The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
served in a number of governmental positions, and founded a law firm before joining the Nixon administration.
Perhaps best known in the White House for compiling the president’s so-called enemies list, Colson pled guilty for having arranged the raid of the psychiatrist office of Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers, and served a prison term.
Raised as an Episcopalian and married to a Roman Catholic, God was not a major part of his life until he read C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity and became convinced that, if the testimony of the Bible were true, then Jesus was either the Son of God or a lunatic. Relying upon John 10:30 and convinced that Jesus was the former, Colson recorded that he had a conversion experience, which he recounted in his best-selling book (Colson 1976, 125–30). One lesson that Colson said he had learned from the Watergate experience was that “a lie cannot live for long” (Hyer 1983).
In addition to providing him with increased skepticism about human nature and the dangers of human power and pride, Colson’s conversion appeared to have reinforced many of his conservative views opposing abortion on demand and same-sex marriage, and his fear that the culture was in moral decline. He took, however, a more liberal stance on matters of criminal justice. As Tanya Erzen has observed, “He opposes mandatory minimum sentencing laws that send people to prison for first-time drug offenses and is an advocate of better work-release and after-care programs for prisoners. Colson promotes rehabilitation, restorative 117justice, and the improvement of living conditions in prisons as long as the rehabilitation entails a conversion to evangelical Christianity” (2007, 1003).
Colson has founded Prison Fellowship Ministries and the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, which are designed to provide rehabilitation for prisoners based on conversion experiences and Bible studies (Sullivan 2009, 66).
Colson authored and coauthored numerous books about developing a Christian worldview that could be applied to the whole of life, often citing numerous philosophers to buttress his defenses of Christianity (Colson and Pearcey 1999; Colson and Vaughn 1992). In an essay in which Colson began by saying that “I believe in biblical inerrancy, the sufficiency of scripture, and the doctrine the Reformers called Sola Scriptura,” he proceeded to say that “while we have to be immersed in scripture and understand it fully, we also have to know when and how to use it in public discourse” (Colson 2011). Pointing out that C. K. Chesterton when asked what book he would most like to have if he were shipwrecked on a desert island responded with Thomas’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding rather than, as expected, the Bible, Colson argued that starting a conversation with “the Bible says” may cause people to stop listening. He observed that in giving his speech at Mars Hills in Athens, which is recorded in Acts 17:16–34, the apostle Paul quoted Greek poets and used what “the Reformers called common grace, or what historically has been called natural law” rather than simply quoting from Scriptures (Colson 2011).
Colson was one of the authors of the Manhattan Declaration of 2009 in which evangelicals, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox Christians joined in support of “the sanctity of human life, traditional marriage and religious freedom” (Brant n.d.). He was the recipient of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1993.
See also Evangelicals; Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience; Natural Law
For Reference and Further Reading
Brant, Ginny Dent. n.d. “Lessons from Chuck Colson: A Heaven-Bent Transformer of This World.” CBN.com. https://www1.cbn.com/spirituallife/lessons-from-chuck-colson.
Chua-Eoan, Howard. 2012. “The Watergate Dirty Trickster Who Found God: Charles Colson (1931–2012).” Time. April 21.
Colson, Charles W. 1976. Born Again. Old Tappan, NJ: Chosen Books (Distributed by Fleming H. Revell).
Colson, Chuck. 2011. “Making the Case: Don’t Quote the Bible?” Christian Headlines. April 27. https://www.christianheadlines.com/columnists/breakpoint/making-the-case-don-t-quote-the-bible.html.
Colson, Charles, with Ellen Santilli Vaughn. 1992. The Body. Dallas, TX: Word Publishing.
Colson, Charles, and Nancy Pearcey. 1999. How Now Shall We Live? Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House.
Erzen, Tanya. 2007. “Testimonial Politics: The Christian Right’s Faith-Based Approach to Marriage and Imprisonment.” American Quarterly 59 (September): 991–1015.
Hyer, Majorie. 1983. “Colson Preaches That Watergate Proves the Bible.” Washington Post. September 28.
Sullivan, Winnifred Fallers. 2009. Prison Religion: Faith-Based Reform and the Constitution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Columbus, Christopher
Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) is credited with the European “discovery” of America, in the first of four trips that he made on behalf of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain in 1492. Long lauded, especially by Americans of Italian descent, for this discovery, in more recent years, his legacy has been tarnished by the legacy of imperialism, racism, and genocide that his exploration and colonization left in its path.
The Italian-born explorer had actually been seeking to open up trade with China, which he thought that he could reach from Europe by sailing West. Although he does not appear to have been the only individual of his day who believed that the earth was round, he does appear to have thought that the Atlantic Ocean was much smaller and that it could become a highway to the Orient.
Although the remarkable legacy of Columbus has been shadowed by subsequent treatments of the natives in the Caribbean and in Latin America, his primary goal (even when seeking gold) appears to have been motivated by his desire to secure funding for another crusade to capture the Holy Land from the Muslims, convert its inhabitants, and rebuild the temple. All of this was to be done in preparation for the second coming of Christ, which he anticipated would occur in about 150 years.
Both his diary and a book, Libro de las profecias (Book of Prophecies), which was not translated into English until 1991, testify to his knowledge of Scripture, especially the book of Revelation (Delaney 2006, 262). His journey to America followed shortly after the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain, and Columbus was highly influenced by the view of Joachim of Fiori (1135–1202) that the world was soon coming to a close. The first sentence of Columbus’s book describes its purpose: “Here begins the book, or handbook, of sources, statements, opinions and prophecies on the subject of the recovery of God’s Holy City and Mount Zion, and on the discovery and evangelization of the islands of the Indies and of all other peoples and nations” (Delaney 2006, 268). The book further indicates his familiarly both with the fourfold method of biblical interpretation (historical, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical) and “prefigurement,” which explains how Old Testament prophecies are fulfilled in the New (Delaney 2006, 268).
Columbus cited a number of prophecies from Isaiah (e.g., Isaiah 51:5b) that focused on the role of islands and often interpreted his discovery of the Americas as the “new heaven and earth”