Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to President Richard M. Nixon, is a highly regarded Christian author, speaker, and commentator. Chuck speaks out each weekday on BreakPoint®, a radio commentary program offering biblical perspective on current events-often controversial issues.
As Chairman of the Board of Prison Fellowship, Chuck's ministry, founded in 1976, exhorts and equips the church to help people suffering at all points of the cycle of crime: prisoners, ex-prisoners, victims, and their families. He is convinced that Christians, in obedience to God's commands, must take the Gospel to people like those he encountered during his seven-month, Watergate-related prison term.
Born Again, Chuck's international best seller, dramatically details his conversion to Christianity in 1973. Other books include The Good Life, Kingdoms in Conflict; Convicted; Against the Night; The God of Stones and Spiders; and the widely acclaimed, How Now Shall We Live? He also writes a column regularly for Christianity Today and contributes numerous articles to magazines and newspapers.
Prison Fellowship utilizes a network of 43,000 highly trained volunteers to work in prisons and communities. Ex-inmates receive guidance and encouragement through mentors and Philemon Fellowship ex-offender support groups. And families are befriended by churches through family support groups and Angel Tree®, a Christmas gift-giving program for children, done on behalf of their incarcerated parents.
Chuck founded Justice FellowshipTM in 1983 to promote biblically-based reform of the criminal justice system. Since then, Justice Fellowship has organized and equipped volunteer task forces in 22 states to promote victims' rights, alternatives to prison for nonviolent offenders, victim-offender reconciliation, and in-prison industries. He is also Chairman of the Board of Prison Fellowship International, a network of national prison ministries chartered in 45 countries.
A native of Boston, Chuck earned a B.A. at Brown University, was a Captain in the U.S. Marines Corp, then finished his J.D. in 1959 at George Washington University. From 1959 to 1975 he practiced law in Virginia, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia, before serving as Special Counsel to President Nixon from 1969 to 1973.
Chuck and Patty couldn't be happier these days being grandpa and grandma to a new generation of Colsons.