COMMENTARY: Living with integrity

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(AT)compuserve.com.) (RNS)-Presidential campaigns invariably raise questions about personal integrity, […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(AT)compuserve.com.)

(RNS)-Presidential campaigns invariably raise questions about personal integrity, and we will soon find ourselves deep in that debate. Americans are somewhat special in this regard. The European press, for example, continuously thunders that a candidate’s personal life has no bearing on public performance.


I know from personal experience how wrong that is. And I only wish our integrity problems were confined to the political sphere.

But the fact is we are in the midst of an integrity crisis. The restraints of conscience have been unleashed from their traditional moorings and moral mayhem is the result. Some two-thirds of the nation’s students cheat, according to a study by the Josephson Institute for the Study of Ethics, a Southern California think tank.

And consider this troubling assertion in a recent Wall Street Journal article:”A typical executive is in his mid-40s, frequently travels on business, says he values `self-respect,’ and is very likely to commit financial fraud.”Why? Often in order to make the company’s profit picture look better than it really is.

None of this should surprise us.

Much of popular culture casts morality and integrity as archaic hurdles along the golden road to enlightened and liberating personal autonomy. Is it any wonder that we find ourselves at the edge of a moral precipice? The question is whether we can draw back.

Enter Stephen Carter, professor of law at Yale University, who has published a thoughtful book titled, appropriately enough,”Integrity”(Basic Books). Carter has earlier warned of the dangers of marginalizing religion in his”The Culture of Disbelief,”a viewpoint that is getting a great deal of lip service, if nothing more. His new book reminds us that without personal integrity, we must expect social anarchy.

Carter’s idea of integrity is not theoretical, but robustly in the real world. He posits three requirements for the person of integrity. One, the ability to choose right over wrong, no matter what the cost. Two, the ability to act on those beliefs. Three, telling other people why such actions are taken.

Why tell? For much the same reason evangelical Christians are required to make a public confession of their personal faith. Public commitment takes people out of the parlor-game stage and sets them on the path to an active faith. Dormant integrity, like dormant faith, is of no consequence.


Carter makes clear this is no easy task. Choosing to do right can put a person at odds with employers, friends, even family members. Integrity, after all, is much different than loyalty: The business executives in the Wall Street Journal story are being loyal to their firms by creating false financial pictures. They are also committing fraud.

The choice between integrity and loyalty is a problem every American grapples with at some time in his or her life. And the final decision can have enormous consequences, as I was reminded during a speaking engagement last year when I returned to Camp LeJeune, N.C., where I once served as a Marine lieutenant.

I had finished my address when a master sergeant raised his hand.”Mr. Colson,”he asked,”which is more important: loyalty or integrity?”It was an amazing question in a sense, for like all other Marines, this sergeant lives and dies by the Corp’s motto: Semper Fideles-always faithful. As a Marine, I had the same lesson drilled into me, and I took that lesson with me to the White House during the Nixon administration.

I answered by telling the audience how big a difference it would have made had I thought about those two conflicting virtues during my White House years. Yet like most palace guards, I put loyalty in front of integrity. The results of my choice are well known, and have played no small part in the distrust many Americans feel toward their government, and toward other institutions as well.

Integrity is the sum of the classic virtues: courage, temperance, prudence, and justice. Loyalty, on the other hand, is merely allegiance. The person of integrity can justly declare,”I have done right.”The loyalist can only say,”I was following orders.”

MJP END COLSON

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