Quotes from Tony Campolo

I am looking for suggestions on what we can do about extremists within our own society. They cannot be ignored.

It's a new day for the Democrats when it comes to matters of faith, and the younger Evangelicals are aware of this and many of them are moving into the Democratic camp.

Most Evangelicals claim to be politically non-partisan, and say they only identify with the Republican Party because the Republicans are committed to 'family values.'

The traditional spokespersons for the Evangelicals, such as Chuck Colson and James Dobson, have become alarmed about this drift away from the 'Family Values' issues that they believe should be the overwhelming concerns of Evangelicals. They have expressed their displeasure in letters of protest circulated through the religious media.

The first reason for the preponderant influence of those Evangelicals who define themselves as advocates of Religious Right theological and political ideologies is that they have both the financial means and technological know-how to make widespread use of modern electronic forms of communication.

I am not suggesting that all those missionary organizations working in Haiti should pack up and go home, but I am urging them to understand that Haiti does not need clever Americans with newly contrived schemes for saving their country.

Those issues are biblical issues: to care for the sick, to feed the hungry, to stand up for the oppressed. I contend that if the evangelical community became more biblical, everything would change.

Sadly, we do a much better job of making people feel guilty than we do of delivering them from the guilt we create. We need to confess this and change our ways.

Marriage should be viewed as an institution ordained by God and should be out of the control of the state.

While a case can be made for intelligent design, I can't figure out why some Christians are so thrilled about that possibility. First of all, it doesn't prove there's a God. If anything, intelligent design lends support to some form of pantheism that defines God as immanent within nature.

If marriage really is a sacred institution, then why is the government controlling it, especially in a nation that affirms separation of church and state?

I, for one, am quite willing to join the 'forgive, forget and move on' crowd, but it does make me wonder if Evangelicals are going to sound believable when they say that they tend to vote Republican because of their religious commitments to the family.

What is especially important is addressing the question of how religion can be enforced through political means and what can be done to create a political environment that, on the one hand, acknowledges the role of religion in society, while on the other hand does not impose one religion on the populace at the expense of all others.

I don't know of many evangelicals who want to deny gay couples their legal rights. However, most of us don't want to call it marriage, because we think that word has religious connotations, and we're not ready to see it used in ways that offend us.

It is hard to say what the future holds, but this is probable - it won't be just like the past.

President Bush once said that marriage is a sacred institution and should be reserved for the union of one man and one woman. If this is the case - and most Americans would agree with him on this - then I have to ask: Why is the government at all involved in marrying people?

After-school tutoring programs, care for the elderly, shelters for the homeless, disaster relief work, and a variety of other services would all benefit from government funding.

Getting the government to put money into social programs run by religious institutions is a practice that started during the Clinton years, when Bill Clinton advocated the AmeriCorps program.

If a guy is intimidated by a woman in leadership, he has real problems with his own concepts of masculinity. That's a harsh statement, but I believe it to be true.

But I contend that if we're providing total medical coverage for every man, woman, and child in Iraq, shouldn't we at least be doing the same thing for every man, woman, and child in the United States?

Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be 'old-time gospel preaching.' This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states.

I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.

Jesus never says to the poor: 'come find the church', but he says to those of us in the church: 'go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned.

Perhaps because our culture and politics have gone so off course, with values so contrary to those of Jesus, more and more people intuitively recognize that His vision of God's kingdom-a new world of compassion, justice, integrity and peace- is the Good News they've been searching and waiting for.