Man For All Seasons: Chuck Colson would run over his grand-mother to help prison inmates. Almost.
Aitken, Jonathan
"Man For All Seasons" Chuck Colson would run over his grandmother to help prison inmates. Almost. BY JONATHAN AITKEN archman State Penitentiary in the 100-degree heat of a...
...Back in 1976, when Prison Fellowship was a tiny operation launched on the proverbial wing and a prayer, Colson teamed up with a most unlikely devotional partner, the liberal Democrat senator from Iowa, Harold Hughes...
...The four seminal experiences in Colson's life have been serving in the U.S...
...I've never forgotten the pain of being separated from your family, of being locked up, of being out of control of your life, of being told that you're no good and that the only thing you can do is to keep quiet and do your time...
...After speaking at a lunchtime service in the "Spiritual Life Center" (a politically correct euphemism for the prison chapel), he goes into the fields to talk to the young offenders under eighteen doing short sentences in the prison's open-air boot camps...
...thundered a prominent Presbyterian minister after hearing one of the post-release testimony talks Colson delivered to Christian gatherings in the mid- and late-1970s...
...Man For All Seasons Chuck Colson would run over his grandmother to help prison inmates...
...Or is he on an ego trip in Christian camouflage...
...Although Colson never actually said, "I would walk over my grandmother for Richard Nixon...
...B Y J O N A T H A N A I T K E N P archman State Penitentiary in the I 100-degree heat of a Mississippi August weekend would not be chosen by many former White House aides as a suit-able location for a heavy schedule of meetings and speeches...
...The Sycamore Tree course is at the heart of the "restorative" justice programs Colson has inspired across the world with his book Justice That Restores...
...serving a prison sentence...
...But as the story in Luke's Gospel of the Pharisee and the Publican going up to the temple to pray reminds us, Christianity has very little to do with externals...
...His political career ended in 1999 when he served a seven-month prison sentence for per-jury in a civil libel case...
...Today's adulation factor can be a problem...
...Is he for real...
...I was in prison and you visited me," says the King in the parable of the sheep and the goats as recorded in Matthew 25...
...In the pin-drop silence his wordscreate, Colson crescendos: "It's because I've never forgotten that I keep coming back into prison after prison to tell you, my brothers, that the message of Jesus—he knew what it is like to be a prisoner too—is the greatest message of hope that the world has ever known...
...Some would say he was a darn sight too original and that America's political system still bears the scars that Colson and other Nixonian hatchet men inflicted on the nation's body politic at the time of Watergate, including dirty tricks and negative campaigning...
...As events turned out, the CIA-inspired coup against Arbenz succeeded in July 1954 without the planned amphibious assault of the Marines...
...and serving Jesus Christ...
...On the other hand some critics argue that the former schoolboy debating champion and successful courtroom attorney is merely deploying his old speechmaking skills in a new cause...
...That was what Colson did in his days of power as a White House aide, when he set out to create a new "silent majority" of union leaders, Catholics, blue-collar workers, ethnic blocs, and special interest groups...
...The essence of its message is that retributive justice is failing—in most Western countries, 60 percent to 70 percent of all prisoners are back in jail within two years of being released...
...Colson's one of nature's overthe-top enthusiasts," says one cynic...
...The notion that such a program could be transplanted into the U.S...
...One that stands out is Angel Tree...
...Only the combined skills of a Christian idealist, a political strategist, a practical operator, a compelling communicator, and a persuasive fundraiser could have pulled together the various strands of support that make the InnerChange Freedom Initiative work...
...After a dramatic pause Colson drops his voice and continues: "But I haven't forgotten...
...Inevitably there are many hands besides Col-son's in an operation of this magnitude...
...This is powerful stuff, and many Parch-man inmates are visibly moved by it as they come forward for prayer, for a blessing, or to make a commitment to a new life in Jesus...
...Back in the days when he was an active politician he was known for being an original thinker and tactician...
...Does his conversion experience include a change of political heart, from hawkish conservatism to bleeding-heart liberalism...
...Over a quarter of a century later it is the cynics and the skeptics who may need toshow a little penitence...
...No wonder Nixon raised a glass of Scotch to Colson on election night in 1972, toasting: "Here's to you, Chuck...
...He's still the same trim, impeccably dressed Ivy Leaguer with many of the same Semper Fi loyalties and friendships that took him through the Marines, law practice, and Republican politics...
...InnerChange Freedom Initiative inmates are all volunteers...
...Has he gone soft philosophically and politically...
...Instead of sharpening his hatchet, as he would have done during his years as a politician in the face of person-al insults and aspersions, Colson now gives a wry grin and a soft answer...
...That innovation succeeded and has been followed by many bolder experiments, of which the latest is the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, based on the concept of restorative justice...
...Many other examples could be given of Prison Fellowship's rigorous efficiency...
...NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 49...
...with hymn singing and Bible reading, and progresses into a highly disciplined Christian curriculum of life-changing behavior courses, including breaking addictions and turning away from crime...
...In his address to the prisoners of Parch-man, Colson tells an anecdote from his own incarceration about an aggressive black inmate called Archie who asked him: "Hey Colson, what are you going to do for us when you get out of here...
...InnerChange was a brainchild of Col-son's that got off the ground thanks to the support of the then-Governor George W. Bush in Texas...
...It is just one more fragment of evidence that the changes in him are real...
...In sharp contrast, Sugar Land and three other InnerChange Freedom Initiative prisons now operating Christian teaching regimes in Iowa, Minnesota, and Kansas show repeat-offender rates below 15 percent...
...Thanks to Angel Tree, this year more than 620,000 kids of men in jail will receive presents—complete with "Love from Dad" labels—that range from mountain bikes for teenagers to fluffy toys for toddlers...
...This is a ten-year-old nationwide Christmas gift distribution scheme to the children of prisoners...
...Some Christians like to say that the power of Colson's oratory is a gift from the Holy Spirit...
...The rejoicing swelled into an anti-hallelujah chorus of mocking cynicism when Colson announced that he had repented, found God, and become a born-again Christian...
...the journalistic license for this famous misquotation was tolerable, because it was merely an exaggerated illustration of the arrogant attitudes and behavior of the White House aide the press most loved to hate...
...It is no coincidence that these hats all fit Chuck Colson...
...prison system seemed fanciful at first...
...Fellow sinners, I have been where you are now" is his opening line...
...It creates an immediate rapport with his audience, as former prisoner 23226 Colson preaches the gospel of redemption with a compelling blend of humor, humility, and humanity...
...serving in the Nixon White House...
...Mostof them had never voted Republican in their lives, but when they coalesced with the traditional sources of GOP support the result was a triumph for Nixon...
...The world, including the non-Christian world, is starting to sit up and take notice of what restorative justice programs can achieve...
...He had a deck of cards in his hand, which he slammed down on the table shouting: "Oh Bull...
...and cabinet minister...
...Some of them already have, among them that same Presbyterian minister who showed up at Prison Fellowship's twenty-fifth-anniversary dinner with a public apology, praising Colson as "a great Christian leader who walks his talk...
...In 1997, when the first InnerChange Freedom Initiative prison was opened by George W. Bush in Sugar Land near Houston, there were many skeptical voices...
...He has a reputation for biblical orthodoxy, squeaky-clean finances, and impeccable personal morals...
...Colson, I hate you because I think you're ripping off Jesus Christ...
...Externally Colson has not changed all that much...
...It is no surprise that his personal hero is William Wilberforce, because like Wilberforce, Colson is a hands-on strategist who knows how to work with the grain of the political system to achieve his Christian objectives...
...The author of seven books—including the award-winning Nixon: A Life—he is currently writing Colson's official biography...
...For a time he was in bad odor with Protestant conservatives when he pioneered the ECT—Evangelicals and Catholics Together—movement in partnership with Father John Neuhaus of New York...
...It was an idea drawn from a Brazilian prison Colson had visited, where amazing changes in prisoner attitudes and behavior were in evidence because every single inmate in the jail was committed to a faith-based rehabilitation program focused on Christian teaching and accountability...
...A sort of Bible boot camp" was the Wall Street Journal's description, in an article that expressed astonishment at the Sugar Land inmates' willingness to accept a regime considerably tougher than those prevailing in the other 111 prisons in Texas...
...It is a verse to which many pay lip service, but few do the prison visiting...
...Even for a seventy-one-year-old veteran of prison ministry who has visited over 600 penal institutions in the twenty-six years since he founded Prison Fellowship, Parchman presents some exceptionally difficult challenges...
...Then he moves to a series of cell visits in a maxi-mum security lock-down unit containing around 500 inmates, most of whom are serving twenty years or longer for crimes of violence...
...One of Colson's political skills that has stayed with him on his Christian journey is the ability to build a coalition of unlikely partners and then to persuade those partners to give the coalition their wholehearted sup-port...
...Marine Corps...
...They persuaded him to agree to the ground-breaking innovation of allowing selected prisoners to be furloughed 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 from federal penitentiaries all over America in order to attend courses in Christian discipleship training at Prison Fellowship's borrowed offices in Washington, D.C...
...Yet Colson has a knack for both creating controversy and rising above it, possibly because his leadership of Prison Fellowship is seen by Christians of all shades as the embodiment of the Gospel in practical action...
...And what has the converted Colson actually achieved...
...When he was young he was willing to die for the Marines, in middle age he was willing to die for Richard Nixon, now he's going over the top for Jesus Christ...
...Colson's dawn-to-dusk itinerary is a demanding and at times harrowing one...
...The last two qualities of humility and humanity were conspicuously absent in thirty-eight-year-old Chuck Colson when he took up his appointment in the Nixon administration as special counsel to the president in 1969...
...Because some of his hats give him a high profile and a high level of access to old friends like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, Col-son has become something of an icon to the new generation of Christians, politicians, and even journalists whose predecessors twenty-five years ago reviled him as "the second most hated man in America" (after Nixon...
...They are required to commit themselves to a sixteen-hour workday, which begins at 5 a.m...
...Soon after being made a platoon commander he was sent to South American waters on a top-secret mission, "Operation Hard Rock Baker...
...It is based on the biblical story of the corrupt tax collector Zaccheus, who climbed down from a sycamore tree to meet Jesus, repented, and then restored ill-gotten gains to his victims on a fourfold basis...
...Colson still has to wrestle with the demon of pride, which his literary and spiritual mentor C. S. Lewis memorably described as "the complete anti-God state of mind...
...I've never forgotten what it's like to be in prison...
...So when "Nixon's hatchet man," as Colson was called, went to jail in 1974, having entered a plea of guilty to the peculiar Watergate-related offense of "disseminating information prejudicial to the legal rights of Daniel Ellsberg," great was the rejoicing of the Beltway's chattering classes...
...NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 47 son's combat training for the invasion instilled in him the qualities of leadership, loyalty, tenacity, and tough discipline that have stayed with him throughout the ups and downs of his colorful life...
...Yet he usually wrestles with it successfully because of the humbling nature of his prison experiences, which still loom large in his private thoughts and public speeches...
...That weekend mission to Parchman State Penitentiary, for example, required a great deal of forward planning, logistics, and tactical movements, not just by Colson, but also by the regiment of 320 yellow-shirted Prison Fellowship volunteers in his "Operation Starting Line" team, who followed him into the prison and took the Christian message to the inmates in over a hundred buildings there...
...In the polarized opinion field that Colson continues to create around himself, these questions still get asked, as this writer can attest from the listening post of official biographer...
...Now he's going over the top for Jesus Christ...
...Alongside discipline in Colson's life and work comes innovation, often of a political nature...
...Colson's program on this particular Saturday begins with an early morning stop on Death Row for one-on-one prayers with the sixty-two prisoners awaiting execution...
...Every so often his daily radio program Breakpoint (weekly audience: 4.5 million) comes under theological fire from one corner or another of the religious spectrum...
...Nevertheless, ColJonathan Aitken is a former British M.P...
...Together they went off to see the then-director of federal prisons, Norman Carlson...
...By late afternoon, when many of the "Operation Starting Line" team of Christian volunteers accompanying him are beginning to wilt under the emotional and physical pressures of Parchman—one of America's few air conditioning-free zones—Colson's stamina lifts him to an oratorical high, which soars above and beyond the barbed wire fences surrounding the main exercise yard...
...Colson is much more than a prison preacher...
...Archie was unconvinced...
...However, the disciplined performance that coordinates churches, donors, presents,prisoners, and their families into a successful gift-delivery operation in the three weeks before Christmas can be traced back to the disciplined ethos of Second Lieutenant Colson USMC, which Colson the Christian leader in turn instilled into Prison Fellowship from the earliest days of its existence...
...When he was young he was willing to die for the Marines...
...Big shots like you come to prison and you leave and you forget all about us little guys you've left behind...
...Although Colson now pleads guilty to the moral charges of arrogance, ruthlessness, and cutting corners to get the results that he knew would feed Nixon's dark side, he has remained loyal to the good side of the thirty-seventh President and the achievements that he and his boss worked for together...
...Commissioned after four years as an NROTC scholar at Brown University, Colson passed out top of his class at the legendary Leather-neck basic training camp at Quantico, Virginia...
...One of the most disarming aspects of the new Charles Colson is that he takes the wind out of such critics' sails by turning the other cheek...
...Archie, I'll never forget guys like you," replied Colson...
...Even among the church-going classes, there was skepticism aplenty about his penitence and his early prison ministry...
...Those are your votes that are pouring in, your votes boy...
...Yet his journey from hatchet man to holy man has not been an easy one...
...Colson is still in the business of creating coalitions, but these days in the constituencies of American Christendom...
...As Col-son's improbable companions in Parchman and many other prisons would agree, the man who has been visiting them and lifting their spirits for the last twenty-six years is an authentic man for all seasons...
...Although it is the fourth experience which dominates and determines Colson's leadership of Prison Fellowship—a $45-million-a-year ministry pioneering an innovative prison-centered program of faith-based solutions to law and order problems—the first three experiences are also fundamentally important to the way he walks his talk...
...So what makes Colson walk and talk these days...
...The Christian journey from self-centeredness to God-centeredness is an internal journey of change, often with the most improbable of companions...
...In middle age he was willing to die for Richard Nixon...
...Although it would be a false caricature to suggest that any sort of militaristic "Onward, Christian Soldiers" attitude prevails in Colson today, nevertheless it is fair to say that one reason why Prison Fellowship has succeeded rather better than many other Christian ministries is that it has been exceptionally well led and disciplined...
...Second only to my conversion, my two years in the Marines were the most formative influence on my life and on my character" is how Colson describes the impact of his active service in the USMC from 1953 to 1955...
...One of the most important of these courses is called Sycamore Tree...
...The answers are interesting, not least because the clues to them go back a long way...
...with orders to invade Guatemala and overthrow the allegedly communist-leaning government of President Jacobo Arbenz...
...He trounced his Democratic challenger George McGovern, 47 million votes—60.7 per cent of the total—to McGovern's 29 million votes...
...But Charles W. Colson is in his element as he tours the sprawling estate of this notoriously tough prison, offering sympathy, empathy, and evangelism to its 6,000 equally tough inmates...
...It was your strategy and it's a landslide...
...There he clambers on to a trailer to deliver a thirty-five-minute address to around a thousand inmates who have turned out to listen to his message...
...Although he is careful to give the glory to God for the success of his ministry, Colson is one of the nation's few religious leaders who reaches out across all denominations...
Vol. 35 • November 2002 • No. 6
