The Honorable Chuck M. Colson
President
Prison Fellowship

Well what a treat we have up next. I don’t want to embarrass him, but at breakfast this morning one of our good friends, a long-time member of CNP, reminded me that —and the reason I want to mention this anecdote is that I know a lot of you may be guests or considering joining CNP or may be regular members that are considering joining the Gold Circle and I just think this anecdote—about ten years ago Pat Nolan, who is the leading Republican in the California state assembly pleaded guilty to some trumped-up, politically motivated charges. The CNP youth council gave him an award then, in his darkest hour. His wife Gail traveled from California (I think it was in New Orleans) to accept the award on his behalf and one of the speakers at that CNP conference was Chuck Colson. Apparently Ed Meese introduced Pat’s wife Gail to Chuck Colson and once Pat was out of prison he became the CEO of a new prison fellowship organization many of you know all about it: Justice Forum, which is really the leading organization promoting penal reform and it’s just a Christ-centered, redemptive, penal policy, so that’s just one great anecdote of how the holy spirit works through CNP and one of the great stories—there are hundreds of them--of how CNP can have a big impact on individual lives.

Our next speaker is author of twenty-three books. His first book many of you are probably very familiar with: Born Again. His most recent book, which I think is--maybe actually is his twenty-fourth--I think he’s going to allude to and tell us a little about today. You know him as a special former special council to President Nixon who spent seven months in a prison as a result of Watergate-related charges. Of course you know him as the founder and chairman of Prison Fellowship. He’s a former US Marine captain, he’s a recipient of John Templeton’s prize for progress in religion along with Mother Theresa, Michael Novak and others, it carries the largest cash prize (it’s more than the Nobel Peace prize) all of which Chuck donated to Prison Fellowship.

All of these worldly accolades and accomplishments I think though, pale in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of lives that Chuck has transformed through prison fellowship and all of his work--his speaking, and his books. Tens, hundreds of thousands of prisoners, but also the wives and children of the prisoners through his Angel Tree Project and the prison works--all the donors and volunteers as well, they go into the prison and have their lives transformed in this process.
I have a very  good friend who passed away about eighteen months ago who was also a good friend of Chuck’s who, a number of year s ago went on a trip with Chuck into the prisons in South America and this fellow at the time was in his seventies. He came back so energized from that trip with Chuck into the prisons in South America, that really this one seventy-five year old man went out and formed in the poorest areas of Phoenix a mentoring project to reach out to the children of incarcerated—who had incarcerated parents and now that program match point, which was sponsored by Prison Fellowship, has more than three hundred and fifty matches of young hurting kids with Christian mentors who serve as surrogate aunts and uncles for these children. So that’s just one example; I know there are thousands of people whose live have been transformed by our next speaker so it’s a real honor to introduce today a modern-day Paul, Chuck Colson. (clapping)

Thank you, Chris. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Good morning to all of you. I welcome you to Disney World. Those of you who have been in Washington a long time should feel very comfortable here, at home. I must say when Chris said, “the apostle Paul”--People do that occasionally and it always kind of puffs you up except for the fact that I am reminded that the apostle Paul of course was beheaded so I don’t want to carry that comparison too far.
It’s a joy to be here. I really strongly believe in what you’re doing in the Council of National Policy and have seen the results of it. Chris mentioned Pat Nolan, which is a great contribution you’ve made to us because he’s become one of the most effective and articulate advocates of a biblically based criminal justice system across the country which is now (Chris mentioned South America) being picked up in South America, being picked up in countries in Europe, Southeast Asia--so it’s having a profound impact and you helped launch that process for us.
My talk today is a little bit about what it means to be Conservatives and Christians and a red-and-blue American. I want to start with just one comment:--controversial, I suspect with some of you. And that is that fact that we’re in a different position.
I stared out in the Conservative movement in 1958 with Barry Goldwater and we’re different today. It used to be easy to criticize. We’re in a governing movement today and it takes different frame of mind.
George Bush understands this. I heard the discussion about the judges. He understands that with the judges he’s been putting out--he has not put up one judge that I could not whole-heartedly support.  In his inaugural address, what he did was to seize the high moral ground, which the Conservative movement hasn’t had in the last fifty year, by setting an ideal--the same ideal our founders set in the Declaration of Independence: that freedom is a gift of God and we’re going to propagate that around the world. He took the high moral ground and what I would say to all of you is that it is increasingly important as Conservatives that we think in terms of how you form a governing coalition and how you take the high moral ground. And that we not think (particularly I say this to Social Conservative) we not think of all the ways in which we want to take the power that we’ve now acquired with all these voters out across the country and leverage it for our own interests; that’s not what Conservatives do.
Conservatives work for the common good—how you can promote the common good in society. When I read things in the newspaper these days about--particularly Social Conservatives going and saying, You’ve got to do this for us or else. I cringe. I’m not proud of the trade union movement. I’m not proud of a special interest group. I’m interested in the kingdom of God being exalted in our midst in righteousness. I’m interested in the basic fundamental Conservative values, which is tradition and order and a sense of personal responsibility and religion. And I’m not going to trade those as political pawns in a political game. I know that’s controversial but it needs to be said.
What’s wrong with a red-and-blue American? Fundamentally, what’s wrong with a red-and-blue American today is that it has divided us—more divided than this country has been certainly in my lifetime, anytime since the Civil War--along ideological lines: the blues and the reds facing off in a great ideological contest.
You read the papers the morning after the election--I read The New York Times. I have to read The New York Times; it’s tough on me, but I do because I do “Bright  Point “every day on the radio and that’ s the only way I can keep informed on what’s going on, or what people think is going on and, through my gritting teeth I read The Times. But, the morning after election was amazing. Thomas Freedman’s column--and he said, “I woke up and realized, I’m not just in the –this isn’t just another election, I’m living n a different country. And then a young woman (I assume a young woman, the name sounds like a woman’s name) wrote a rollout to The New York Times shortly thereafter about Freedman’s column in which she said, “He’s expressed my feelings completely. I woke up and spent the day walking around in shock. I had the feeling I had just witnessed the end of the America I was raised in and had ended a new country.”
Now my first reaction to that was one of “Tough. We won.”
And then I remembered I’m a Christian and the Bible tells me to welcome strangers in our midst. Maybe that doesn’t apply to Frenchmen, but strangers from any place else. And if this woman feels like she’s in a new country I’ve got a responsibility to reach out across that ideological divide and welcome that person and say let me show you there’s a better way to live your life. I want to show you the better way. I want to lovingly welcome you. There’s a lot of antagonism between the two ideologies today because ideologies--remember what ideologies are: They’re man-made constructs.
Russell Kirk, who formed my political thinking when I was an undergraduate at Brown University--Russell Kirk, whose writings so influenced me all my life--Russell Kirk says that, “Ideology is the enemy of revealed truth.” And if the Conservative movement stands for anything it is revealed truth. As a Christian, I believe it’s revealed truth in the Bible. But it’s revealed truth through the natural law; it is revealed truth through the common wisdom of a civilization that has been lived out.
The longer I live, the more Conservative I become. Why? Because I see all the utopian ideas that were advanced when I was a young man falling in ashes and on the ash heap of history. I don’t want to put my trust in man-made ideologies; that’s what the word means. My trust is in a deeper set of beliefs and that’s what’s wrong with red-and-blue America.  While, so long as we are ideologically divided and clashing--so long as it’s ideologies at war, it’s one side’s utopian schemes against the utopian schemes of the other side.  And Conservatives have an opportunity to walk into this battle ground and say, Look, here’s what we really believe in: We really believe in the dignity and the responsibility of human beings. We believe it is anchored in their God-given character. We believe human dignity is anchored in God-given character. We believe in the wisdom that has been learned through civilization. We don’t want to cut ourselves off from our past and leave ourselves spinning around in this post-modern vacuum. We believe we’ve learned more from history and from what’s gone on before us and from the great art and great advances of civilization and Western civilization and we want to profit from that for our own good now. We believe in order, because freedom has to flow out of order; “Tranquilitous ordinances,” as an Augustan put it. And we believe in religion because we believe that’s the fundamental way in which the individual searching for his relationship with God is protected in a society. Those are the things we believe.
Now if you start living those out—Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote that book, One Naiton, Two Cultures. I think she was dead wrong. I don’t how many of you read that book; I thought it was a great, very popular book about five years ago. She said, “We’re always going to have to live with these two cultures.”  Basically, that was before the reds and the blues and the retros and the metros. She was talking about the two different ways of looking at life in our society--two different cultures. And she said they can live side by side in peaceful accord.
No they can’t. Because the basic premises that you live by are just totally different. The postmodernist says, There is not truth. We believe the most important thing in life is revealed truth; that’s what we live by. If there’s no truth, what are you going to live by? The postmodernist says I can make things up as I go.
We were talking about the judges up here. The problem the judges had with Oliver Wendell Holms, who wrote an article and gave a speech about the law not resting on revealed tradition but resting on social engineering. And then you talk about how culture shifts politics? 
The thing we must never do is win the politics and lose the culture, because it would be a very very short-term victory. And the culture precedes politics. Why did we get Roe vs. Wade? We got Roe vs. Wade because of the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution said, Anybody can have sex any time they want under any terms. But wait a minute, women have a disadvantage--they get pregnant. Therefore, you gotta to have abortion in to order to give them complete sexual liberty equal with men and that’s exactly what motivated Roe vs. Wade. It’s what’s motivating all of our decisions afterwards because modern Liberals have embraced what John Stuart Mill taught in the nineteenth century and that is the greatest good of man is to be free of all restraints and the only ethical guideline is: the greatest good for the greatest number. That’s exactly what postmodern Liberals think, and it’s disastrous. It’s okay if you want to maximize the pleasure principle in your part of the majority, but if you happen to be on dialysis and you’re over seventy years old, that’s not a very good thing in hospitals that have futile care today--not a very good thing if you’re a child born with a cleft palate and, Peter Singer says, you’re sitting on the delivery table and just as soon have infanticide rather than raise a child with this disability--never good for the peoples on the margins of society. Why is it that all through the years Conservatives have always defended the people on the margins of society?
Why is it--Elizabeth Bumilller came I in my office last year and said, “I don’t understand something.” She said, “I was just sitting at home with my” (New York Times correspondent for the White House) “just sitting at home and was watching president Bush and, she said, “He came on television and he was giving and address to the United Nations on sexual trafficking. Why would the president have done that?”
She said, “I understand you were the one that talked him into it.”
I said, “Well, Franklin Graham and I and some others had meetings with him on it.” But, I said, “Yeah we were involved in that.”
She said, “Well why would Christians care about that?”
I said, “Don’t you understand the roots of human dignity? Don’t you understand William Wilburforce—the great crusader against the slave trade? Don’t you understand this is absolutely part of our tradition? That’s why the president has been so concerned with AIDS in Africa; that’s why the evangelical movement has been on that; that exactly why we’re concerned”--I told Elizabeth Bumiller--“with unborn human beings. It’s the same thing. It’s precisely the same issue.”
She ended up writing an article in which she said, Franklin Graham and Chuck Colson—front page of The New York Times—had been involved in these things and it almost had the tone of it of: How strange for evangelicals, how strange for Conservatives.
No, go back through history; we always have--because we believe that people’s rights are anchored in revealed truth, not in somebody’s idea about a perfect society that they want to create. So as Christians, we can make a tremendous witness--and as Conservatives--a tremendous witness on our society--that we do care about how people live.
I’d like to get a hold of this Beate Boland. I assume it’s Beate, it’s B-e-a-t-e, Clifton New Jersey, November Fourth, 2004. I’d love to sit down with her and say, “Would you let me walk you through, first of all, what’s wrong with your world view? What’s wrong with your world view is that it has nothing to rest on--no foundation.”
And people can’t even see that what they’re advocating is self-refuting. It cancels itself out. It’s irrational. We’ve abandoned logic (the great gift of the Greeks to Western Civilization)--we’ve abandoned it. So you have somebody like Maxine Waters, the congresswoman from California whose—you’ve heard her screaming on television from time to time--Maxine Waters who stood up--was down marching in the pro-choice parade in Washington last spring and somebody stopped her and said, “Congressman, why are you marching? You’ve had abortion rights all of your life.”
She said, “I’m marching because my mother didn’t have the right to an abortion.” (laughter)
Don’t go where you’re thinking. Don’t go—
This is the post-modern mind. It’s Yogi Bera-isms: Nobody eats in that restaurant anymore, it’s too crowded.
 It doesn’t work; it’s irrational. I gave a speech at Harvard Business School in 1991 on why Harvard can’t teach ethics and it created a great controversy--Maybe you’ve read the speech; it got more circulation than any speech I’ve ever given.
And then I was invited to all kinds of schools afterwards because they never challenged it. And for fourteen years I have been giving that speech in all kinds of forums. I’ve yet to find somebody to challenge me because you see you can’t have ethics in a secular society because you see there is no truth. Sixty-four percent of the American people said there’s no such thing as moral truth. And if you really want to get chills up your spine, look at what it is with kids—eighty-three percent of the teenagers say there’s no such thing as moral truth. Six percent of the teenagers say there is, but of course evangelicals are much better—Nine percent say there is.
 I mean, we’re losing this next generation. We can win the election; if we lose this next generation, forget about it. If they don’t believe there’s any such thing as proof, how are you gonna have a sense of right and wrong and teach ethics in school? You can’t.
A year and a half ago I went back to Brown University from which I graduated many years ago when it was a Conservative school., and–graduated in political philosophy, loved it, and have had nothing to do with the school since, because they’ve gone so far Left. But I was invited to my fiftieth reunion and invited to give a distinguished lecture at the school that weekend of the commencement. So I did it before a packed hall. They allowed me to pick my subject. I said: Why the Ivy League Can’t Teach Ethics--Same speech I’d been giving everywhere else.
The place was packed with faculty and students (overflow crowd in Solomon Hall), and I talked that morning before--I was introduced by an assistant professor of Political Science who I suspect is not long for Brown University, and he got up and he said that, “I watched Chuck Colson through the Watergate hearings when I was a student--” (that hurt). And he said, “I’ve really been fascinated by his life--” And he said, “Particularly fascinated that he’s coming back to talk about ethics here this morning because I used to teach ethics here at Brown until I was forced to discontinue; it was impossible to do so. And after you’ve heard Mr.Colson’s speech I think you’ll understand the reason why.”
First guy I’ve run into--I mean I’ve been challenged at Stanford, I’ve been challenged at Yale, I’ve been challenged at business schools all across the country.
They’ll send me their curriculum. What is their curriculum? It is diversity. It is the environment--nothing to do with right and wrong. Naturally you’re going to have Enrons; naturally you’re going to have a collapse if there can’t be ethics.
So the postmodern world gives us an impasse. You want all these liberties; you want the whole structure of government changed, which modern liberals have done. Russell Hittinger has written a brilliant paper about this, delivered at the Vatican a couple of years ago when we were both speaking over there. Russell Hittenger said that the job of government throughout modern history and the biblical job of government is to enforce the common good. The job of government in the last hundred years because of social liberals influenced by Mill is to keep government from enforcing anything on you: free you from the common good. And there can’t be common good anyway because there’s no truth by which you can measure the common good. So the only thing that matters is, you do whatever you want to do and ethics are what Peter Singer says it is: Maximizing pleasure for the most people.
It’s a disaster.
Aw, I’d love to sit down with this Beatie Bolan, or Betty Bolan and say, “Let me show you, that’s where your world view is gonna lead you.”
And then I’d like to show her where our world view leads her. It leads her to a sense of justice that is rooted in revealed truth--not in somebody’s whim at the moment. It is rooted in a sense of human dignity because, exactly as President Bush has said in his inaugural address, it’s God’s gift. It’s not to be given or taken away by a state.
This is exactly what Jefferson meant when he wrote those words in the Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness--not happiness in the hedonistic sense (people coming to the Ritz and having a big weekend like we’re doing), happiness in the sense that the Greeks meant: eudomania, that is, virtue.
So the individual has rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of virtue. I can’t express a Conservative view of the world any better than that.  Our founders understood that. My appeal to you today, and I see that I’ve got ten minutes left and I would like some time for questions. My appeal to you today is very simple. The church has a tremendous responsibility here. One of the things that I’ve discovered in the ministry that I’m in of Prison Fellowship is that we have a great opportunity because of my radio program which is on a thousand stations and because of being able to speak out on these issues, to talk about world view issues and to critique what’s wrong--and I write about that in my book, How Now Shall We Live? – if you haven’t got that book, Frank Cerutti’s in the back of the room and he’ll—give him a card, he’ll give you a copy. We’d be delighted to send ’em but we want people to read ’em. Frank, raise your had--there. Now let him know, we’ll be glad to send tit o you because it’s got a way you look at all of life under the biblical--through the biblical understanding.
And we’ve got to do that as a church. And we’ve got to do that as Christian people. And we’ve got to do that as thinking Conservatives: have a well-formed world view and understand why you believe what you believe about, where we came from, why the world’s in trouble, is there a way out, and how do we restore it?--The basic four questions that people have been asking from the beginning of time.
And then secondly we’ve been able, in this ministry at least, to live it up by going among those thousands of people that Chris was talking about--who are the most marginalized in society--that everybody has written off--nobody cares about. We’ve tried to go among them and redeem them. And what it has done is give us some credibility of course, to be able to speak to the broader issues. But it’s also shown people that a Christian understanding of life--a life rooted in the basic Conservative truths that we all share, it one that brings people hope and can restore them back to society. It’s not some institutionalization where we’re gonna so-called rehabilitate people; we’ve been trying to rehabilitate people in prison--
When I got out of prison there were two hundred and thirty-nine thousand people in prison. Today there’s 2.1 million. The recidivism rate is unchanged except in the four prisons we run where we’ve cut the recidivism rate to 4 percent—to 8 percent.
That’s what happens when we really roll up our sleeves as individuals and say, We’re gonna go in and make it a better society. This is what Edmund Burk and Russell Kirk meant when they talked about the little platoons of society. The most important thing is for us to get out and engage ourselves in the midst of society. Tocqueville said, when he came to the United States, “There aren’t ten men in all of France who do what Americans do every day and as a matter of course: helping their neighbors, raising barns, doing good things in society.”
We, whether we’re moved by our commitment to Christ and the Church or whether we’re moved by our care for society and sense of civic duty, it’s imperative that we get out and make a difference in society.
Win that culture, and the politics will follow. Lose that culture--the political victories will be empty. the balance we strike--of course I want to work for justice; I’ve been  lobbying hard in Washington for a lot things, including the sexual trafficking, including slavery in the Sudan, including the unborn--all of the issues we care deeply about and certainly the judges which is absolutely--Phyllis Schlafly’s right--absolutely imperative.
But at the same time, don’t put so much of your focus on that that you lose sight of the fact that we’ve got to--by being little platoons of society and by defending truth and by teaching truth to people, be able to invade the society and see that culture change.
Today, the Liberals own the culture. We’ve got a political majority because that’s the way people can express their beliefs, but they still own the culture. The culture is determined today (I could give you case after case after case to prove this)--the culture is determined today by people who basically believe Mill. They may not associate it with John Stuart Mill, but that’s what they believe; that ultimate freedom in life is to be kept free from anybody interfering; let me be able to do my own t things completely. So long as they control that culture, our victories in the ballot box aren’t gonna make that much difference.  ‘Course they’re gonna help, they’re gonna keep—hold back the tide.
But we’ve got a much bigger job than that, and that’s why I appeal to you to have a look of a governing majority—how it is that we look at society, not as the naysayers, but as the people who are advancing the cause of human freedom and liberty and human dignity and the rights of individuals in society and a society that is based in revealed truth, not on the ideological propositions of some coffeehouse dreamers. That’s the kind of life an American would want to live in. That’s the kind of life in America we want to work for. I see Chris, I’ve got ten after, does that mean I’ve got--five minutes for questions. Okay, yes. (clapping) Thank you. Thank you.

Hi John, I wanted to know if you have an answer for people. When I talk to-- especially when I’m speaking with fellow evangelicals and I’ll say some of the things--so many of the things that you say--and that we need to take back the culture and so forth. And the response that I get so many times from evangelicals is, Well, it’s all supposed to get worse anyway, we’re all gonna be raptured out of here soon, it’s not gonna matter; I read Left Behind, I saw the movie; I know that the anti-Christ is coming so why try to polish brass on a sinking ship? Why should I be involved in this sort of thing? Do you have an answer to that sort of thing?
Yeah, the curse of the twentieth century is that evangelicals went into fundamentalist isolation—largely because they bought exactly that same argument at the end of the nineteenth century; Dwight Moody had said—that was his metaphor--Polish the brass on the sinking ship.
And that’ a terrible attitude because I don’t know when Christ is gonna return. I know he’s gonna return--I’d stake my life on that, but the fact of the matter is that until he does I‘m gonna occupy this ground and do the best I can to present righteousness and truth in society and defend it. (clapping)
And so evangelicals can say that; I think they’re wrong; I argue with them all the time. I do everything I know how; I preach messages on the logos--what it means--the plan of creation, I talk about the cultural commission in that book on How Shall We Live? But the cultural commission figures prominently. And I would just tell you for word of encouragement—they’re changing. I’m teaching a course to a hundred laypeople across the country by email and by three residences, and web cast and that sort of thing, on biblical world view.
Boy, to see the transformation; and now how they’re all teaching it. I think we’re gaining ground.
Yes, you waved.

Now when I went to law school, we were never concerned with morality. It was always concern with the question of is it legal or illegal? Not Is it right or wrong? And it seems to me that there’s a linkage in the American public but influenced by that legal education so that the American public doesn’t realize that something can be legal and immoral. If something is not illegal, then by definition it is moral.
Now remember what I said, 64 percent of the American believe there’s no such thing as moral Truth. So you come up and say, well this is moral; well it’s like the debate in the campaign. I mean, are all the issues alike? Of course not.
Life underlies all the other issues. The reason I go into the prisons to take care of the people who are the poorest and weakest in our society is because they’re created in the image of God, and they’re every bit as good and the same as I am. You take away the right o life as a fundamental issue--all the other issues collapse. But this is where our world view has been inverted in modern society.
I don’t know where you went to law school. When I went to law school, which was ancient, we had courses on ethics; we talked about what was right and what the law ought to be doing, and had a deep respect for the traditions of the law.
That’s all changed in the last twenty years with the school of Critical Legal Studies. If you went to Yale you rally got brain washed. But the school of Critical Legal Studies erased that. And so you won’t get that today, there is simply practitioners of the law; the law is whatever people in black worlds say it is. And there is no right or wrong, you’re absolutely right.
At Yale Law School I had lunch with—had dinner with Steven Carter. He said to me, “Good for you coming talking about the rule of law working and working proem and Lex Rex.” And he said, “You’re gonna have a great evening.” 
And I did; five hundred students turned out. And he said to me, “They’ll listen to you politely, hold up their notebooks and leave and won’t ask any good questions, because in deconstructionism and postmodernism everybody’s point of view is the same. So isn’t that interesting? Mr. Colson’s come here and given us that lecture. That’s fine, and go off and—I mean, they don’t process it . There’s no law of non-contradiction, we—the Supreme Court has suspended it. People can believe one thing and, yeah: Nobody eats in that restaurant anymore because it’s too crowded. That’s exactly it.
One more question. That lady right down front she’s—

Thank you. Gambling is exploding across America and--
What, what ‘s the ploy?
Gambling.
Gambling.
And, I believe that it’s directly linked to crime and drug-addiction and prostitution and many other ills in our society. Is there anything we can do to help halt the rapid expansion of gambling? To get the word to the president that he could perhaps take a leadership role in turning things around and not having gambling explode so fast?
Well, of course about gambling--you’re absolutely right--It’s fueled by two things: It’s fueled by the public attitude that this is how they can get rich quick, and everyone thinks they’re gonna hit  it. It’s a rip-off of the poor, really; the poor are the ones who are exploited by it.
The other problem is a political problem because we like to take those gambling revenues and pay for our schools. And you have to beat it on a state-by-state basis. 
You are absolutely—it’s a perfect example, thank you for using that--It’s a perfect example of how culture and politics come together. So long as the culture thinks this is a good idea, the politicians will get away with it. Once the culture begins to realize it’s ripping off the poor, the politicians will stop.
I went down to Alabama just before the vote on the gambling—the casino vote four years ago--and spoke, and it was beaten there. Now we can beat it on a state-by state basis, we can beat it when people realize that it’s the most regressive tax in society. You start talking about it that way and it gets people’s attention. Thank you all. (clapping) God bless you. (clapping)

Thank you very much, Chuck.