Charles Colson’s ‘Ecumenism of the Trenches’
Religion & Liberty Online

Charles Colson’s ‘Ecumenism of the Trenches’

“Walter Hooper once said of C.S. Lewis that he was the most truly converted person he had ever met,” says Baptist theologian Timothy George. “The same thing can be justly said of Charles W. Colson, who came to faith in Christ through reading Lewis’ Mere Christianity.”

In an article for the National Catholic Register, George examines the legacy of his friend, a man who helped forge Evangelicals and Catholics Together and the ‘Manhattan Declaration.’:

Sentenced to prison for his Watergate crimes, Colson left prison in 1975 only to return again and again with a message of hope and life in Christ. For many years, Colson spent every Easter Sunday behind bars preaching to inmates about the risen Christ.
Prison Fellowship, a transcultural movement for justice and reform, is today chartered in 120 countries around the world.
Over the years, Colson came to see the close connection between despair within the prisons and the “culture of death” in society on the outside. Colson was drawn to the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity, and he knew that genuine reform had to embrace the family and the community as well as the state.

Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).