Backyard Apologetics
An Interview with Charles Colson
Charles Colson is founder (1976) and Chairman of the Board of Prison Fellowship and Prison Fellowship International.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Colson was a captain in the US Marine Corps, a partner in a law firm, and special counsel to President Richard Nixon. He served seven months of a one-to-three-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to a Watergate-related charge in 1974. He converted to Christianity in August 1973, as documented in his book Born Again. Colson then used the royalties from the book to begin Prison Fellowship, an outreach organization assisting prisoners, ex-prisoners, victims, and affected families.
Since then, Colson has visited more than 600 prisons in 40 countries and, with the help of nearly 50,000 volunteers, has built Prison Fellowship into the world’s largest prison outreach ministry, serving the spiritual and practical needs of prisoners in 83 countries including the United States. In 1983 Colson founded Justice Fellowship®, an organization dedicated to working with legislators and policymakers to enact restorative justice principles. In 1989, he founded Neighbors Who Care®, a community-based support system for victims of crime.
In 1993 Colson received the $1 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion and donated the prize to Prison Fellowship.
Nearly 5 million copies of his 15 books have been sold in the United States. (All royalties from these books are donated to Prison Fellowship.) Titles include Loving God (Zondervan, 1983), Who Speaks for God? (Crossway Books, 1985), Kingdoms in Conflict (Zondervan/Morrow, 1987), The Body (with Ellen Santilli Vaughn; Word, 1992), How Now Shall We Live? (with Nancy Pearcey; Zondervan, 1999).
He is also a syndicated columnist and has contributed articles to magazines and newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. Colson’s daily radio commentary, “Breakpoint,” has a weekly listening audience of 3 million people.
Colson also has worked with Richard J. Neuhaus and J. I. Packer on Evangelicals and Catholics Together, a series of initiatives to build bridges of understanding and cooperation between Christians.
Touchstone editors James M. Kushiner and David Mills interviewed Chuck Colson at Cambridge University in 1998, while attending Oxbridge ’98, a conference celebrating the 100th anniversary of C. S. Lewis’s birth. Mr. Colson was a plenary speaker (“C. S. Lewis: Mere Christian, Twentieth-Century Prophet”) and also led a workshop, referred to during the interview. Some small changes have been made in the transcript for the sake of clarity and completeness.
Touchstone: You’ve been a figure in public life and in church life. I’ve heard you speak on Christian unity and the persecution of Christians, and you’ve written about cultural engagement as well as a book on the Church. What would you say is the greatest challenge that Christians are facing as they go into the twenty-first century?
Charles Colson: There are two great issues. One would be the unity of the Church, of all believers. The Church has to be constantly in a state of seeking reformation and unity. In other words, it has to be constantly reforming itself and constantly trying to come closer together to fulfill Jesus’ prayer in John 17. Unity is the condition God created. Disunity works against God’s purposes.
James M. Kushiner is the Director of Publications for The Fellowship of St. James and the former Executive Editor of Touchstone.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on apologetics from the online archives
31.4—July/August 2018
The Difficulty of Apologetics for Dead Souls in the Real World by R. J. Snell
31.2—March/April 2018
How Best to Face the Total War of the Anti-Culture by R. J. Snell
33.3—May/June 2020
On Flight & Fight in the Present Tribulation by Douglas Farrow
more from the online archives
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
