Charles Colson: Culture Warrior?

Owen Strachan says No, but first we need to hear what Strachan thinks a “culture warrior” is. It is hard to know what he thinks he’s denying until we hear what that expression means.

Colson’s public-square work offers modern evangelicals a workable model. Initially, Colson considered himself contra mundum, “against the world,” as a believer. He wished to stand against evil. He never lost this vital perspective, but his friend, First Things editor Richard John Neuhaus, suggested Colson tweak the self-descriptor. The Christian, he said, is contra mundum pro mundo, “against the world for the world,” an elegant and accurate summation of evangelical engagement with a fallen order. The believer, and particularly the public-square witness, opposes evil, but does so not to defeat opponents or gobble up cultural territory. We are against the world out of love, seeking always to win lost friends to Christ and usher them into flourishing.

This is the key to understanding Colson. It differentiates him from the “culture warrior” label that is sometimes affixed to him. Colson was not a culture warrior; he was a Christian witness. [That’s a false dichotomy as expressed.] In his mind, when he spoke against recidivism or postmodern amorality, when he created new projects to promote a united front against cultural [note the term] decline, and when he talked quietly with a wayward person about the effects of sin and the reality of damnation, he was opposing evil out of love for neighbor. You could read Chuck Colson as an agent of the “religious right” or the “Moral Majority,” [which most did and still do] but in truth, he was in but not of these groups [clever, but hardly clear in meaning]. Like his hero, William Wilberforce, he was against the world for the world. [To whom would this not apply?]

In the whole article, not a word about “church.” Telling.