The Reverend Dr. Tony Campolo, an itinerant preacher and longtime professor of sociology at Eastern University College, died last week at his home in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. He was 89.
Born in Philadelphia to poor, Italian immigrant parents, Tony’s folks credited a local Baptist mission with helping them make the ends meet. Members of the local church not only taught them about the Lord, but also helped Tony’s dad find a job and secure a place to live.
“People often ask me, ‘Where did you get your social consciousness? Where did you get your commitment to the poor, before it was ever fashionable?’” Tony recalled.
“My mother and father saw in the way they were treated by a group of Baptists that this is what Christianity is about. It’s not about getting a ticket to heaven, it’s about becoming an instrument of God to transform this world.”
Tony caught those same values, graduated from Eastern Baptist College, then earned his Master of Divinity from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He eventually earned a Ph.D. from Temple University.
Over the years, Dr. Campolo admitted to being something of an ugly Christian soon after being saved.
“I thought I would impress the world with my piety,” he recalled. “I was sure that would do it [lead people to Christ]. I would walk around school and be sure to let the rest of the kids know that I didn’t do what they did. But the world is not impressed with piety.”
As a pastor and preacher, Dr. Campolo electrified and convicted classrooms and congregations. He was bold and blunt, often lamenting what he perceived as either apathy or disinterest for those who were suffering.
But though considered controversial and at times caustic in the early years of his ministry, Campolo was unapologetically faithful to the Scriptures:
“I’m one of those old-time fundamentalist types,” he said back in the 1980s.
“I believe the Word, and if the liberal wing of Christianity had no right to reinterpret the Scripture to serve their purposes, neither does the evangelical wing have the right to reinterpret the Bible. It says what it means, and it means what it says.”
In 1998, Dr. Campolo was invited to serve as a spiritual advisor, along with Reverend Gordon MacDonald, to President Clinton in the aftermath of the Monica Lewinsky affair.
”There are those who will say that Gordon and I are being used and manipulated,” Dr. Campolo wrote.
“Should this be true, it would not be the first time that Christians have been taken in. But we would rather be men of faith who believe that God is working in the life of the President than to join that army of cynics, many of whom are religious leaders who cannot accept a plea for forgiveness at face value.”
Either Campolo or MacDonald met and prayed with the president on a weekly basis.
“We want him to understand what went wrong with him personally that led to the tragic sins that have so marred his life and the office of the Presidency,” explained Campolo.
Conservative Christians rarely become liberal overnight, but instead incrementally. Looking back across the arc of Dr. Campolo’s ministry, this would certainly have been the case with him.
As the 1980s and 1990s evolved, and the radical Left began wholeheartedly championing abortion on demand and later same-sex “marriage,” Dr. Campolo grew increasingly uncomfortable with the evolving dynamic between evangelicals and Republicans.
It was in 2007 when Dr. Campolo joined forces with Shane Claiborne to start “Red-Letter Christians,” a movement designed to focus on following what Jesus said in the Bible – and either ignoring or deemphasizing other parts of Scripture.
At the top of the priority list of “Red-Letter Christians” has been the destigmatization of homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Asked what Jesus had to say about gay “marriage,” Dr. Campolo would reply with one word: nothing.
“The evangelical community has made gay marriage the greatest sin that you can commit, but when Jesus went after the greatest sin, you know what it was?” he stated. “It was the sin of the Pharisees and the priests and the Sadducees, who kept people out of the kingdom with their rules and regulations.”
Dr. Campolo is correct that the Bible doesn’t record Jesus saying anything specifically about homosexuality. But that’s an incredibly misleading statement. Jesus did and said a lot more than is recorded (John 21:25). Second, and perhaps most importantly, Jesus is God, and all of Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). That means all of the verses in the Old and New Testaments that reference homosexuality also come from Jesus.
Our strengths taken to extremes can become weaknesses. Putting such an appropriately high premium on ministering to those struggling and living on the margins of society, it would seem that Campolo allowed himself to be persuaded by the emotional arguments many of his friends were waging. Having previously believed same-sex marriage was unbiblical, the pastor reversed his position in 2015, writing:
Dr. Tony Campolo believed he was called to be a critic, but also said God wasn’t going to quiz him on the orthodoxy of his theology.
“On the day of judgement, it will not be: ‘Campolo, do you believe in the Virgin Birth? Strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree – check one.’ No. He’s going to ask me: ‘Did you feed the hungry? Did you clothe the naked? Did you visit the sick? Did you help those who were in prison? Did you reach out to the alien?’”
When it comes to our theology, reductionist thinking is dangerous and can be downright destructive if it leads others astray. It is not ours to pick and choose which parts of God’s Word to believe.
Despite some significant differences on key issues, many of us especially loved Dr. Campolo’s telling of Pastor S.M. Lockridge’s famous sermon, “It’s Friday, But Sunday’s Coming!”
“It’s Friday, Satan’s dancing his little jig and he thinks he rules the world, and all the institutions are at his command and governments do his bidding and everything’s in his control – but that’s because it’s Friday,” Campolo shared. “But Sunday’s a-coming!”
Sunday is coming for all who put their faith in Jesus Christ.
Image credit: Tony Compolo
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