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The Colson Way

Loving Your Neighbor and Living with Faith in a Hostile World

Thomas Nelson

ASCENT

Chuck Colson was sweating. He was standing just feet from the US president in his office. While Colson was perspiring, Richard Nixon was yelling. This happened often when his plans were frustrated. Nixon was not one to take setbacks lightly.

The president's request was simple: in fulfillment of a campaign pledge, he wanted a commission appointed to study Catholic schools. Though a Quaker, Nixon liked the Catholic model of education and, as the most powerful man in America, wished it to be studied at some length in order to publicly commend it. It was not a complex request, as far as presidential wishes go. But for various political reasons, Nixon's lead advisors had not acted to appoint the commission. Though America's chief executive must deal with ten thousand matters, at 5:00 p.m. on a Friday in the winter of 1970, this one had his full attention. Other aides were out of the office, but Colson was present. He was contemplating a relaxing Friday night when Nixon suddenly called him into his office.

"Chuck," Colson years later remembered him saying, "I want a commission appointed now." He paused and looked the thirty-eight-year-old staffer in the eye. "Break all the [expletive] china in this building," he roared, "but have an order for me to sign on my desk Monday morning."

With that, Colson was off. He ran back to his office, telling Joan Hall, his startled secretary, that he had no idea where to start. This was no easy mission to fulfill. It was a quiet Friday evening, the kind that features elite politicos fleeing their squeezed offices for ski slopes or coastal retreats, not digging in to meet the shouted expectations of world leaders. But Colson saw an opportunity, the kind his assertive nature craved. He hadn't had much to do since joining the White House some months earlier as Special Counsel to the President.

John Ehrlichman, chief domestic aide, and H. R. Haldeman, Chief of Staff, led Nixon's administration. The two men famously relished their roles as the president's gatekeepers. They had little interest in cultivating Colson, with his bullish personality and penchant for brilliant political strategy. The human heart in its natural state is not generous to competitors.

This was Colson's golden moment, however. The gatekeepers were temporarily away. Here was the world's preeminent leader not merely asking him to fulfill a request, but commanding him to do so, ordering him to do so. For a former Marine like Colson, this was irresistible stuff.

He set to work, finding the necessary documents to draft an executive order, placing call after call to various officials, even pulling the White House budget director from his faraway ski slope to approve the money to fund the commission. He worked furiously through the weekend over two "frantic" days, sleeping little, barely taking note of his family, in order to honor Nixon's request. On Monday morning, he placed the executive order on Nixon's desk. The work was done; the task was finished.

The china was broken.

Chuck Colson had arrived.

* * *

The political overachiever did not hail from privilege. Charles "Chuck" Wendell Colson was born on October 16, 1931, in Winthrop, Massachusetts, just across the harbor from Boston. His parents, Wendell and Inez "Dizzy" Colson, raised Colson in upper-middle-class fashion despite lower-middle-class earnings. Dizzy was a force of nature with a classically extroverted personality. She was not adept, however, at managing family finances, a trait that created some chaos in the young man's life. The family struggled with debt and making ends meet, fostering anxiety in the household.

This was a plug-away era, though, and the Colsons did their part. Wendell devoted himself to what men of his generation took pride in: he put his head down and worked. He spent long hours in a meatpacking plant by day and took classes at Northeastern Law School by night to advance his family's prospects. Years later, Chuck would do the same while raising a young family. For a certain kind of child, the feeling of desperation produced by unstable finances creates a propulsive energy to succeed and strive. Colson's youthful experience left a mark on him, developing in him a desire to push ahead relentlessly despite tough odds. From eleven years of age, Chuck took summer jobs to defray his school expenses, which his father's salary barely covered.

Despite the family's humble beginnings, in 1945 Colson was placed in a small but elite Boston prep school, Browne and Nichols (now called Buckingham Browne & Nichols, "BBN" for short). Located in Cambridge on the banks of the fabled Charles River, the school drew many of the children of Harvard faculty members, including some who could not gain admittance to the upper crust of the New England prep schools (Groton, Andover, and Phillips Exeter among them).

Colson's peers would go on to distinguish themselves, however. One year behind Colson was Anthony Perkins, the actor who would forever alter the American perception of roadside motels in Psycho. Mindy Kaling, beloved of The Office, is a more recent alum. In the years preceding Colson's arrival, the school had established a reputation for itself along calmer lines, winning the Thames Royal Regatta in London and vanquishing foes from larger Boston schools in athletic competitions.

Colson fit the school's plucky mold well. He did not make his mark in sports, the dream of many a fifteen-year-old boy. Though he tried hard, Colson was an average athlete and a little heavyset for his age. But he had other, perhaps more potent, gifts: a forceful personality, the ability to rally peers to his cause of choice, and a quicksilver intellect. Colson worked his way onto the school newspaper, the Spectator, and quickly became its editor-in-chief. By 1948, the paper's advertising revenue had tripled under Colson's leadership. His instincts for business and his interest in intellectual influence were nascent but growing. Even among a gifted peer group, Colson stood out. He was named the valedictorian of the forty-person senior class and voted "Most Likely to Succeed" by his classmates. Little did they know just how well he would succeed.

Colson graduated from high school desiring an excellent collegiate experience. After B&N, he applied to two Ivy League schools: Harvard and Brown, the latter located in Providence, Rhode Island. In what was his most remarkable coup to date, Colson won scholarships to both schools. This was the American dream, gift-wrapped and dazzling. Were Colson's life story to end at this point, his trajectory was already spectacular.

His paternal grandfather was a Swedish immigrant who died when Wendell was a teenager and his maternal grandfather was a British silversmith. Neither side of the family had aristocratic connections. But Colson had an indomitable will. His application landed in the admissions office at Harvard Yard in a time when famed President James Bryant Conant (tenure from 1933 to 1953) effectively reshaped the storied institution, opening its famously restricted gates to students from diverse socioeconomic experiences.

In an address given in 1940, Conant charged the American university to return to the educational ideals of Thomas Jefferson, who sought to enhance the intellectual life of all Americans, not just the upper class. More than a century after Jefferson, Conant sought an increasingly level playing field:

I look forward to a future American society in which social mobility is sufficient to keep the nation in essence casteless—a society in which the ideals of both personal liberty and social justice can be maintained—a society which through a system of public education resists the distorting pressures of urbanized, industrialized life.

Colson was a beneficiary of this expanded vision, though it is likely that his talent alone would have won him admission to Harvard. Colson, however, did not receive the news of his admission to the nation's most prestigious university with the customary awe and gratitude. Just the opposite: he turned Harvard down.

In his autobiography, Born Again, Colson reflected on how his humble origins clashed with the culture of Harvard. It was, he wrote, "pride" that drove him to sneer at his scholarship offer: "As a boy I used to stand on the pebbly beach looking across the gray-green waters of the harbor at the city then run by the Brahmins, the Beacon Hill establishment which traced its ancestry through generations of Harvard classes back to the Mayflower."

Colson's rejection was an act of reverse snobbery. He and his family were not part of this hereditary aristocracy. They were "Swamp Yankees," as Colson noted, people who "fervently sought admission to the elite." But in his mind, he showed Harvard that he was not desperate for its stamp of achievement. When offered an entrée to the corridors of influence, a place at the table, Colson pushed back from it. He entered Brown on an ROTC scholarship and never looked back.

For a man who would focus on religious liberty, Brown University was a noteworthy choice. The school sits on College Hill, a high hill overlooking Providence, the city founded by Roger Williams in 1636 as a spiritual harbor for colonists whose polity and piety did not fit the dictates of Puritan New England. For this reason, many Baptists flocked to the city, establishing the first Baptist church in America midway up College Hill in 1638. More than a century later, Baptists chartered the College of Rhode Island in 1764 and settled it in its current location in 1770. The school was the third college founded in New England. Its motto was In Deo Speramus—In God we hope.

By the time Colson matriculated at Brown in 1949, the cast of the university had changed dramatically. The school downplayed its evangelical heritage and featured a boisterous social scene. Colson joined a fraternity, Beta Theta Pi, founded at the school in 1848. He threw himself into the social life of the outfit, hazing members, organizing escapades, and spending time with his girlfriend, Nancy Billings, a sweet young woman from an upper-crust New England family. The two dated throughout Colson's time at Brown and, as a result of Colson's irresistible wooing, were married in June 1953.

Colson had already showed a penchant for aggressive thinking and an action-oriented philosophy. He continued in this vein at Brown, balancing his classes in political philosophy with his vibrant social life, student politics, and weekly drilling in uniform as a member of the Brown ROTC. Colson fit mid-century fraternity life to a tee. He smoked constantly (a habit that took him decades to drop), drank regularly, and galvanized those around him through his propensity for electric debates and organizational savvy. In a visit to Brown fifty years after his graduation in 1953, Colson reflected on how his environment shaped him:

The tolerance I was willing to fight for is the freedom in civil discourse in the public square to be able to present my truth claim and also listen respectfully to other people's truth claims. That is tolerance. Tolerance, I learned at Brown was to sit and listen respectfully while I disagreed with the person who was speaking, because we are in a free society, and I will die to protect his rights to speak freely about what he believes.

As time wore on in Providence, Colson excelled in his studies in political philosophy, which featured an exciting array of thinkers. His classroom engagement with Nietzsche, Marx, and others trained him to relish the give-and-take of ideas, and the presence of classmates and professors who disagreed with him encouraged him to "listen respectfully." Later, he would launch a phase of his ministry centered around intellectual exchange.

Colson's training at Brown readied him for future endeavors. His academic preparation rendered him an unusual figure at times, for American evangelicals have had a rocky relationship with the life of the mind. Many Christians found themselves marginalized in elite academia in the early twentieth century. Some, in response, opted out of engagement with the secular academy, preferring instead to focus on practical ministry. In some evangelical circles, an attitude we could call "spiritual pragmatism" dominated.

This was in sharp contrast to the past. In America, schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (originally the College of New Jersey) represented colonial efforts to equip ministers with a love for Christ and for truth. The mottoes of these schools captured this desire: Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae, "Truth for Christ and the Church," at Harvard; Lux et Veritas, "Light and Truth," at Yale; Dei Sub Numine Viget, "Under the Protection of God She Flourishes," at Princeton. Today these schools are marked by their secularity, but they were each founded for a distinctly Christian purpose: to train young believers in a richly intellectual faith.

In 2015, when secularism looms large, evangelicals can give fresh priority to the life of the mind. In years past, Christians took it upon themselves to found colleges and universities that would pass down the faith and invigorate the heart and mind for Christ. This was founded in biblical conviction. In the language of Genesis, we should "take dominion" of all we can (1:26–27). The "dominion mandate," as it's called, does not only apply to our backyard gardens and our animal husbandry. It surely extends to all of life and all of our education, whether we study philosophical systems, multivariable calculus equations, or flagellum in a petri dish. Academic instruction reaped from faithful instructors at excellent institutions prepares us to think well in public, and to defend and promote the truth.

Colson began to enjoy the life of the mind at Brown. Engaging with various schools of thought excited him, as it would in later life. Though his early academic efforts were not stellar, Colson graduated cum laude from one of Brown's toughest departments. He later observed that, though he "read a lot of philosophy" at the university and "thought [he] understood it," it was not until his "life was turned upside down" and he "made a mess" of it that he really comprehended it.

The young man enjoyed action as much as intellection. At this time in Brown's history, military officers held official faculty positions at Brown, training students in military strategy and theory. These subjects proved centrifugal for youth like Colson. Decades later, Colson identified the straight-back, shiny-shoed officer who first drew his interest in 1951 as "Lt. Cosgrove." The high standards and proud professionalism of the Marine Corps spoke to something deep in Colson. As often happens with college students, his idealistic side surged in him. Though acting like a boy with his fraternity buddies, he yearned to prove himself a man.

Cosgrove showed mastery in his dealing with Colson. He played hardball with him, wondering aloud to Colson whether the would-be officer was "good enough" for the Marines. Once again, Colson sat across a desk from an eminent man, a gatekeeper whose approval could shape the course of his life. Unlike his experience in Harvard Yard, however, Colson had no snappy retort for Cosgrove. He was speechless, a condition that did not often overtake him in his voluble life. But Cosgrove got Colson's attention. He threw himself into his ROTC exercises, seeking covertly to imitate the bearing and posture of Cosgrove. Not long after, in June 1953, he was commissioned an officer in the United States Marine Corps. He would later reflect that the moment in his ceremony in which he was first saluted as an officer was the proudest of his life.

The Corps offered Colson a life of discipline and accountability, order and authority. It was led by legendary figures like famed three-star general "Chesty" Puller. In a tradition that raises certain heroic figures to Olympian heights, Puller stood out for his reputation for bravery and toughness. His famous dictums speak to the confidence of military officials of the period. At one point in Korea, facing tremendous fire, he told his men, "[T]hey're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us. They can't get away this time." Such bravado led young patriots like Colson to follow Puller unquestioningly.

Colson never entered actual battle in the Korean War. By the time of his deployment, the conflict had ceased. Not surprisingly, Chuck found the peacetime military less appealing than the wartime military. He agitated to leave and begin a law career. But the military left a lasting impression on the young man. Amid his enjoyment of university life, Colson had found for the first time a cause he considered worth dying for, as he told students at his alma mater in 2003:

When I went into the Marine Corps I was perfectly willing to lay my life down for the great opening words of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." That is a great thing. That is a great freedom!

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Excerpted from The Colson Way by OWEN STRACHAN. Copyright © 2015 Owen Strachan. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
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