Chuck Colson: An Obituary for a Life-Long Constitutional Scofflaw
& the necessary lessons for Humanists.

The anti-gay, anti-choice, radio contributing, octogenarian, and Watergate felon Chuck Colson died Saturday (20 April, 2012) of a brain hemorrhage. From the Watergate break-in to Colson’s Prison Reform Ministries, Colson set a career in what even any remotely mild secularist would find chilling, Colson’s legacy includes state-sponsored projects of prison-Christian-conversion projects. Chuck Colson’s greatest crime was not as Nixon’s burglary-choreographing intellectual strongman, but his forty year career in back-room bargaining for the implementation of state-sponsored Evangelical Christianity. Though anathema to the progressive Humanist cause, Charles Colson’s legacy can serve to teach us Humanists where our efforts are underserved.

Though well known for both Nixon’s administration and the Evangelical movement, Colson was not always in the spotlight-but nationally one of those names that after a second makes you nod and say “…Oh yeah, that guy!” Myself, a secular activist and political science student born in 1980, I always found Colson to be one of those pivotal background characters responsible for that type of sundry evil that makes you raise your eyebrows and sigh. Occasionally hearing reference to him on Dan Barker and Annie Laure Gaylor’s FreeThought Radio, I learned more about Colson through the first Deputy Secretary of the Office of Faith Based Initiatives David Kuo’s book Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, and Jeff Sharlet’s The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

In the 1970′s Colson helped Nixon defeat George McGovern, he authored Nixon’s “Enemies List,” and in an attempt to discredit the Pentagon Paper’s leak, Colson orchestrated the burglary and leak of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatric records. Ellsberg was not Colson’s only illegal Nixon Administration-agenda act of burglary, there was also Watergate. Colson’s participation in the Committee to Re-Elect the President authorized the allocation of $250,000 for “intelligence gathering” on the Democratic Party. This “intelligence gathering” included the Nixon-tied break-ins to the DNC headquarters at the Watergate Hotel (Kuo: 2006, and Sharlet:2008).

As is the ad nauseam Evangelical narrative, Colson credits his very public “fall” for “brining him to Christ.” Colson’s “second-birth” conversion occurred between his Watergate conviction and his incarceration. Colson recounted how during his sentence a family member had become critically ill. In what Colson would later cite as a “true” Christian gesture, a senior congressman (Al Quie) offered to serve the remainder of Colson’s prison term so that Colson could go be with family. Colson would rhetorically ask, “what would make him do that?,” adding that Jesus said, “As I have loved you, so must you love another” (Colson: 2007).

After his sentence, Colson began his prison ministry (1976). Prison Fellowship’s mission is: “To seek the transformation of prisoners and their reconcilliation [sic] to God, family, and community through the power and truth of Jesus Christ.” Within Prison Fellowship’s Statement of Faith is the typical laundry list of Evangelical Christian boilerplate (e.g., trinity, virgin birth, etc). The faith-statement also calls for Christians to “submit to divine authority,” and for good measure-a slight against homosexuals is inserted there as well (“We also uphold the holy institution of marriage between one man and one woman.”). The statement concludes with: “We believe that Jesus Christ will personally and visibly return in glory to raise the dead and bring salvation and judgment to completion. God will fully manifest His kingdom when He establishes a new heaven and new earth, in which He will be glorified forever and exclude all evil, suffering, and death.” Which of course is an exemplary platform befitting incorporation into any public institution.

Colson’s Prison Fellowship carries with it the highly superficial appearance of efficacious-goodwill. There are pen-pal programs, Bible studies, a call to not imprison non-violent offenders, and Christmas gifts donated to the children of imprisoned parents. There have been noted decreases in recidivism from the program (which is explicitly aggressive-Evangelical, and thus has incurred complaints of ostracism by Muslim inmates) (Plotz: 2000). Former President, then Texas Governor George W. Bush granted permission for Colson to sling his prison-proselytization programs in Texas State correctional facilities (according to Colson, now active in 114 countries). According to a University of Pennsylvania researcher, those who had participated in Colson’s InnerChange Freedom Initiative programs had an eight percent recidivism rate as opposed to 20% of the control group (Colson: 2008). Colson’s goal however was not one of rehabilitation and reentry into society, but that of collecting their souls for his god (Plotz: 2000).

Writing in 2000 for Slate, David Plotz wrote that what had made Colson succeed beyond the Robertsons and the Falwells was that Colson did not seek national prestige. “They [Falwell and Robertson] were hinterlands preachers, not political sophisticates. They didn’t speak the language of politics, and their shrill self-righteousness scared away millions and made the Christian right a bugaboo.” Plotz makes the case that being burnt by his Nixon-Machiavellian power grabs, had inoculated Colson from the bellicose power lust of those televangelists. To Plotz, Colson being a polyglot in both politics and Evangelical Christianity generated an air of sophistication making Colson more palatable and respectable than his pulpit-pounding colleagues. Today Colson is associated with the popular Evangelism that he helped sculpt. Both Colson’s God and Government and Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life were published by Evangelical publisher Zondervan, and Colson’s The Movement suggests that its readers use one of Rick Warren’s programs. Beyond cultural Evangelism, since his Nixon days, Colson had been a master political manipulator.

Colson was a man intent on shaping America into a Christian Nation. “Declaring civil war” on secularism, Nixon’s “hatchet-man” (Sharlet: 2008), “the man who would have run over his own grandmother to get Nixon elected” (Plotz: 2000), Colson orchestrated Nixon’s Christian-politicization by having the 37th President hold “quasi-religious, quasi-political” church services in the White House. Colson did this with surgical precision. He helped bolster Nixon by working to stir the working-man’s apprehension of blacks, feminists, and hippies. Colson augmented these efforts by granting photo-op and rotating short session-”Tricky Dick” access to Christian leaders (a strategy later used by Bush Administration advisor Karl Rove [Kuo: 2006]). As a core-member of C-Street’s “Family,” Colson’s political career would go underground, continuing to fan the flames of Christo-fascism, even into the next generation. Kansas Senator Sam Brownback said, “Colson had taught that abortion is a ‘threshold’ issue, wedge with which to introduce fundamentalism into every question” (Sharlet: 2008 p. 269).

Colson’s view of America, was as if you were to look at a Normal Rockwell painting and the Americana-figures all had meth-mouth. This was the corrosion and abandonment moral values attributed to Islamic extremism from without and an “aggressive” secularism from within. Colson called secularism, “no less a threat than terrorist bombs.” Colson lamented that because of the Enlightenment, “Suddenly, the very idea of truth was up for grabs” (Colson: 2009). Colson said that, “The crisis of the age we live in is the abandonment of truth, inevitably resulting in the decline of moral values… The solution to crime, therefore, is ‘the conversion of the wrong doer to a more responsible lifestyle’” (Colson: 2008, p. 373).

Colson wrote of the good deeds of Dietrich Boenhoffer and William Wilberforce (for which he named his publishing company. He cited them as examples of how religion draws out the best in us in even tumultuous and extraordinary times (Colson: 2007). The Nazis were not bereft of faith, nor was (or is) the British government not a theocracy (e.g., the British sovereign as “protector and defender of the faith,” God save the rotating monarchial-gender title). In disagreement (and perhaps though Humanistic-chauvinism) I see the work of Boenhoffer and Wilberforce as securely grounded in human, not religious ethics. Like Martin Luther King Jr. I see the defiant spirit of human freedom and liberation as the impetus of Freethought forged in Humanism; while in this case wrapped in the cloak of clerical title.

Colson represented a smooth-grafting of brilliance and paranoia. His was a world in which believers had lost sight of the “true message of Christ,” causing society to be constantly in decline. In a speech, Colson projected this message, “What America needs, is a restoration of religious values in public life. The shockwaves that threaten the very foundations of our culture today emanate from society’s failure to understand man’s need for God and Christians’ failure to accurately present Christ’s message of the Kingdom of God (Kuo: 2006)… To put it simply, humanists using that term in its best sense, fail to understand humanity and Christians fail to understand the message of Christ” (Colson: 2007). The galvanizing shame he employed cast a weightier blame on Christians for not holding up to their spiritual responsibilities, more so than nonbelievers who “Satan wasn’t fighting for.”. His past life as Nixon’s evil genius maintains a degree of ostensible sincerity to Colson’s loud-faith. I assume that he was sonorously sincere, yet looking at a life of cold-manipulations, I still reserve the possibility that such ostentatious faith could be a thick mixture of true-belief and yet more political machination.

As Humanists we find that church and state should be separate, that in full Ingersolian sentiment, we see god in government as an abdication of power and responsibility. Also, though a motive completely antagonistic to our own sensibilities, we can look at Colson’s work in the penal system and take a hint that Colson’s absence may be easily substituted by a Humanist outreach. We could have Humanist ethical discussion groups with prisoners. We could bring the prisoners Ingersoll, Paine, Sagan, and Russell. It would probably be easier than bringing in Dawkins (by the fact that Dawkins took a page from his predecessors and his name recognition may inhibit curriculum approval). We could most definitely do this to form a dialogue with the prisoners, rather than the paternalism of talking at them in apostolic condescension; learning together, not saving the worthless.

Socially, we gain so much more by realizing our shared interest rather than wallowing in an emotional sadomasochism with a modern incarnation of a far removed desert tribe’s community deity. If we are the ones who believe in a temporary and short existence, why are we not the ones in the jails providing comfort and fellowship? It is our obligation to reach out. Those degradations calling human beings toxic creatures is the product of shallow minds. Colson said, “The view that man in his own rational self interest can sustain a man-made religion is voiced regularly on op-ed pages, on television specials, even from church pulpits. It remains fashionable because it offers a view of human nature filled with hopeful optimism about man’s capacities. But it ignores the reigning testimony of a century filled with terror and depravity” (Colson: 2007). Yes, there was a century of terror and depravity. This was not due to secularism, but to neglecting our true Humanist instincts of altruism and compassion. Stalin may have been an Atheist, but he by no means was a Humanist.

Colson wrote, “But men and women need more than a religious value system. They need civic structures to prevent chaos and provide order. Religion is not intended or equipped to do this; when it has tried, it has brought grief upon itself and the political institutions it has attempted to control” (Colson: 2007). Of course Colson was referring to the need for civic government to step in line with religious doctrine in order to fulfill the need for social order. I don’t disagree with his statement, just his contextual sentiment. Colson was right that religion is incapable of coercing men and women to comport with particular ethical and value systems. He was also correct that much grief has come at the grafting of church and state. Religion, however is not a necessary or sufficient condition for a fully functioning, peaceful, and flourishing society (often it is the catalyst for ending one).

Colson also wrote, “If the real benefits of the Judeo-Christian ethic and influence in secular society were understood, it would be anxiously sought out even by those who repudiate the Christian faith. The influence of the Kingdom of God in the public arena is good for society as a whole” (Colson: 2007). We have had more than 5,000 years of Judeo-Christian influence, and for some reason it has never led to things working out more well than other systems (such as post-enlightenment representative Western Liberal Democracies). As should be expected, we have come up with better systems. It is not as if we didn’t have Judeo-Christianity as an example in this process. In fact, the faults of Judeo-Christianity served as an example of what not to do. Because of this, we thank them, and have moved on.

Lastly, Colson had said that “Many Christians are frustrated as we steadily lose influence and secularism becomes the religion of the age” (Colson: 2009). Hey Chuck (for our sake), let’s hope they are right.

Works:

Colson, C. (2007). God & Government. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. (iBooks Ed.).

Colson, C. (2009). The Movement. The Wilberforce Press. (iBooks Ed.).

Colson, C.W. (1976). Born Again. (2008 Ed.) Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen. (Kindle Ed.).

Ingersoll, R.G. (1890). God in the Constitution. In S.T. Joshi (Ed.). Atheism: A Reader (p.
276-286). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Kuo, D. (2006) Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. New York: Free Press.
(iBooks Ed.).

Plotz, D. (2000) Charles Colson: How a Watergate crook became America’s greatest Christian
conservative. Slate Magazine. (10 March, 2000). (accessed 22 April, 2012). .

Prison Fellowship. http://www.prisonfellowship.org/prison-fellowship-home. (accessed 22 April,
2012).

Sharlet, J. (2008). The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.
New York: Harper Collins.

A cat is incapable of loving you the way that you assume that she does. A cat’s brain is geared toward something slightly different than you expect it to be. You may love the cat, and feel that you have a personal relationship with it, but does she have a theory of mind sophisticated enough to recognize your emotional needs, and be a sufficiently empathetic companion to foist your anthropomorphized sentiment onto in expectations of emotional reciprocity? Probably not.

Even if we participated in the development of the house cat, I would never say that she was “designed that way.” Or that “she wasn’t designed to love you back.”

I would suggest rather, to say that her brain does not sufficiently posses the capacity necessary for x, y, or z. The cat’s brain is anatomically restricted from loving you back.

Please stop acknowledging creation-science by saying that “we” or something else, wasn’t “designed that way.” Just don’t give creationism, or intelligent design, or “natural theology” that type of endorsement.

Dogs on the other hand were “designed that way.” We specifically bred them to bring out certain characteristics. Dogs are one species, and though through human-directed breeding programs. Dogs have been shown to exhibit disapproval at perceived lapses in fairness (In studies when one of two dogs side by side is consistently given better treats [e.g. beef vs. cucumber], the dog who perceives disproportionate treatment where they receive the short end of the stick, generally stops complying).

Stop saying “I wasn’t designed for x, y, or z.” You weren’t designed. You were the product of two teenagers on a rock-concert date, a spacious backseat, a bottle of Boone’s Farm, and a forgotten condom. Unless you were popped out of an All-Star Athlete Noble laureate’s frozen sperm and the swipe of your mother’s credit card, you were not “designed.”

Dogs were designed. Dogs love you. In comparison to their wolf relatives, Dogs have artificially inflated empathy. Cats don’t. This is why (as the saying goes), “Dogs have owners, cats have staff.”

A friend of mine has started a new club at UCI (the University of California Irvine). I support him. I have helped cofound it with him. My friend has political asylum in the United States because his home country (Iran), doesn’t take too kindly to people that change their mind. Today i visited the table he was running. Kasra was doing an event highlighting Mohammed (pb&j) having sex with a 9-year-old girl.

We were approached by a nice young woman from Egypt. She is Coptic. The Coptic Christians know what it is like to be a minority faith in a majority Muslim land. Coptic women are coerced to veil themselves. She says that it is a terrifying situation in Egypt for Coptics. At the moment the Coptic Church is in transition owing to the passing of their pope. The new Islamist-coalition post-Arab Spring Government doesn’t look like it will shine too friendly on this odd little Christian-sect.

I was approached by a few Muslims who were not happy about our message. One thing that was sent our way was, “How do you think this is going to make Americans think of Muslims?” Well, I am not here to play PR for a wretched and toxic superstition.

Also, how incredibly surreal to defend myself for saying that 53-year-old men having sex with 9 year old girls is rape. Saying that child rape is wrong is not something that you generally should ever have to defend. It’s like a battered spouse. These people make excuses for Mohammed (pbuhijklmnop).

I then got into an argument in which I was arguing that regardless of the era, it is wrong for a 53 year old man to have sex with a 9 year old girl. The rebuttal was that there are more recorded incidents of rape in the United States. That “things were different back then, and that we cannot hold Mohammed to today’s standards.” That since “Abu Bakr [Mohammeds (reece's pieces be upon him) friend and successor] gave his nine-year daughter to Mohammed (he’s so fine, he’s so fine he blows our mind: bum-bum-bum Mohammed), it was not rape.” And, that Aisha was not 9 years old, but between 12 and 15, that it couldn’t have been rape.

1. Just because there are different statistics for each country, you have to realize in these matters that in the United States, we encourage the reporting of rape. Secondly if you have a wider latitude of what you consider “rape,” there is a greater spectrum of actions to report. Third, if what we would call spousal rape, your religion calls a husband’s entitlement: it doesn’t get reported as rape. Thirdly, if in certain regions qualified witnesses to crimes must be four men; if you have one woman accusing a man-where her testimony wouldn’t count regardless, you don’t have an accurate survey. Even in the US it is difficult to get all raped individuals to report (even anonymously).

2. “Things were different back then,” works contextually. But if there is a figure whose influence permeates a culture-and whose presence in that influence is seen as one inviolable of criticism, then “different back then is irrelevant” and making a poor excuse for today’s actions anchoring themselves in the past. Also, there is this insularity that is grafted onto the story of Mohammed (he’s our man, if he can’t do it no one can MOHAMMED!). This is not a valid excuse. Tradition is not a sufficient excuse for bad behavior.

3. Daddy’s best friend giving his darling little girl as a child-bride to his buddy in tribute does not nullify the claims of rape.

4. 12-15 with a 53 year old man is what we would call, statutory rape. Beyond being a disturbing story, this narrative is used today to condone child-brides. It is wholly unsavory by today’s standards. We of course could find and criticize Atilla for doing unsavory things, but the difference would be that you don’t find many Huns running around these days.

This was like arguing with a battered spouse in a case of intellectual domestic violence. It is making excuses. No one should have to lower their dignity to cover for such a terrible person as Mohammed (swm, 22 seeks dbm for p&p, please be D&D free). No one should have to carry that horrid weasel’s baggage. It is yet another tragedy spinning the wheel.

I had posted some of my thoughts on facebook tonight and someone messaged me saying that I was being intolerant for saying that the freedom producing Western Enlightenment of modern secular democracy was superior to Islamism. I jotted down my thoughts:

If you don’t like what i have to say… no one is forcing you to be on my friends list or subscribe to my comments. Please do me a favor, if you have a problem with me, then don’t waste my time telling me how my vocabulary “obfuscates” my message. If you studied literature and not political science-don’t tell me that I am “a poor excuse for a rational being” because I say that Modern and Western Culture is superior to Islamism. We have this whacky thing where we consider spousal rape… well rape, and not what a man is entitled to even if his wife is not in the mood. We consider a woman’s testimony in court worth equal to that of a man’s. We also don’t cut off people’s heads for changing their mind about God. From my calendar the 7th century ended ohhhh 1400 years ago. If you have a problem with me being an evangelist of a Secular 21st Century… don’t call yourself a liberal and then insult me in private message on facebook because of your faux-liberal condescension called “cultural relativism.”

I furthered this thought.

i fucking hate faux-liberals. To them, potentially hurting someone’s feelings trumps upholding liberal values. If one culture treats their women like shit, kills gays because of ludicrous religious laws, plays with its food by casting magic spells before it slits the throat of a cow; and you say that your culture which is more advanced and more conducive to a better life for nearly all people -and they reply that you are “not recognizing the beauty and worth of the other culture” the one that does shitty things; and the faux liberal tells you that your critique of the backwards museum-piece that inspires people to fly planes into buildings is hatred, because you refuse to see the value of their culture, and because there were isolated incidents of governments doing terrible things…

Your response as a true-liberal should say: listen, we are not separate people. We are a global community of human beings. Men and women are equal, and anyone that maintains cultural bullshit saying that we aren’t in the trite name of tradition; needs to be corrected. We are all citizens of the 21st Century, and just because some people didn’t give a fuck when they got the memo, it’s not my problem.

Welcome to the 21st century. If it weren’t for goons like catholics or muslims, science and reason may have be so much further advanced (Where is my flying car already). Secondly those moments when the Muslim world “kept alive science” were not done by believers.. knowledge was kept alive by unbeleivers like the Khalif al Walid Ibn Yazid, and Mamoun who was denounced by the orthodoxy as an atheist. The rest of the history of Islam was orthodox clerics ruining science and killing people for saying that the koran was not from god (MacKinnon-Robertson, J. A Short History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern, 1914).

i would rather hurt everyone’s feelings who thinks that a culture in which women are devalued as subordinate to men, by saying that it is bullshit, than have one more blasphemous blogger get his anything-chopped off. I would rather have a billion pairs of eyes flow with tears at my insults to their culture, than another gay teenage couple be hanged for engaging “haram” activities. I value human life more than refraining from critique of the ridiculous and terrifying.

The 7th Century does not belong to us and who are we to wrest that ownership from the dead?

you know, fuck Mohammed (Mohammed, Mohammed, banana-fanna-fo-hammed, mi-mai-mohammed, Mohammed)!

Also, if there is a Heaven, and Mohammed got in. If it was the Muslim Heaven, Mohammed would have plenty of young boys to serve him too. Too bad that he has to wait for the young boys to present their puckering anuses like fertile-cats after-death. If Mo-Mo would have get young boy man-pussy, he probably would have ended up as a Catholic Priest. I was going to write “and thereby leave the little girls alone.” But one of my biggest gripes against the media’s coverage of the Catholic Rape-Scandal is that it is being portrayed as a merely homosexual affair, and all of the girls and women violated by the Catholic Clergy and church officers have been shamefully ignored.

I am a Freethinker, and in response to the earlier question that I heard posed of how it makes Islam look? Hopefully the man behind the curtain can finally be revealed. Oh wait in the Wizard of Oz it was a dog that exposed the charlatan snake-oil salesman as the “very bad wizard.” Perhaps that is why Islam finds dogs forbidden?

If you claim to be a scientist, and you do unsciency-stuff, and a are a dick; you might just get let go by the real scientists that actually have real work to do….

“David Coppedge alienated his co-workers by the way he acted with them, and blamed anyone who complained about those interactions,” according to JPL in their response. “He accuses his former project supervisor and line manager of making discriminatory and retaliatory employment decision, when they had in fact protected him for years.”

JPL alleged that Coppedge “was seen as stubborn, unwilling to listen and always having to do things his way, which frustrated project members and resulted in errors.”

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/13/terminated-scientist-claims-bias-against-intelligent-design/?hpt=hp_c2

Rush Limbaugh says terrible things about poor people, women, gays, immigrants, college professors etc. He provides an easy answer for people instead of linking them to supreme court cases, academic journal articles, and ushered in a wave of the current gas bag gop hack pundits. He also based drug abusers while being one himself.

Calling a woman a slut is the worst thing he has ever done? Oh come on. Americans need to grow up! I said the word fuck under my breath in a library yesterday when the internet was not working and someone made it a point to get up out of her chair to stand for forty five seconds in my face to tell me how disruptive I was being. Jennifer Brauer was in the Apple Store yesterday getting one on one help, and then after she got frustrated and saying the word “fuck,” the apple guy told her that he needed to get another person to help her. AMERICA, FOR GODDAMN CHRiSSAKES, GROW THE FUCK UP. IT’S JUST A FUCKING WORD.

With Limbaugh, saying slut, Imus saying “nappy headed ho”, and like Schlessigner fired for saying “nigger” x 23 as an example; You can spew what ever horrid, hate filled garbage you want. You can foment dischord, and lower the general consciousness and dialogue. You can form interesting neologism like “feminazi,” but if you use a potty-word, God help you.

Also, though I disagree with their message; and even if it happens to more progressive people in their programs, I don’t like it when someone not in a specific audience who would assert no effort to listen to someone, or discuss them outside of when they say something shocking.

This is ridiculous in the regard that this is the wrong time to try to shut him down. Censorship is never acceptable-even with hate speech. In prohibition, interest goes up. The best thing to do if you want to diminish interest in limbaugh is offer something better. Secondly highlight his buffoonery.

If Limbaugh calling someone a slut is your galvanizing point to shut him down, by all means try to. But I think that is rather shallow thinking. Censorship is never appropriate. If there is someone spouting such bullshit, it is your obligation to offer something a little better (at a minimum). Rush Limbaugh is not challenging, he is a challenge.