Reborn and Rehabilitated:
The spectacular Christian rehabilitation of Charles Colson—the man
who once advised Richard Nixon to firebomb the Brookings Institution,
a liberal think tank—began after Colson's Watergate prison term,
with his best-selling conversion narrative, Born Again. His
resurgence accelerated as he founded Prison Fellowship Ministries and
built it into a $50 million organization that operates in all 50
states and 110 countries. His ministry's success (a University of
Pennsylvania study found that graduates of the prison program were
60% less likely to be reincarcerated than was the average con) and
his campaign for humane prison conditions helped define compassionate
conservatism and served as a model for the faith-based initiatives
that Bush favors.
Colson, 73, is now regarded as one of evangelicalism's more
thoughtful public voices. And, says Ted Olsen, online managing editor
of Christianity Today: "If he gets on a bandwagon, it's likely to
move." After decades of relative abstention, Colson is back in power
politics. He helped cobble together an alliance of Evangelicals and
Catholic conservatives, advised Karl Rove on Sudan policy and put his
prestige behind an anti-gay-marriage lobbying body, the Arlington
Group. And he has recouped one more lever of power: in 2000 Florida
Governor Jeb Bush reinstated the rights taken away by Colson's felony
conviction—including the right to vote.
