Weekend Reads: A millennials' guide to Chuck Colson

Owen Strachan’s new book on Chuck Colson is aimed at people like me.

“Colson is known to many Christians but, lamentably, to far fewer millennials,” Strachan writes in the introduction to The Colson Way: Loving Your Neighbor and Living with Faith in a Hostile World (Thomas Nelson, 2015). “His voice was prominent during their youth, but my hunch is that for many millennials, Colson is not front and center on their cultural radar.”

Strachan’s point was more astute than I first realized. I picked up the book expecting to find mostly familiar facts, since Colson’s story is legendary in Christian circles, but it proved me wrong.

Strachan, though wordy at times, adeptly takes readers from Colson’s early childhood to his stint at the White House, Watergate-related conviction, and then almost four decades of Christian ministry. Along the way Strachan provides fresh anecdotes and revisits details obscured by history and likely unknown to many younger believers.

One example: I didn’t know Colson’s conversion predated his prison sentence—and actually contributed to it. Days after putting his faith in Christ, Colson turned down a plea-bargain deal that would have helped him avoid prison but require him to admit to a crime he hadn’t committed. He chose character over convenience and got a prison sentence as a reward.

In turn, the Church got a ministry that has led thousands to faith in Christ and continues to thrive after Colson’s death in 2012: Prison Fellowship has grown into the largest family of prison ministries in the world.

In writing the book, Strachan, a millennial himself, illustrates the kind of gospel-driven activity he hopes to inspire. Throughout the book, Strachan urges a new generation to advance truth and justice in the public square—what WORLD editor-in-chief Marvin Olasky has described as the Daniel Option.

Strachan doesn’t avoid applying Colson’s philosophy to the most pressing and controversial social issue of our day: same-sex marriage. He writes:

“We cannot respond to brokenness by embracing it and its effects. … The church must be crystal clear on this point: our identity is not inherently sexual. We are not the sum of our lusts, our perversity, our fallenness, whatever shape sin takes, whether heterosexual, homosexual, or any other form. We will not find happiness and freedom when we allow our lusts free reign.”

Preaching such direct truth is rare among millennials, but it’s a tribute to the man who inspired the book. Colson, founder of Angel Tree and the mastermind of the Manhattan Declaration, would be proud.