RIP Tony Campolo

My evangelical heroes are dying off. For those of you who do not know, Tony Campolo was an evangelical influencer and leader of “the evangelical left,” a group of (formerly) young evangelicals who left fundamentalism and embraced left-leaning politics. Their original publication was The Post-American which became Sojourners.

That group influenced me a great deal when I was in seminary and later.

Tony died November 19 this year (2024) at age 89. For many years he was an evangelical celebrity speaker, making the rounds of evangelical (and other) colleges and universities. He was a very popular speaker, a gifted speaker who also wrote books and articles.

Tony was a sociologist who taught at Eastern (Baptist) University in Pennsylvania. Among other books he wrote was We Have Met the Enemy and They Are Partly Right. It was a riff on a book by his theological mentor Bernard Ramm that was entitled The Devil, Seven Wormwoods, and God.

I first heard Tony speak at Bethel College where I taught theology from 1984-1999. He came almost every year, often speaking to the faculty and students and guests for two or three days. He then spoke at Baylor University almost every year when I taught there from 1999-2022. So I had many opportunities to hear him and two very brief conversations with him.

Tony was a “progressive evangelical” and therefore controversial. I think I first heard of Tony in the pages of Christianity Today when he was the scheduled main speaker at a mass rally of Christian young people in Washington, DC. I do not remember the year. CT followed the controversy. Tony has written or said (probably both) that there is a “little bit of Christ in everyone.” Some conservative evangelical influencers wanted him canceled. (Cancel culture is nothing new!) The organizers, including as I recall Bill Bright, asked a blue ribbon panel of evangelical theologians to examine Tony about that and eventually gave him the green light to speak at the DC event.

Tony was a unique speaker among evangelicals. He loved to push the envelope. He was funny. I liked to call him “the Christian Don Rickles” because he looked like Rickles and loved to insult his audiences but in a way that made us laugh. He told stories. I wondered how true some were.

Here are a couple of well-remembered stories Tony told college audiences.

He began his talk by saying very loudly, in his very distinctive voice “You are all winners!” Then he would elaborate on that, saying the same thing in different ways. Then, he said “Millions of sperm were swimming toward that one egg and YOU got there first! So you’re a winner!” The students laughed loudly for a long time. Who but Tony Campolo could get away with that in an evangelical college or university?

Another time he was telling the students why they should stop sinning. He said that God is timeless, so Jesus, being God, is still on the cross. Every time you sin, he said, you drive the nails deeper into Jesus’s hands and feet. I really wanted to talk to him about that, but Tony was almost impossible to get to. He always had a couple “body guards” to keep from being mobbed by students, faculty and visitors.

One time when I did meet him face-to-face he asked what I taught. I said “theology.” He pulled a face and made the sign of the cross with his two index fingers and backed away from me. I guess he had experienced a lot of grief from conservative evangelical theologians, like I have.

Tony was a force of nature among evangelicals. He was loved by so many people including Bill Gaither who often invited him to speak at his special musical conferences. His common themes were the evils of racism, poverty, and social injustice. He called students to consider missions instead of pursuing “the American dream.”

One time, at Bethel, he told about one of his former students who said he was called to be a medical missionary to some developing country. Years later, Tony said, he met the student and found out he had become a wealthy plastic surgeon in America. He made a dramatic point of calling the student a “b**b builder.” Some of the female faculty members demanded a meeting with Tony in the president’s office. The outcome was that Tony had to apologize publicly the next day. (He was the guest speaker for “spiritual emphasis week”.) He did apologize gracefully but I heard through the faculty grapevine that he was not happy about it.

The problem was that when you invited Tony to speak you took a risk. You didn’t know what he would say. You only knew that he would probably say something that would offend someone. That became increasingly problematic for him. The last time I heard him speak, in about 2010, he told a large group of faculty that his wife suggested they “go upstairs and make love.” He reported that he told her “Honey, I can do one of those things but not both.” He was joking about his increasing age. I don’t know if anyone was offended. Probably not. It was a mature audience.

I loved to hear Tony speak. I admired his communication skills and loved his messages. He was for several decades the most influential progressive evangelical, a strong advocate for evangelical social action. Oh, where is Tony now that we especially need him? Or someone like him?

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