Chuck Colson’s InnerChange prison program was booted out recently from the UK Dartmoor prison, because it might convince some that that the Christian faith is the right faith.

Chuck Colson’s InnerChange prison program was booted out recently from the UK Dartmoor prison, because it might convince some that that the Christian faith is the right faith. Credit:prisonfellowship.org

Colson, widely remembered from the Nixon Watergate scandal, has forwarded evangelical Christianity among prison cultures in America for decades.

The program has shown great success in diminishing crime and recidivism among prisoners, the Telegraph said.

A similar program was launched in 2005 in the UK’s Dartmoor prison with the support of then governor Claudia Sturt. It involved 10 prisoners who joined voluntarily.

Included was aftercare for all participants whether or not they became Christian, the Telegraph said.

Last year Sturt was promoted and sent to Belmarsh. InnerChange was then mysteriously accredited under PSO4350—for schemes that involve public funds. InnerChange never sought this accreditation and raised its own funds, the Telegraph said.

Then an Area Psychologist of the Prison Service observed InnerChange and reported displeasure that they believed “the root of offending is individual sin.” She said the statement lacks scientific basis, the Telegraph said.

She also said the concept of good and evil is “antisocial” and did not like the fact that those who ran the program believed that their faith is the right faith, the Telegraph said.

Supporters of InnerChange have noted that many Muslims are offended by the idea that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. However, they questioned whether this meant that no Christian could say it, the Telegraph said.

InnerChange has met with great success in the United States. In Texas, among those who joined the program recidivism dropped from 55 percent to eight percent. In Minnesota, Commissioner Joan Fabian of the Department of Corrections noted, “It is one of the best things that we’ve done in our system. [It] is just the right one when nothing else worked,” the Telegraph said.

The course cites Biblical role models and parables such as the Prodigal Son and the Lost Sheep. It also provides follow ups after prisoners are released from prison, the Telegraph said.

Sam Childers arriving to the Book Signing Event of his book “Another Man’s War,” Beverly Hills, CA on May 5, 2009 - Photo by Glenn Francis of www.PacificProDigital.com Source: Wikimedia Commons

Hollywood action superstar Gerard Butler, whose recent high-octane roles include King Leonidas in “300” (2006) and Clyde Shelton in “Law Abiding Citizen” (2009), will soon be playing the role of real-life AK-47-toting Pastor Sam Childers in 2012’s “Machine Gun Preacher,” according to the Internet Movie Database.

A former bike gang member and drug dealer, Childers underwent a massive spiritual transformation in 1992, during a revival at an Assembly of God church and his pastor prophesied that Sam would one day travel to Africa.

Six years later, near the close of 1998, Childers boarded a plane for the Sudan.

It would be the first of several trips he would make to the war-torn region where the Ugandan sectarian militant group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army, led by Joseph Koney, had abducted and tortured an estimated 30,000 children and displaced 1.6 million people since the start of the rebellion in 1986.

The LRA claims they act under the principles and morals found in the Christian Bible and the Ten Commandments.

Childers made it his life’s mission to defend and protect the innocent children of the Sudan region by any means necessary.

For the past 12 years, the so-called “unconventional American pastor” has lived and operated in Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda. His Angels of East African Children’s village has become a safe haven for rescued children.

“Machine Gun Preacher” is currently in its preproduction phase and will begin shooting in Pennsylvania in early July, according to Variety Magazine.

Under the directorship of Golden Globe nominee Marc Foster, whose 2008 “Quantum of Solace” follow-up to the 2006 James Bond remake “Casino Royale” cemented him as a Hollywood action-film giant, “Machine Gun Preacher” will co-star Michelle Monoghan of “Mission Impossible 3” (2006) and “Eagle Eye” (2008) fame as Childers’ wife Lyn.

The Christian Post recently interviewed Childers about his use of heavy firearms.

“I don’t condone violence at all,” he responded. “I don’t believe in violence but at the same time I don’t believe that children should be raped, murdered or cut up.”

Gerard Butler at the 2010 Golden Globe Awards. Photo © gerardjamesbutler.co.uk Fan Site.

He also added, “I look at it as self-defense and I look at it as I’m helping God’s children. I’m not a person out to murder. It’s not that I like hurting anybody. But at the same time these people [the LRA] need to be stopped.”

Childers’ book Another Man’s War: the True Story of One Man’s Battle to Save Children in the Sudan and his official web site http://machinegunpreacher.org/ recall “the gruesome scenes after LRA raids that included the smelling of burning flesh and saving a woman drenched in her own blood from a breast that was half cut off by a machete,” according to The Christian Post.

Childers also recounted the LRA’s forcing of their victim’s to engage in cannibalism and children to murder their own mothers.

The biopic film’s release dates have undergone several changes and reschedulings since entering preproduction and is now slated for release sometime in 2012 with Lionsgate Entertainment and in association with 1984 Films.

You can find out more about Childers and his Angels of East Africa organization at his website www.machinegunpreacher.org.

People gathered at an intersection in Bloomington, Minn. to protest against the actions of the BP, the company formerly known as British Petroleum. The oil spill from a BP oil drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico has surpassed the Exxon Valdez spill, and it continues to gush oil as of the day of this protest.

The  “BP oil spill” in the Gulf of Mexico  is revealing the unsteady ground the country walks on, and people are feeling this more keenly now than ever before–more so because unlike the Haiti earthquake or the Indian Ocean tsunami, the oil spill is a man-made disaster.

Reverend Chuck Freeman in the Huffington Post feels an inner divide.  The pastor within mourns the loss to environment, lives and livelihood.  His prophetic side is frustrated that the country lives out of harmony with God.

Referring to Jeremiah in the Bible, Freeman notes that the oil spill is viewed as the largest in U.S. history.

He is appalled with himself as he wrestles with a callous urge, wondering if the harm is large enough for people to wake up to human limitations.

Will they, in the end, feel “rescued” by the human technology that caused the spill?  Will they become complacent afterwards, believing human genius can save mankind from any calculated failure?

Still photo from US government live feed of Deepwater Horizon oil spill in cooperation with BP. Taken May 11 2010.

Freeman wonders, too, if he can afford to think this way because he lives safely in Texas.

On the other hand Russell D. Moore, dean of the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary feels the crisis keenly because it lies right at his doorstep in Biloxi, La.

In his blog, Moore to the Point, he says the oil spill exceeds Hurricane Katrina in that it makes him wonder if his children’s children will ever know what Biloxi was like.

The spill, he says, has endangered everything “from seafood to tourism, crabs and seagulls.”

It has also threatened national security because of the great dependence of the country on the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico, which some have called Katrina meets Chernobyl.

Religion Link rues how the country depends so much on fuel and values consumption over conservation.  It raises the theological necessity to teach about creation care and of the apocalypse.

The spill occurred due to an explosion one mile below the ocean surface on April 20, and has been pouring up to 19,000 barrels (800,000 gallons) a day into the waters, killing 11 men and leaving idle thousands of fishermen, shrimpers and other seafood workers, as well as causing harm to the tourism industry, according to Reuters.

BP has sheared away the gushing well pile and lowered a cylindrical containment cap over the hole—a temporary and partial fix.  According to Reuters it will take some time before they can confirm if this works.

They are hoping that when the cap is firmly in place, they can funnel some of the escaping oil and gas into a large hose that would carry it from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico to the surface, where ships will collect and remove it, Reuters said.

Louisiana is hardest hit, but beaches in Mississippi and Alabama have been fouled by the oil, and there is the possibility that the oil sheen may hit Florida in days.

Plus, the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research projects the oil slick may by early summer reach the east coast up to North Carolina, Reuters said.

Moody’s and Fitch ratings say clean up costs alone may at worst exceed $5 billion in any one year.

Moore, turning in, says “For too long, we evangelical Christians have maintained an uneasy ecological conscience. I include myself in this indictment.  We’ve had an inadequate view of human sin.”

He rues the excess belief in the free markets, to the point that they expect corporations to protect the environment.

“But a laissez-faire view of government regulation of corporations is akin to the youth minister who lets the teenage girl and boy sleep in the same sleeping bag at church camp because he ‘believes in young people,’ ”  he writes in his blog.

Freeman, looking out, notes “…the addict has to ‘hit rock bottom’ before he can muster the humility and fortitude to move toward the light.  And even George W. Bush confessed that America is addicted to oil.  Do we need to suffer full-blown ruination to be awakened to our right mind?”