Chatting with Chuck Colson

Chatting with Chuck Colson

by | Jan 19, 1978 | Archive - 1978

Chatting with Chuck Colson

January/February 1978

Good News

 

Charles “Chuck” Colson, one of America’s leading evangelicals, spoke at the 1977 Good News Convocation. In an exclusive interview before the event, Good News editor Charles W. Keysor and associate editor Eddie Robb spoke with Colson.

 

Eddie Robb: At one time you were a nationally known and controversial political figure.

Chuck Colson: Infamous

ER: But you’re also America’s best-know Christian convert. Is it difficult to maintain your equilibrium as a Christian in your private life while you are so much in the limelight of publicity continuously?

CC: Yes. You asked the question on a very good day because I’m hoping that the Lord will give me enough strength to survive through 24more hours, when we will end up on the coast of Oregon in a quiet house looking out over the water with a lot of books to be read and some time to sleep and be quiet.

ER: Do you grow weary at times of being looked upon as a “professional” Christian?

CC: You grow very tired of constantly being on display. We were in Europe this summer on a really busy tour. We had two days off in London. It’s hard to describe what a nice feeling it was to think we were going to be walking out on the streets and nobody was going to be looking at us. No heads were going to turn. Nobody was going to come walking up to us. Then we walked into a restaurant and somebody yelled, “Chuck Colson!”

ER: There are many critics (perhaps even some of your friends) who construed your conversion as nothing more than a religious cop out amidst the pressures of Watergate. Now that some time has passed since your conversion experience, has that type of criticism pretty well run its course?

CC: Yes. I used to find that a lot of people came to hear me speak purely out of curiosity. They were plain skeptical. They would come up after the speech and say, “We didn’t believe you, but now that we’ve heard you, we do.”

All I ever say to people is, “You know, I’m like the blind man who, when asked whether Christ was the Messiah replied, ‘I don’t know who He was but now I can see.’”

I just tell my story, and if it provokes other people to think about their own lives, then I challenge them to try Christ for themselves.”

ER: Do you think that most of the press now accepts your conversion experience as genuine?

CC: I do, if they believe any conversion is genuine.

Charles Keysor: Considering the Christian scene in America, what place do you see the large mainline denominations having? ls the Holy Spirit moving in them?

CC: I don’t think there can be a real awakening of God’s Spirit except by the reviving of Christ’s Body, the Church. And it’s happening. You see great evidences of it in the charismatic movement in the Roman Catholic Church. There’s a flicker of hope in the Episcopal Church (which happens to be my denomination) where you see an evangelical seminary started. That’s the beginning of something. Certainly the growth in the Southern Baptist Church is an indication that people are going where the Gospel is preached.

Several sociologists have predicted that the churches of America will become evangelical in the period of the late 70s and early 80s because of the demands of the laity. Believers are going to force churches to become evangelical. Evangelical churches are thriving. Church attendance went up last year two percent- the first time in 17 years in America it has not decreased! And this growth was all in evangelical churches. As a matter of fact, the more traditional mainline churches did not grow, but the evangelical churches did. So I think renewal is happening. God is raising up people with a renewed commitment, and they are going to revive the church.

CK: What place do you see the charismatic movement having in the present church scene?

CC: I like what Oswald Chambers wrote: “… never make your experience a principle. Let God be as original dealing with others as He was with you.” I see problems occasionally in charismatic teaching. I don’t happen to be a charismatic in the way that term is traditionally defined. I often feel filled with the Holy Spirit and have had experiences with Him, but I don’t pray in tongues.

I think there’s room in the Body of Christ for all of us who love Christ and want to follow Him. I’m sorry to see that issue divide the believers. I think it’s too bad that it does.

CK: Do you see any signs of awakening social consciousness among Christians?

CC: Well, there’s a group called Evangelicals for Social Concern that began with the Chicago Declaration in ‘73, and has been growing rapidly. That’s been kind of the core of people who are concerned, Mostly they have been academics who have not been widely heard in the Body. I don’t believe that we can say that there is awakening going on, even though millions are coming to Christ, until we begin to see the impact of Christian values in a secular world. To me this is the number-one challenge.

CK: Fruits, in other words?

CC: Yea. God’s transforming power working through believers.

CK: How can ordinary Christian people get involved in prison reform?

CC: The only prison reform that Is ever going to mean anything is when the prisons become places of real revival. And only God is going to change these people. You can’t. I can’t.

We’ve had some success making little changes in a prison, but it is all – 100 percent – a matter of building relationships between people and Jesus Christ. I was in one prison where the men told me they had no pillowcases. I went out that night, talked to some Christian men in town. They bought pillowcases and shipped them into the prison. That went through the federal prison system like electricity! These are little things that happened because of what we are trying to do to open up the prisons to the Gospel.

There are 300,000 men and women in prisons and penitentiaries serving sentences, not counting jails where they are awaiting trials. If 300,000 committed Christian families on the outside would take an interest in helping these people, one-on-one, I think we could cut the crime rate by 50 percent.

The statistics show that four out of five crimes are committed by ex-convicts, so in some future year a statistician will tell you that 80 percent of all the crimes committed in the United States will be committed by the 300,000 people in prison today. Now, you change those people and it does you a whale of a lot more good than hiring policemen to fill the streets. That’s not where the answer is.

CK: What kind of possibility you see for this one-on-one prison ministry? Are Christians excited by it?

CC: Right now one of the biggest problems we have is that there are about 15 people in our office in Washington, and mail comes to us in sacks. And we love it. But we’re having trouble keeping up with it. We’ve been matching up prisoners and families manually, which is a terrific job. We’re exploring some ways to get them on computer.

ER: I don’t expect that in November, 1972, when you were at the height of power in Washington DC, that you would ever guess that four years later you would be working in prison reform.

CC: I didn’t see myself in 1972 as ever visiting a prison, let alone spending seven months there.

ER: So what do you see yourself doing 15 years from now? Do you see prison reform as your lifelong work?

CC: Scriptures tell us to look at one day at a time. And I made the mistake my first 40 years trying to plan it all out. I want to be open to whatever God’s leading is. One thing I don’t ever want to get back into, be it in the name of ministry of Christ or any other name, is building up a great big operation, then having to justify it, and then going out and saying – now we’ve got all these people working for us, we’ve got to keep them all going and find something for them to do. We’re staying as lean as possible in what we are doing.

I’d love to be able to tell you that this ministry would be out of business in five years because it would have done its job.

ER: Go back in time to 1972. If I were to have said then, “Chuck, you’re going to be a good friend of so-and-so in 1977,” whose name would have shocked you most?

CC: Eldridge Cleaver. Harold Hughes, a former US Senator from Iowa, would also be very high up on the list. I spent one day in the Congress last week. I’d been putting it off for a long time. A lot of fellows had asked me to come up. And I was with people whose politics I … I mean, I wouldn’t have worked in the same room with them before.

ER: Do you find you are spending more time with ordinary people, or mostly with celebrities?

CC: I spend a lot of time with convicts. I guess I call them ordinary people. Most people don’t. Most people think they have horns, don’t eat with a knife and fork, and chase their kids around.

Saturday night I had one of the most beautiful experiences that I have ever had. Eleven prisoners had graduated from two weeks of our discipleship training in Washington. I never had such a great night! I was never so excited. It was 10 times more gratifying than any White House dinner I ever attended.

CK: Here I am witnessing to someone and think, Oh, he’ll never become a Christian. What counsel would you have to help us in witnessing to “hard cases” like you were before you met Christ?

CC: The first counsel is, let the Lord do it. Don’t think you’re doing it!

The second counsel is harder. I’ve sometimes found that a man who is fighting is really under conviction. There’s a very prominent man whose name I will not use. I think he was turned off by a lot of evangelicals who have tried to exploit him because he’s rich and famous. A year-and-a-half ago he tried to hire me. He said, “You’ve got something I want.”

I said, “Well, I can tell you what it is and you can have it.”

He said, “What’s that?”

And I said, “Jesus Christ.”

He slammed his hand down on the table and said, “Don’t ever talk to me about Christ.” He grew up in the Bible Belt and was really turned off and angry about it, furious. That was the end of it. But he came back wanting to hire me again. This went on over and over.

Once in a while when I would visit the city he lives in I would stay at his home, in a nice, big, comfortable guest house. I never pressured that man, but I noticed every time I was with him he would stare at me, trying to see if I was “for real.” One morning he woke me up at 5 a.m., and he had a Bible in his hand. He started asking questions and then accepted Christ. If I had to gauge the people who have reacted negatively to me, he was the most hostile.

Conversion – it’s God’s business, not ours.

ER: Has there been much of a change in your lifestyle as a Christian?

CC: I didn’t travel and speak before. I liked to be in the background, and to shove other people up front. I liked to be the guy behind the scenes, manipulating the lovers of power.

So this is a very unaccustomed life, getting out and being in front.

We’ve had a lot of changes. All of our friends are different now. But in personal lifestyle Patty and I haven’t changed much. I used to get stacks of invitations to embassy parties when I was in the White House, but I only went to two. I went to the Iranian Embassy because they used to get fresh caviar. I went to the Nationalist Chinese because I felt badly that we were sort of brushing them off after Mr. Nixon went to China. I ended up on the front pages of the paper for going, so I never went to another one. That was it. We seldom went out and did that kind of stuff anyway. We don’t now.

ER: I was thinking this afternoon, if I were Charles Colson, I would occasionally have periods of depression. Do you?

CC: Sometimes I get those feelings when I’m trying to get away from the world and just have a little time of quiet. I mean, people get to you! You love them, you really do, but at times it’s just overpowering. You need time away. You need rest. It’s very hard to break away.

Occasionally I’ll take a day off and there will be sightseers or tourists coming down the driveway. It’s just hard for us to find a little bit of the peacefulness that we used to have.

CK: Would you comment on some of the spiritual climate in Washington D.C.? Is the Spirit moving there?

CC: It has to be one of the number one spiritual battle grounds in the world, because in Washington there’s everything that could drive a man away from a relationship with God, Everyplace you go it’s Senator this, Senator that. Congressman this, Congressman that. The President of the United States walks around, and there’s this man behind him with a little black bag that could set off World War III. And there are 535 members in Congress calling him on the phone, having to see him. A hundred governors and heads of state. Press a button and a helicopter lands on the South Lawn. You begin to think you are God.

I would say there are four, maybe six, really committed brothers in the Senate. We have prayer groups in every government agency.

I think the climate in the government today is generally a little better. There has been a pretty good feeling for the first six months of Carter’s presidency. He is part of that, and I give him a lot of credit for it. And I think the feeling on the Hill and in Congress is better than it was – although they are all heading for the bomb shelters now. It was ironic to be up there last week. I was with one congressman. He was pounding his desk saying, “Can you imagine the Washington Post! Four days in a row they have brought up this Korean stuff and put it on the front page [Congressional bribery investigation]. Four days!”

I felt like saying, “Hey, do you know who you’re talking to? I had one year of seeing these bizarre Watergate headlines daily.’’

It sounded just like the White House in 1972.

Chatting with Chuck Colson

Archive: And You Came to Me

by | Jan 1, 1978 | Archive - 1978

Matthew 25:36
I was naked and you clothed me,
I was sick and you visited me,
I was in prison

Archive: And You Came to Me

Larry Bogart is a United Methodist doctor who spent three years in a maximum security prison, where God led him as a servant-witness for Jesus Christ.

Jake O. has spent years at the state penitentiary at Eddyville, Kentucky. His parents are now elderly and unable to visit him. During the three years I served as a medical director, I cannot recall his having a single visit. He is buried like a forgotten man in a giant sarcophagus of steel bars and electric fences.

Scripture gives us a mandate to “Think constantly of those in prison as if you were prisoners at their side.” (Phillips).

Unfortunately, we Christians, like the world, seem to have forgotten that even prisoners are human beings, with feelings and a need to be important to someone.

Christ never forgot. In fact, prisoners are so important to Him that He accepts an act of kindness toward an inmate as if He were the recipient. “I was in prison and you came to me … as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren you did it unto me.” Try as we might, His words will not go away.

Joe was down! He knew there was no sense getting up false hopes. I’ll never get out of this place. What’s the use trying to be straight? Then a visit came from Sister Christine, a loving, radiant Catholic teacher from Louisville. Joe was like a new person. Sister told Joe about his friend, Danny, who had been “out” nearly a year. Danny was going straight now, had married, and was buying a house. “We are waiting for you, Joe. Your home is with us.”

Joe’s hopes were revived. There was something out there to live for! It was worth the effort to stay “cool.” A few weeks later, Joe received a beautiful letter from Sister Christine. It reaffirmed him as a man, as someone important to someone out there. Again, Joe’s hopes were lifted and his will to go on strengthened.

Have you ever wondered why the church is called to remember and to visit convicts? Perhaps it’s because Christ knew it takes people to change people. People who care. People who are willing to get involved in Christ’s name. People who are willing, yes, even to fail.

After working for three years as a prison doctor, I’ve come to believe no significant reformation will occur behind prison walls until Christ’s mandate to care about prisoners is taken seriously.

When we do risk ourselves for prisoners, results come. God blesses our efforts.

Billy H. was once referred to as the meanest and most dangerous convict at Eddyville. He knew what it was like to spend four years in a tiny 6 by 10 cell, 24 hours a day, with an occasional shower and rarely a visit.

Then, a miracle! Two and a half years ago Billy found Christ. A beautiful Christian layman led him to the Lord. Thank God, Joe Rose’s concern did not end after he had won a convert. Week after week, he drove 150 miles round trip from his home in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to Eddyville State Penitentiary to disciple Billy. This was the continuation of Joe Rose’s 20-year ministry during which he had been a true friend to many convicts. I often think of Joe when I hear the words of Jesus, “I was in prison and ye visited me.” Recently I heard Billy addressing about 80 fellow inmates. He said, “You cannot take a newborn baby and abandon him and expect him to survive. Because Joe and the Doc [Dr. Larry Bogart] stuck by me these three years, I can stand here tonight and assure you that I intend to live for Christ no matter what comes.”

Billy is now a radiant, sensitive Christian with the deepest love for Christ I have ever seen. As Billy became a new person in Christ, I found my friendship with him more and more enriching. In the end, the one we had so carefully discipled was ministering to us!

Perhaps another reason Christ commanded us to “come to prisoners” is because He knew the benefit for the visitor. I’ve frequently heard first-time visitors say, “This was one of the greatest experiences I have ever had. I had no idea what prisons or prisoners were like before. Those inmates are just like us.”

Something special happens to the person who cares enough to go against the grain of his anxiety, and visits a prisoner.

Men behind prison walls are numbed by endless days, pungent loneliness, and profound alienation. A sense of unreality and of ceasing to care sets in. A visit from someone who loves Jesus Christ, treats you with respect, who is willing to come back and be a friend can literally raise a man to life again. Resurrection!

In prison, a seemingly commonplace visit can so deeply influence another person’s life that it is almost like a religious experience. A visit—a simple visit—gives a prisoner new hope. To know someone cares; that here is someone I can trust—this can be the first step back to a meaningful future.

Gerrald Fair had been on Eddyville’s administrative control unit for nearly two years after taking hostages. Now he is attending Asbury College where he is majoring in the social sciences. His transformation started, by his own account, when he realized there were Christians who cared and believed in him.

In a study by noted psychologist Daniel Glasser, most ex-cons who remained “straight” over a five-year period had been influenced not by treatment staff per se, but by persons who had treated them justly. The study concluded that the reformative influence was a change in the offender’s perception of his relationship to others in society. A lay visitor who treats an inmate with love and respect may be the first reformative influence an inmate has encountered since he began a life of crime.

Many Christians are concerned about prisoners but do nothing simply because they do not know what to do. How do you go about visiting an inmate? How do you know whom to write or visit?

Fortunately most state or federal prisons and reformatories have a chaplaincy program. Either the chaplain or superintendent of treatment can furnish you names of men who receive no visitors or who wish to receive mail. Having received the names of such inmates, you simply choose one name, write a letter introducing yourself and offering to visit. Invariably the inmate will promptly write back inviting you. He will contact his case worker and have you placed on his visiting list. The case worker will send you a brief form to fill out and return. Then, you and the inmate can decide on a time and date for your visit.

One word of caution. Don’t send any items except letters or stamps unless you check with some official at the prison. If the inmate keeps asking you for gifts and favors, confront him with this attempted manipulation. If he persists, graciously break off this relationship and make contact with another man or woman. The majority of inmates I have known are like people anywhere. If they like you they will not try to use you.

Today the problem of crime has reached crisis proportions. If Christians continue to ignore prisons, they will continue to be breeding places for more crime. In no area has the church so abrogated its responsibility. In the one area of social concern where the transformation of men is most urgently needed, the church has readily permitted the whole burden to be laid on the state. This is not the answer. The state simply lacks the spiritual resources and vision to complete this task alone.

But concerned Christians, caring enough to visit a lonely inmate, can interrupt this vicious cycle of crime. If every Christian family who is free to do so would become a friend of one inmate, the results would be incredible. The lives of hopeless men and women would be transformed, not to mention the persons who would be freed from hell. How I wish I could better convey to you the urgency of this need. May the Spirit awaken His people to their mandate to “remember prisoners as if they were prisoners at their side!”

Would you like to get involved in prison ministry?

Write: Charles Colson, Prison Fellowship, P.O. Box 40562, Washington, D.C. 20016.

Editor’s note: February 1, 1977, Dr. Larry Bogart resigned as physician at Kentucky State Penitentiary (Eddyville). Bogart said his reasons for quitting included interference by prison officials with his management of the prison hospital and “severe budgetary restrictions that left the medical department without essential supplies.” He also cited the conflict between his philosophies and the “sadistic attitudes” of some prison employees.

Prison superintendent Don Bordenkircher said he spent more time with Bogart than with any other staff member. “I consider him a friend of mine,” the warden said. “Once in a blue moon you meet a Bogart … I disagree with some of the things he believes, but he‘s refreshing because whatever his philosophy, he genuinely believes it and lives it. … ”

The following is the testimony of one former prisoner whose life was touched by Dr. Bogart.

My name is Gerrald Fair. I am 27 years old and have been a Christian for one year. When I was born my father left my mother, who had to raise my sister and me alone. My mother remarried, but this marriage never worked out for me. My stepfather resented me. This unhappy home situation influenced me to run away from home. I spent some time with my grandmother who showed some love for me.

At the age of 12 I was caught shoplifting. By the time I was in the ninth grade I was a delinquent and barred from attending any of the schools in Fayette County, KY. I was considered incorrigible. This set in motion a chain of events which put me into every correctional institution in Kentucky—finally ending up in maximum security at Eddyville as a habitual criminal. My ten-year sentence was lengthened to 11 ½ years for cutting an officer and for holding hostages.

While in solitary confinement, Dr. Larry Bogart (medical director of prison) showed some interest in me and persuaded me to attend school classes. This resulted in my taking and passing the General Educational Development examination.

When my attitude changed for the better, I was granted parole with the condition that I have a home to live in, and a job. After several unsuccessful attempts in this direction I was invited to stay in the home of an older Christian couple, Dr. and Mrs. H. A. Hanke. I was given a job at a local auto body shop.

A few months after getting out of prison I was in a serious car accident resulting in a broken hip and brain concussion. When the authorities were about to send me to Eastern State, a mental hospital, the men at the men’s prayer breakfast in the local United Methodist Church had a special prayer for me. I was restored to complete mental health but still had a badly injured hip. This condition has now been healed and I am walking well with the use of a cane. I have just successfully completed a reduced college work load, and now have a full load for this winter quarter.

Last summer I was filled with the Holy Spirit. Life has taken on a whole new dimension for me. At the Indian Springs Camp Meeting in Georgia, I gained a better understanding of what happened to me when the Holy Spirit baptized me.

Dr. Hanke and I now conduct prison services in five Kentucky correctional institutions. This gives me a chance to witness to the men with whom I was imprisoned. At my baptism a new ministry was opened up for us at the Camp Nelson home for juvenile boys. We conduct regular services there, and the boys frequently attend our United Methodist Church. I feel that this juvenile home ministry is important because first offenders (age 16-17) are taken here. If they can be redirected here, they will be spared a life of crime later. I am very much indebted to many fine Christian people for giving me a chance. I know now that only Christ has the answer to life’s problems and this is my message to those I contact.