[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 58 (Monday, April 23, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2594-S2595]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO CHARLES COLSON

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to talk for a few minutes about 
Chuck Colson, who was a friend of mine and the founder of Prison 
Fellowship Ministries. He died on Saturday at 80.
  Before Chuck Colson was 40, he was counselor to the President of the 
United States, Richard Nixon. At about that same time, about the time 
he was 40, he pled guilty to offenses related to the Daniel Ellsberg 
break-in. When he did that, I am told, even though his lawyers advised 
him not to plead guilty at that moment, he said pleading guilty was 
``the price I had to pay to complete the shedding of my old life to be 
free to live the new life.'' In June of 1974, he began to serve his 
prison sentence.
  What was the new life? In August of 1973, Chuck Colson's good friend 
Tom Phillips had counseled with him, and that was the moment Chuck 
Colson said he decided his life would be led as a Christian, that he 
would surrender his life to the Christian view and the Christian 
belief. He personally told me at one time that it was T.S. Eliot's 
writing ``Mere Christianity'' that then later became the intellectual 
basis for his faith. But initially his faith was needed more than he 
clearly understood he had, and he found that in his faith. It was an 
active faith.

[[Page S2595]]

  I am constantly amazed that an active God can take the bad decisions 
people make and, while God would not have wanted those to be the 
decisions people make, can turn them into incredible opportunities. In 
the life of Chuck Colson, that incredible opportunity became the 
founding of Prison Fellowship Ministries and the impact it had on so 
many other Lives.
  Twenty years ago, I became the first chair of the Missouri Prison 
Fellowship. As Chuck Colson was reaching out and trying to see how this 
idea could become an idea that would sustain itself and perhaps in the 
future within States. As a House Member, 10 years ago, I hosted a 
speakers series that was the Chuck Colson speakers series, and I was 
able to spend time with him virtually every week for 2 or 3 months as 
we had people come in and visit with House Members in a great speaker 
series.
  I personally benefited from lots of advice and discussions with him. 
Just to sum up a couple things about him as I reach a conclusion that 
doesn't begin to express the impact he had on people's lives.
  He founded Prison Fellowship Ministries in 1976. He founded Justice 
Fellowship in 1983. They have both grown to serve literally thousands 
of prisoners in this country and around the world. Prisons around the 
world saw Chuck Colson walk into them as well to try to help people.
  In 1993, he won the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion; in 
1994, he was instrumental in drafting the publication and publishing a 
document called the ``Evangelicals and Catholics Together.'' In 2008, 
he was awarded the Presidential Citizen Medal by President George W. 
Bush, and he is survived by a family who cared about him and lots of 
friends.
  For almost 40 years, starting with the Mike Wallace interview--as I 
suppose only Mike Wallace could interview someone--there were doubters 
and skeptics who questioned his faith, who questioned the change in his 
life beginning in 1973, but of course, they questioned it less so every 
year. I would say, in 2012, that Chuck Colson passed any test about 
whom he had become. The test is both past, P-A-S-T, and passed, P-A-S-
S-E-D. He won the race. Lives continue to be changed, and I would just 
say, I thank God for Chuck Colson, and I thank my good friend from 
Vermont for giving me a few moments on the floor.

                          ____________________