it in his most recent book, Who Speaks for God?, "the only way to combat the demagoguery which so inflames public passions [about crime] is for Christians to work for laws which apply biblical standards to criminal justice issues...

...Historian Edwin Orr points out that the appeal of modern evangelicalism is for "enlistment, not repentance"—in other words, that evangelists have always exploited Christianity's populist characteristics, its potential as a social movement, at the expense of the more demanding aspects of Protestant theology...

...For me this was reality . . ." Colson feels called to work among the "powerless and the oppressed...

...Chuck Colson, the Nixon hatchet-man turned evangelist, and Jerry Falwell, the Lynchburg preacher playing statesman, are brothers in Christ...

...On occasion Colson will even sound like a radical when he talks about modern Christianity's evasion of social responsibility...

...He has mocked the ascent of TV evangelists—"Some preachers, especially a few I've seen on television, sound like they've just hung up from a private session with Him before going on the air' and questioned their pretensions to authority: "The quiet, often unnoticed actions of ordinary Christians .. . speak far more loudly than all the bombast of so-called religious leaders...

...Evangelical historian George Marsden calls this a historic propensity to respond to secularization "by bless[ing] its manifestations—such as materialism, capitalism, and nationalism—with Christian symbolism...

...Sound like a good lobbyist...

...Yet—and this is Colson's strongest point—it does not ring true, not so long as Jerry Falwell turns from TV evangelism to international ambulance chasing or Pat Robertson hungrily awaits word from God on whether to run for the presidency...

...Pat Robertson, the Christian entrepreneur made good, doesn't seem to think so...

...engaged in a "defensive offensive" with limited aims...

...I think it would be disastrous for our country if all Christians adopted Colson's attitude...

...Even as it has been in reaction to secular America, fundamentalist culture has shown a marked ability to adapt to social trends...

...This is a dangerous attitude for the Christian witness...

...Christians must no longer sit idly by," he says, in another context...

...He couldn't go in there and gain their respect if he weren't doing something for them on the outside...

...Who remembers what Richard Neuhaus said of the political activism of the National Council of Churches just four years ago...

...For his political sins he was sent to prison where, he remembers, "surrounded by despair and suffering, I began to see through the eyes of the powerless...

...Bob Jones (of Bob Jones University) has said that Falwell'sinvolvement with politics makes him the greatest instrument of Satan in America today...

...And today...

...Is he troubled...

...Tim LaHaye, who as head of the American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV) and a founding board member of the Moral Majority, has just recently moved from the fundamentalist backwaters to a Washington office overlooking the Capitol, sounds more hurt than any-thing else when he says: "I think it would be disastrous for our country if all Christians adopted Colson's attitude...

...Cautious lobbying must give way to voter registration, religious agendas, and Christian candidates...

...Do the fundamentalist meek still inherit the earth...

...However crudely or even mistakenly this critique may prove to be applied in some instances, calling it paranoid, like treating support of a nuclear deter-rent as a sign of mental disturbance, amounts to a distorted, self-serving abuse of psychology...

...THE FUNDAMENTALISTS How political can you get...

...Either the church is going to become morally active and set moral issues as the dominant standard for its elected officials or we will be overrun by humanist thought by 1990...

...This apparent contempt of Colson's for politics and political institutions is at the heart of his debate with the religious right...

...Mark Hatfield can be a liberal and a Christian...

...As LaHaye put it in an earlier interview: "They have us in a stranglehold...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1986 23...

...But no one's criticisms carry the weight of Colson's...

...But never has a man been redeemed from something of the symbolic enormity of Watergate...

...Justice Fellowship is careful to steer a neutral course...

...One thing about a democracy is clear," Col-son wrote, exhorting his readers to action...

...Colson doesn't feel beholden to any ideological standards save those of his conscience...

...There is simply too much eagerness in fundamentalist political activity—the exploitation of direct mail, the proliferation of PACs, the slick and lavish promotional efforts...

...There is absolutely no indication that because Colson borrows from the left he feels bound to it in any larger sense...

...If prosperity is the gift of God, then so must be the political clout that comes with it...

...At stake, most ominously, is fidelity to the gospel of Christ...

...This is a man who has taken communion from evangelicalism's most prominent radical—Jim Wallis of Sojourner's magazine—but who also once silenced a hostile college audience asking about Watergate by stating flatly: "Richard Nixon is my friend, and I don't turn my back on my friends...

...Just as Falwell found Bishop Tutu a "phony," Tim LaHaye expresses puzzlement at the fact that Sen...

...Colson has a very clear sense, in other words, of the limits of his political activity...

...At heart, Falwell remains a country preacher," wrote Dinesh D'Souza in his recent biography...

...In the fundamentalist world, ideological considerations have begun to color fellowship with other Christians...

...Unlike so many of Falwell's detractors, he does not issue a blanket condemnation of all forms of political activity...

...Does Colson appreciate this...

...Colson explains that his own experiences with "the injustices in our courts, and the barbarisms in our prisons," inspired him to action...

...Unlike groups such as the Moral Majority with their broad emphasis on electoral politics, he sticks closely to single-issue lobbying...

...In fact, through his prison ministry, the organization known as Prison Fellowship, he has THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1986 21 become involved with criminal justice movements across the country...

...LaHaye and the Moral Majority have a point...

...Power is a Christian birthright...

...Through Prison Fellowship he has set up a highly acclaimed rehabilitative and support network that today uses local volunteers and professional counselors to minister to thousands of convicts, ex-convicts, and convicts' families...

...This is what the fundamentalists' defenders have tried to argue...

...The presidency would not be something a Christian leader could run for, but something he'd be drafted for, and there is only one Person who could do the drafting...

...Nor is there much doubt about whether the man who has quipped that "the Kingdom of God will not arrive on Air Force One" thinks Pat Robertson should run for President...

...Sometimes it's not clear that he does, and he seems to criticize fundamentalists for something that they themselves did not do willingly...

...Colson left power and politics for God...

...The political task is urgent but it is one among many...

...Even Col-son's political conclusions—which essentially form a "liberal" agenda on criminal justice and prison reform—seem to have been reached less for explicitly ideological reasons than because of his firm religious conviction that "even a modest effort by Christians at evangelizing a prison can do more to reduce the crime rate than building twenty new fortresses...