(b.October 16, 1931), was special counsel to the President of the United States, 1969–72; administrative assistant to U.S. Senator Saltonstall, 1956–61; assistant to Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1955–56; and served as a captain, USMCR, Korea. The founder of Prison Fellowship, 1976, Chuck Colson is a nationally known speaker and author, whose works include: Born Again, 1975; Life Sentence, 1979; Crime and the Responsible Community, 1980; Loving God, 1983; Who Speaks for God?, 1985; Kingdoms in Conflict, 1987; Against the Night, 1989; The God of Stones and Spiders, 1990; Why America Doesn’t Work, 1991; The Body, 1992; A Dance with Deception, 1993; A Dangerous Grace, 1994; and Gideon’s Torch, 1995. He received the Templeton Prize for progress in Religion in 1993.
In 1981, Chuck Colson stated:
Imprisonment as a primary means of criminal punishment is a relatively modern concept. It was turned to as a humane alternative to the older patterns of harsh physical penalties for nearly all crimes. Quakers introduced the concept in Pennsylvania.
The first American prison was established in Philadelphia when the Walnut Street Jail was converted into a series of solitary cells where offenders were kept in solitary confinement. The theory was that they would become “penitents,” confessing their crimes before God and thereby gaining a spiritual rehabilitation. Hence, the name “penitentiary”—as a place for penitents.3871
On September 2, 1993, in his speech entitled “The Enduring Revolution,” delivered upon his acceptance of the Templeton Prize, at the University of Chicago, Chuck Colson stated:
On this, at least, we must agree: the right … to state faith without fear—is the first human right. Religious liberty is the essence of human dignity. … It is a sad fact that religious oppression is often practiced by religious groups. Sad—and inexcusable. A believer may risk prison for his own religious beliefs, but he may never build prisons for those of other beliefs. It is our obligation, to bring back a renewed passion for religious liberty to every nation from which we came. It is our duty to create a cultural environment where conscience can flourish.3872