His Act? A Zing and a Prayer – Orlando Sentinel
October 15, 2006His Act? A Zing and a Prayer – Orlando Sentinel
(This article originally appeared in the Orlando Sentinel on October 10, 2006.)
His act? A zing and a prayer. But seriously, folks. A funny thing happened to evangelist Tony Campolo: He’s fired up about politics and materialism.
Mark I. Pinsky, Sentinel Staff Writer
October 15, 2006
LAKE WALES — -Tony Campolo works a room a lot like a veteran Borscht Belt comic, his timing perfect, his punch lines practiced zingers.
Still, the house he is playing this morning — the Lake Wales Church of God, on the campus of Warner Southern College — could be a tough crowd for the fast-talking, left-leaning evangelist.
The conservative Christian school is about as distant from the Catskills as one could imagine, politically, culturally and geographically. Undaunted, the old master has hundreds of students and faculty in the modern sanctuary eating out of his hand within seconds.
Campolo describes himself as a Baptist — “but not a Southern Baptist.” He is definitely not a Pentecostal, he says, although he admits he is sometimes mistaken for one. “I talk so fast they think I’m talking in tongues,” he says, to gales of laughter.
Campolo, the son of a union organizer, talks about how materialism has corrupted Christianity, asking the crowd what Jesus would think about BMWs in church parking lots, in a world of want. “Can you imagine God wanting a status symbol?” he says, his voice thick with sarcasm.
To many evangelicals, Campolo, 71, is one of Christianity’s holy madmen, crisscrossing the nation and the world with his outspoken message of social and economic justice, and proclamations that evangelicals shouldn’t necessarily adhere to the Republican Party. “When did Christianity cease being radical?” he asks, quickly providing an answer. “When it ceased being Christian.”
Whether they consider him a fiery prophet or just one of God’s fools, friends and foes agree that Campolo is a compelling figure.
“He’s a wild man and a fanatic,” says Bishop William H. Willimon, of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. “And I mean all that as a compliment.” In short, Willimon says, “he’s everything they said about Jesus. That is why crowds were attracted to Jesus — and why they lynched Jesus. Tony’s been one of the greatest people I’ve ever known in this faith.” When Willimon was serving as dean of the chapel at Duke University, he invited Campolo to speak at his imposing Gothic church. By the time Campolo had finished, Willimon recalls, “the students were standing on the pews yelling. The kids love him because he sticks to a visceral kind of gospel.”
Reaching out to students
This morning, dressed in a charcoal sports jacket, black slacks and a black, collarless shirt, Campolo does not disappoint. Twice he quotes inspiring lyrics from the Broadway hits Les Miserables and Man of La Mancha.
“I don’t find young people dreaming impossible dreams,” he tells the audience, sitting in rows of padded chairs, arranged in an angled semicircle. Sensing there are many fans of The Simpsons in the audience, Campolo acknowledges his resemblance to Homer, the cartoon’s bald, paunchy patriarch. A longtime fan of the show, he notes that, like Homer, he has a wife named Marge and children — now grown — named Bart and Lisa. The crowd, wearing everything from ties to T-shirts, loves it.
The main purpose of Campolo’s trips is to recruit volunteers and generate financial support for self-help ministries in U.S. inner cities, in Haiti and in Africa. The main vehicle is an organization called EAPE, which stands for Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education and is based in the Philadelphia suburbs.
“America is waiting for you,” he says, asking them to sign up for a summer or a year, if not a lifetime. “You are called to be instruments of God.” The retired sociology professor also urges them to act in other ways — helping feed a child in an impoverished nation through a program called Compassion International, or starting small businesses and cottage industries in inner cities and developing nations.
The students’ career choices, he says, are being “a boring person in a corporate system — or being an instrument of God. That’s what I’m offering you — a meaningful life! I know you are a believer. Are you willing to be a disciple?” For many, the message is well-received.
“I really enjoyed it,” says Shristi Thoresen, 16. “I can really see how he is a very controversial speaker, but he had a good message overall.” Samuel Mills, a senior, agrees: “His energy alone gives him the ability to connect.” Still, some student reviews are mixed. “I liked the way he challenges the youth not just to accept the way things are, but to stand up and be different, and not just care about the trivial things of life — to impact the world for Christ,” says Joy Devore, a sophomore. “I didn’t like the way he tied in left-wing politics and bashed right-wing politics. I think politics could be left out of it.” There are critics.
Despite his age and a stroke several years ago, Campolo takes his one-man, traveling revival on the road 270 days a year, including speeches at about 26 Christian colleges. He says he donates all but about 20 percent of his speaking fees, and half of his book royalties, to EAPE, as well as to other causes.
Voluble Campolo is a frequent visitor to Central Florida, lacerating and inspiring listeners at churches and seminaries with essentially the same barn-burning brand of Christianity he brings to college students.
Campolo, who once served as a spiritual adviser to Bill Clinton, is also a familiar face in the national media, appearing on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, Politically Incorrect, Crossfire and Charlie Rose. When not on the road, he serves as associate pastor of Mount Carmel Baptist Church in West Philadelphia, where he is the only white member.
Campolo’s 30 books have sold more than 1.5 million copies, mostly to evangelical Christians, and he has a new book addressed to the next generation of Christians, called Letters to a Young Evangelical: The Art of Mentoring.
But his positions — including his belief that God is not a Republican or a Democrat; that capital punishment is unbiblical; that the war in Iraq is causing America “to lose its soul”; that draping a cross with an American flag to show church support for the war is “idolatry” — have made some conservative evangelicals uncomfortable. “I do see him on the left wing of evangelicalism,” says Tom Minnery, senior vice president of Focus on the Family. “I think he’s majoring on fringe issues. He needs to grapple with the reality of evil.” Minnery agrees with Campolo’s goals, but not his means. “Nobody likes poverty,” he says. “We differ on how to end it. If (Campolo) would campaign for a free-market economy in Haiti, over the long term that would help Haiti’s people more than piecemeal efforts.”
Campolo has other critics, including the Rev. Lou Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition. For at least a decade, Sheldon says, Campolo has “wanted to steal from the rich and give to the poor. He was constantly talking about the injustice of the free-enterprise system. I don’t think it’s biblically based at all. He looks for the latest oddball thing to stand for that’s in vogue, and then takes off on it.” Sheldon doesn’t consider Campolo an evangelical. “He’s a socialist,” Sheldon says. “I think he’s trying to sing a song in the wrong church.”
Focused on the goal
Campolo is undeterred by his critics, and he admits that he sometimes provokes a hostile reaction when he speaks.
“You can’t be simply wedded to the Republican Party,” he says, claiming that a third of white evangelicals support more liberal positions. “We don’t want our souls to belong to any one party.” “‘Evangelical’ means right-wing politics in America today,” he tells the audience. “They’ve sold you a bill of goods.”
Despite his protests that he is a centrist, Campolo is often grouped with “left-wing evangelicals” such as author/activist Jim Wallis who founded Sojourners, a Christian political and cultural organization. Although these evangelicals think that, for Christians, poverty is a matter of justice, rather than charity, the label “leftist” makes them uncomfortable.
“We don’t like that term,” Campolo says.
So recently, Campolo and the others have said they prefer to be known as “Red Letter Christians,” a reference to the way the words of Jesus are identified in many versions of the New Testament. “I think Jesus was insulting,” Campolo explains to the students. “He ticked off a lot of folks. I try to be faithful to the red letters.”
Mark I. Pinsky can be reached at 407-420-5589 or mpinsky@orlandosentinel.com.
Copyright (c) 2006, Orlando Sentinel
