Few conversion stories are as public as that of a man once known for the aggressive loyalty with which he defended his boss. Charles Colson reached the top of American politics, and in his fall, found something no position had ever given him: a fresh start.
Born in Boston in 1931, he graduated in history from Brown University, served as a captain in the United States Marine Corps between 1953 and 1955, and earned a law degree from George Washington University. In 1969 he became special counsel to President Richard Nixon.
Colson was among the central figures of the Watergate scandal. In 1974 he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, over a plan to discredit analyst Daniel Ellsberg, and served seven months at the federal prison in Maxwell, Alabama, the first member of the Nixon administration imprisoned over the case.
Months before surrendering to justice, in August 1973, he visited businessman Tom Phillips, who read him a passage on pride from C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Colson wept so hard in the car that he could not pull out of the driveway: there he gave his life to Christ.
In prison, he saw firsthand the neglect of inmates and their families and decided to devote himself to them. In 1976 he published the best-selling Born Again and founded Prison Fellowship; in 1979 he created Prison Fellowship International, now present in dozens of countries.
In the following decades he wrote several books, among them Loving God and How Now Shall We Live?, and created the daily commentary BreakPoint, bringing a Christian worldview to listeners beyond prison walls. In 1993 he received the Templeton Prize, whose award money he donated to the ministry.
Not everything in his later work was free of controversy. In 2006, a federal court ruled unconstitutional the agreement between the state of Iowa and the InnerChange Freedom Initiative program, linked to Prison Fellowship, for improper entanglement between church and state through the use of public funds; the decision was upheld on appeal and the ministry had to return funds received from the state.
He died in 2012 in Falls Church, Virginia, following complications from brain surgery. His life remained marked by a duality he himself acknowledged: the man tied to the dark dealings of Watergate became a steady advocate for those most forgotten by the justice system.
The Prison Fellowship he founded remains among the largest prisoner assistance movements in the world, combining evangelism, counseling, and advocacy for criminal justice reform, a legacy born from a public downfall transformed into service.
