Convicted Watergate figure Chuck Colson returned to the White House Wednesday for a meeting with President Bush on Colson's post-prison endeavor - ministering to inmates.
"I felt quite emotional coming back here after my experiences in this building - and leaving it,'' Colson told reporters gathered on the White House driveway after his 40-minute meeting inside.
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Colson was White House counsel for former President Nixon and spent seven months in prison for his role in the 1972 Watergate scandal. In 1976, he founded Prison Fellowship Ministries. Now an author and radio commentator, Colson was part of a group invited to the White House to talk with Bush about helping former inmates find work and keeping them from returning to prison.
Colson's Reston, Va.-based organization operates the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, a rehabilitation program for inmates that is based on fundamentalist Christianity. The program was begun under then-Gov. George W. Bush in 1997 at a Texas prison and now is also offered at prisons in Iowa, Kansas and Minnesota.
Colson praised Bush for allowing the program to start.
"At that time, I didn't believe he'd be willing to fight it through - the church-state issues and all that were involved in it,'' he said.
Participants live in a separate prison unit and follow a curriculum of religious study, other education and work for up to 18 months. After an inmate's release, the program continues for at least six months with guidance from a mentor and local church support.
An advocacy group, the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has filed suit against Iowa, contending state funding for the program is unconstitutional.
Bush asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to work on ways that such efforts could be expanded to the federal prison system, said Jim Towey, head of the White House faith-based office.
The plan, especially the appeal to Ashcroft, smells not only a bit too Christian, but too fundamentalist Christian. Even though we've studiously ignored the Saudi influence on 9-11-01, aren't we all a little sick of government-sponsored fundamentalists yet?
Besides, shouldn't Buddhist or Shinto or Jewish or Islamic prisoners be entitled to the same availability of religious study?
Colson's penal Christianity is all a ruse. He has much bigger ambitions beyond the superficial prison-prayer nonsense, and he's hoping President Gump will bite the bait.
What Colson really wants is $5 billion to preach abstinence to Africans, the amount he envisions as his portion of the vague $15 billion AIDS in Africa relief package Dubya proposed during the State of the Union address.
