’Watergate reminds us that political office is as much about serving as it is leading,’ says Sharmila Meadows as she looks at the redemption in the life of Chuck Colson, who was once Nixon’s ’hatchet man’ but after coming to faith and going to prison, formed the Prison Fellowship.
This summer marked the 50th anniversary of the resignation of President Richard Nixon after Watergate. For those unaware, Watergate was an act of political espionage and sabotage of America’s Democratic Party’s 1972 presidential campaign, conducted and financed by Nixon’s re-election campaign.
For my generation, Watergate was a term you knew, if not quite why.
For my generation, Watergate was a term you knew, if not quite why. It was only through its retelling in the mesmerising 1976 film All the President’s Men that I learnt how Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, so skilfully played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, relentlessly pursued the “best obtainable version of the truth”, which exposed Watergate and brought down a president.
When I last watched the film, I couldn’t lose the thought that here was the world into which I was born. A world of the Cold War and Vietnam and Watergate. And in the haircuts, the telephones, the clothes and that bleak 1970s’ landscape, I saw my early childhood. Nixon’s downfall was the standout news story from the year of my birth, but fifty years on, its lessons feel painfully relevant.
Because Watergate reminds us that political office is as much about serving as it is leading. Politicians are lent high office by their electorate and granted the privilege to serve. They earn that privilege upon honest campaigning and fair elections. Where they feel entitled to that office, refuse to relinquish power, or indeed are elected by means that are disingenuous or undemocratic, the basis of their power and democracy itself are corroded.
In America today, a toxic presidential campaign unfolds.
In America today, a toxic presidential campaign unfolds. Here, we witness a new government that, within two months of taking office, has reneged on core tenets of its electoral campaign - tenets that were challenged during the campaign and which it repeatedly said were sacrosanct - and who now seeks to ‘re-frame’ the country’s economic record as a political tool. It doesn’t feel like honest politics, but Watergate shows us that honest politics matters. It matters deeply and we need to be wise to it.
Nixon’s administration was marred by dirty politics to the point that his White House counsel, Chuck Colson, was known as a hatchet man. Paradoxically, it is in Colson that Watergate delivers its most compelling story. For in the aftermath of the scandal, Colson found Christ. He then voluntarily pleaded guilty to his charge and served a seven-month sentence in an Alabama prison, where he felt the call of God to honour prisoners. He did so by founding Prison Fellowship – a ministry that continues to bring Christ to prisoners and their families.
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Prison ministry feels intrinsic to our faith. A flagrant demonstration of Christ’s redemption. Time and again, Jesus met people where they are and as they are. I think of the woman at the well or the one caught in adultery and find a Jesus so unafraid of our mess. Ready to love us and work with us even where, like Colson, the wreckage is of our own making. Working until he takes all the broken and ugly places and fashions them into something of indescribable power.
Colson concluded that God had placed him in prison for a reason. His willingness to respond has left a kingdom legacy, changing lives to this day. One that walks in the footsteps of Wilberforce and Fry. That walks in the footsteps of Jesus (Matthew 25:36). Through Colson’s response to God, Watergate stands witness not only to the importance of clean politics and honest campaigning, but also to the saving grace of Jesus Christ.To a God who takes our mess and shapes it into a message of enduring worth - not only for ourselves, but also for the hurting world that he calls politicians and Christians to serve.
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