Preaching Christ to Culture: An Interview with Chuck Colson

You can’t preach today without caring about the workplace, when so many of your people are there all week. You’ve got to be preaching about that. You’ve certainly got to be preaching about families and neighborhoods. Those are worldview issues. We’ve got to be preaching about political decisions that are clearly moral. We shouldn’t preach about ones that aren’t moral or that don’t touch upon serious moral questions. But I see the job of the pastor is to be the interpreter of biblical truth to the laity so the laity are informed in such a way that they can live out their faith—Ephesians 4—and become ministers themselves of the message that comes from the pulpit.

Preaching: We’re in an election year, and there is a constant effort by candidates to try to pull congregations into political campaigns. How should a pastor deal with that?

Colson: I wrote a book a number of years ago called Kingdoms in Conflict [recently revised and re-released as God & Government], which described the proper role of Christians in politics. I said it is wrong for Christians to allow themselves to become a special-interest group or a power block and thereby bargain to put themselves in the hip pocket of a political party or movement. It is equally wrong to ignore politics because we have to care deeply about it, but we stand independent of and apart from a specific political movement.

So it’s a balancing act because, of course, if you have one party that is clearly pro-life—or at least confesses to be and most of its candidates are—and one party that has very few pro-life candidates and no pro-life plank, you’re automatically gravitating toward the one who is pro-life. But you have to be very careful that you don’t simply put yourself in bed with any one party or movement.

The life issue to me is transcendent because I think it goes to the very heart of the gospel. Pope John Paul II wrote an encyclical called Evangelium Vitae in which he said that dignity of human life is a part of the gospel. Some of us evangelicals believe that it is integral to the gospel. But either way you look at it, when someone is taking away life from the moment of conception to natural death—threatening life—they’re threatening what it means to be human. And they’re threatening the very nature of the gospel.

Preaching: From your perspective, are there some areas where preachers need to be cautious? Are there lines that they ought never step over?

Colson: I’ve never endorsed a political candidate, and preachers should not endorse a specific candidate or party. To say from the pulpit, "Go vote for X or Y or this person or that person" would be a serious mistake. To explain what the candidates’ positions are on crucial issues is entirely appropriate, but I think you have to be very careful that you don’t allow yourself to be an instrument of partisan politics in the pulpit.