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In print · 1976
Born Again
by Charles W. Colson
Colson belonged to no church and professed no faith. Inside the Nixon White House he was the man sent for when something needed doing badly, and he was good at it. Watergate ended that, and in the week the career was coming apart a friend put a book in his hands. He read it straight through. He pleaded guilty, served seven months, and wrote this down within two years — close enough to the wreck to still smell of it.
Why Chuck Colson became a Christian
On August 12, 1973, with Watergate closing in, he visited his friend Tom Phillips, the head of Raytheon, who read him the chapter on pride from C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Colson turned down Phillips’ offer to pray with him, then sat in his car in the driveway, unable to drive.
“Ex-Marine captain, White House tough guy, I was crying too hard, calling out to God.”
What it cost
Not his career. Watergate had already taken that. What his conversion cost him was being laughed at: Washington took it for a ploy to shorten his sentence.
Boston Globe, 2012
Common questions
- What was Chuck Colson convicted of?
- Obstruction of justice. In 1974 he pleaded guilty to one count over his efforts to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers. He served seven months in federal prison and was released in January 1975.
Related reading
The book that did it
Mere Christianity
C. S. Lewis · 1952
The chapter on pride that a friend read to Colson in 1973. He said it was like having a hot knife put in his stomach.
The same kind of story
The Case for Christ
Lee Strobel · 1998
Also filed under dramatic conversions & evangelists.
The same kind of story
Confessions of a French Atheist
Guillaume Bignon · 2022
Also filed under dramatic conversions & evangelists.
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